Make The Leap Steve Walsh

After Steve Walsh retired from Kansas back in 2014 many thought that would be it and we’d hear no more from Walsh, luckily this was proven wrong and here we have a new solo album from him. Joining Walsh are Tommy Denander, who co-wrote the majority of the songs on here with Walsh, and FM’s Steve Overland adds backing vocals…

For most genre fans John Elefante needs no introduction. But for the youngsters out there … Vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer John Elefante is the guy who replaced the guy, Steve Walsh, in Kansas in 1981. (Elefante beat out, among others, Sammy Hagar and Doug Pinnick for the job.) He would record two albums with Kansas, Vinyl Confessions and Drastic Measures. To the former, he was the vocalist on the mega-hit, Play The Game Tonight; to the latter, he wrote Fight Fire With Fire, Kansas' biggest single to date.

Steve Hackett left Genesis in June 1977 (following the tour that would be documented on Seconds Out), and started his solo career in earnest with Please Don't Touch. Unlike Voyage of the Acolyte, which was a largely instrumental concept album steeped in the progressive rock idiom, this record is primarily a collection of songs featuring guest vocalists Richie Havens, Randy Crawford, and Kansas' Steve Walsh (their Phil Ehart also chips in here on drums). Although the sum effect is something of a patchwork, the individual pieces are often lovely…