Yes, prog-rock legend Jon Anderson is headed our way with his Band of Geeks

That high-floating, majestic voice of Yes' Jon Anderson shall shine again on a concert tour headed our way.

The set list will contain numerous Yes songs from all stages of the English art-rock band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career that featured Anderson as lead vocalist and songwriter. The tour also promises the introduction of new material created by Anderson and his current group, The Band Geeks.

"We're going to be doing the Yes epics and classics and throw in a couple of the new songs which won't be released yet," Anderson said.

The Band Geeks are living out a fantasy for guys who started out periodically getting together to jam on cover songs and a few originals.

"A friend of mine, who works at Sirius Radio, sent me a video of the Band Geeks doing a video of 'Heart of The Sunrise,'" Anderson said, referring to one of Yes' 1970s art-rock epics. "And I just thought, wow, these guys are seriously talented. After a month or so, I started wondering if they'd want to go on tour. We could do Yes classics and epics and things like that, so I rang up the bass player, Richie Castellano, and we got on very well on the phone and I said let's go out together on tour, and he said 'What? Are you crazy?' I said no, no, no I think it could be so much fun. You know how to play Yes. Yes music is very special to me, of course, and I sent him my list of songs I'd love to do, especially 'Close to The Edge' and 'Awaken,' 'Yours is No Disgrace' and 'All Good People' − all the usual stuff I know I like doing − and that was that."

Three months later, Anderson and the Band Geeks did an East Coast tour to see how it felt on stage together.

"They were just such wonderful guys, and they were so happy to play the Yes music note-for-note quite amazingly well," Anderson said. "And I was in heaven."

Anderson looks forward to another heavenly experience on a follow-up tour starting May 30 at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, N.J., followed by dates June 1 at the Bergen PAC in Englewood, N.J.; June 3 at Kodak Center Theatre in Rochester, N.Y.; June 6 at Hart Theatre in Albany, N.Y.; June 8 at Point of The Bluff Concert Pavilion, Hammondsport, N.Y.; June 13, Copernicus Center, Chicago; June 18, Palace Theatre, Greensburg, Pa.; June 20: Hershey Theatre, Hershey; June 22, Capitol Center for the Arts, Concord, N.H.; June 25, Shubert Theatre, Boston; June 27, Ridgefield Playhouse, Ridgefield, Conn., July 21, Great South Bay Music Festival, Patchogue, N.Y.

The tour specifically is billed as "Yes Epics and Classics Featuring Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks," so how does Anderson differentiate epics from classics?

"Well, we did 'Gates of Delirium'; that's an epic," Anderson said of the nearly 22-minute war-themed track that filled the entire Side One of Yes' 1974 album "Relayer."

Anderson and the Band Geeks performed "Gates of Delirium" on their initial 2023 tour "with jet planes flying over and bombs being dropped as I originally thought it should be. And we had a good time."

Last year, after the Band of Geeks tour wrapped up, Anderson headlined shows in Europe with two dozen young musicians from the Paul Green Rock Academy, reprising a tour that played U.S. dates in 2022.

Fresh off that European jaunt with the Rock Academy, Anderson telephoned Band of Geeks bassist Castellano, who's also been in Blue Oyster Cult since 2003, and presented another big surprise.

"I said let's make an album now," Anderson said. "He said, 'What, you want to do an album?' I said yes, you're so good at it, you're a great bass player and good producer and I've got lots of songs and we can work together and that's what we did for the last three months. It was mixed and printed and it turned out to be a good-sounding album and it's called "True," and I think it's going to come out in a couple months, probably in the end of July or in August."

Anderson, 79, said those new songs harken to classic Yes material, including his lyrics with a pro-environmental world view.

"I'm writing about the Earth Mother and how this wonderful Earth we live on needs help," Anderson said. "It needs sustenance from the human experience to try to make it like the ancient days of Eden. I have two songs about 'let's nurture Mother Earth and it will nurture us' instead of all this silly craziness we're living in and madness of money and advertising and war and pestilence and the usual stuff."

Concertgoers can expect to hear a few of those new songs.

But Anderson knows "we've got to be delicate and say 'Yes epics and classics' because that's what people want. We're selling a lot of tickets so it's going to be a good tour. And we have a guy who does brilliant lighting and projection, so we continue the evolvement of stage design and lighting to make sure the audiences gets a good experience for their money."

Chatting by phone, Anderson happily relayed the story of Yes' surprising 1983 comeback when he rejoined the band and sang on the "90215" album and its crossover hit, "Owner of a Lonely Heart," that became the progressive rockers' lone Billboard chart-topper.

"I think the production (on "90215") was brilliant," Anderson said.

