For 50-plus years, Kansas have traveled a winding path that has included periods of major success, lulls in the band’s popularity, arrivals and departures of multiple band members that have introduced different talents into the lineup and stretched the band’s sound into new territories, a long span of time where Kansas didn’t make new music, and since 2014, a return to making new albums and an upswing in the band’s touring business.
The past year has brought new twists and challenges to the Kansas story. On the more concerning side, drummer and original member Phil Ehart suffered a serious heart attack in February 2024. Against the odds, he’s recovering, but has stepped away from touring, with his drum tech Eric Holmquist taking over the drummer slot.
“The heart attack that he had, they call a widowmaker,” singer-keyboardist Ronnie Platt explains to Orlando Weekly. “I guess there are two different kinds of widowmakers, of which I was told one particular type only 15 percent of people survive and the other one only 25 percent of people survive. So that’s pretty scary but, you know, Phil had everything in his corner, living an extremely clean lifestyle for being a rock star.”
Platt reports that Ehart, who remains the manager for Kansas and handles the band’s business, sounds great these days and is full of energy. But whether he’ll return to touring with Kansas is an open question.
“There’s no predicting what he wants to do,” Platt says. “Will he return to the band? At this point I know he wants to come out and — not do an entire show — but play songs here and there. So as far as the future and beyond that, you never know. It all depends on how he feels.”
For his part, Platt also had a recent major health scare. In February he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and underwent surgery. But things worked out exceptionally well for the singer and he was back performing with Kansas a month later.
“Talk about taking the wind out of your sails, you know, to have the doctor say that your cancer is malignant. The first thing that came to my head was how much time do I have?” Platt says. “So to go from wondering if I had three months, six months, a year to live, to a clean bill of health a month later, it’s pretty spectacular.”
As it turned out, surgeons were able to remove the tumor without having to remove Platt’s thyroid, and his recovery was smooth.
Another positive development for Kansas has been the return of guitarist Zak Rizvi. In a 2023 interview, guitarist Richard Williams had reported that after finishing the 2020 album The Absence of Presence, Rizvi — who produced the album and was a main songwriter on the album (as well as 2016’s The Prelude Implicit) — had left Kansas and there had been “little to no contact” with him since.
The group, though, reconnected with Rizvi when Williams had to miss a show and the band invited Rizvi to fill in. Platt says he thinks Rizvi realized he missed touring and soon he was welcomed back into Kansas.
“Talk about just an insanely talented guy,” Platt says of Rizvi. “What a phenomenal guitar player. His knowledge of music theory is bottomless and then to be such a great producer and songwriter, I mean anyone would want Zak in their band.”
So things are once again looking up for the band, which broke big with their fourth album, Leftoverture, in 1976. Featuring the single “Carry On Wayward Son,” the album went platinum. Their next album, Point of Know Return — featuring the hit single “Dust in the Wind” — was another blockbuster and solidified Kansas as one of the hottest rock bands of their era.
Over the years since, Kansas has made more albums, toured consistently, and opened a new chapter in 2014 when longtime singer Steve Walsh retired and Platt took over the frontman slot.
Platt, who had played in various Chicago-area bands for some three decades, was a lifelong fan of Kansas, but he admitted he worried about whether fans would accept him as the band’s new singer.
“Right before I was about to do my first show with Kansas, I saw an episode of Behind the Music with Styx and Lawrence Gowan taking Dennis DeYoung’s place and he talks about the crowd not being so nice to him,” Platt says. “That’s putting it lightly. And I saw that episode right before my first show and I’m like I’m going to stand where Steve Walsh stood? ‘Jesus, what the heck is wrong with me. I’m throwing myself into the fire!'”
But the backlash didn’t happen, as Platt believes fans recognized his passion for Kansas’ music, and 11 years later he’s still fronting Kansas.
“My time in Shooting Star was only four years,” he says. “I thought to myself, ‘Oh my God, if this can go two years, even three years, [it] would be a dream.’ Anything beyond that would just, you know, it was hard to conceive.”
Bayside Stadium
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This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2025.