Kansas: Steve Walsh (vocals, piano, organ, synthesizer, vibraphone); Robby Steinhardt (vocals, violin, viola); Rich Williams (acoustic & electric guitars); Kerry Livgren (guitar, piano, clavinet, ARP, Moog & Oberheim synthesizers); Dave Hope (bass); Phil Ehart (drums, percussion).
Producer: Jeff Glixman.
Reissue producers: Jeff Glixman, Jeff Magid.
Recorded at Studio In The Country, Bogalusa, Louisiana. Includes liner notes by David Wild.
Digitally remastered by Darcy Proper and Suha Gur.
From their inception, Kansas had been working on a combination of American heavy rock and UK prog rock. Their aesthetic and commercial peak in 1976-'77 found them achieving the perfect synthesis of these elements, first on LEFTOVERTURE and then on POINT OF KNOW RETURN. While the latter was somewhat more concise and accessible, LEFTOVERTURE contains what is inarguably the Midwestern band's signature song, "Carry On, My Wayward Son," an irresistible riff-fest that channels everything from Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull to Lynyrd Skynyrd, and would make Kansas rock-radio denizens for decades to come. On many of the other tracks, the band's proggier elements come to the fore, with elegant piano, elaborate synthesizer, and death-defying shifts in meter and dynamics, but the whole is delivered with a greater conceptual concision than Kansas had previously managed.