He had been dwelling in the south of France before Yes' comeback, working on two solos albums; one inspired by Russian artist Marc Chagall; the other drawing from British fairy lore and the 1956 book "A True Fairy Tale" by Daphne Charters. On a visit back home to London, Anderson heard from his former Yes bandmate, bass guitar virtuoso Chris Squire.

"Chris called me up and said, 'Do you want to listen to some music? Do you know I'm working with this guy Trevor Horn and with Trevor Rabin.' I said, oh, I like Trevor Horn, he makes good music. He did a great album called 'Duck Rock' with Malcolm McLaren who was the Sex Pistols' manager."

Next thing Anderson knew, he was sitting in Squire's Rolls Royce listening to the songs for which Squire and the two Trevors had been collaborating.

"I said Chris, these are so good. What's this 'Owner of a Lonely Heart' thing?" Anderson recalled. "Chris said, 'Well we think that should be a single.' And I said, well, the chorus is a hit, you know? But the verses are a bit slow and lackadaisical. And he said, 'Well, what would you do?'"

Anderson recalls phonetically sounding out a punchier, quicker-cutting rhythm for what would become the verses like "Move yourself/You always live your life/Never thinking of the future/Prove yourself/You are the move you make/Take your chances, win or loser."

Squire liked what he heard and asked Anderson if he'd come to the studio the next day to sing it.

"I said I don't know, I'm busy down the south of France," Anderson said. "He said 'Jon, we want you to join the band and it will become Yes if you sing in the band.' And I said, ah, that sounds pretty good to me. And that's what I did. I went and sang four songs, one of them was 'Owner of a Lonely Heart,' and Trevor Rabin helped me through the first verses. But halfway through the second verse, he said, 'Jon, I'm going for a beer, but you get on with it.' So I did. That's how it happened."

With "90215" a success, Yes went back out on a 1984 tour, brimming with confidence.

"The great thing about it is you go on tour knowing that the album has done so well. You have this feeling 'Wow, the audience is going to be so excited about what we're going to project out there.'"

Fans who witnessed that tour hold it in highest regards, which doesn't surprise Anderson.

"The sound was great; the visuals were great, and I just had the best time of my life then," he said.

A recording artist since the 1960s, Anderson knows not to predict the sales success of his upcoming "True" album with The Band of Geeks.

"You never know. Sometimes you spend a lot of time working on an album and then you put it out there and nothing happens," Anderson said. "I did an album '1,000 Hands' I thought was the best album ever and it didn't sell very well, and the record company went under. They had no money. And life happens. But here we are with an album called 'True' and going out on tour. And by the time we tour next year we'll probably have money for a bigger show and who knows, we might be No. 1 around the world. You never know."

Touring the East Coast again gives Anderson a chance to reflect on Yes' mid-1970s successes and extravagances, like when the band drew a record 100,000-plus fans to JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.

Anderson recalls an in-the-round show at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena where as soon as Yes was finished, the bandmates sprinted to a waiting helicopter to whisk them to Greater Pittsburgh Airport in time to make a red-eye flight to Cincinnati.

"Very rock star, you know? All these fans are waving to us, and we got into this helicopter waving."

Yes members caught their flight and checked in late to their Cincinnati hotel where a surprise awaited.

"There was a guy standing outside waiting. He looked like a hippie. He said, 'Jon, Jon can you come meet somebody?' I said no, no I'm too tired. And I got into the elevator and there was a band in there. I knew they were a band right away. And I said what are you doing? And they said, 'Oh, we're here with Elvis.' I said wait a minute; Elvis is in the building? He said 'Yeah, we're all on the 13th floor.' I thought oh my God, well good luck and give Elvis my best and they were like, 'yeah, all right.'"

Minutes after getting into his hotel room, Anderson heard a knock on the door, opened it and saw the hippie standing there. He said, 'Elvis wants to meet you.' And I said wait, it's like 12:30, what would I say to Elvis? I freaked out. He said, 'No. no he just wants to meet you. He's a nice guy.' I said of course he's a nice guy, he's Elvis Presley. But I said tell him I love everything he's ever done, but I'm tired and I need to sleep."

Anderson quickly fell to sleep until about 30 minutes later when the hippie knocked again and re-invited Anderson to come meet Elvis.

"I said no, just say I'm really shy − which I actually am − and very nervous about meeting Elvis Presley."

An hour later, the hippie returned again.

"He gave me a piece of paper where Elvis had written a little story to me about life. There was a beautiful little energy to his writing. He wrote about how we are all God's children and things like that. I said thank you very much.

The following morning, the hippie knocked on Anderson's door a fourth and final time to give him one of Presley's golden Taking Care of Business necklaces emblazoned with the initials "TCB" and a lightning bolt.

"I told him thank you," Anderson said. "It was beautiful."

Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and easy to reach at stady@timesonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Jon Anderson of Yes brings his Band of Geeks to town