“Carry on Wayward Son” has been a cornerstone of the Kansas catalog for decades. But it has also found an interesting place in pop culture, including being used as featured music leading up to the newest season of Amazon Prime’s crime thriller Reacher, which premiered this week (Feb. 20).
The ties between Kansas and the program go back to the first season, when chief detective Oscar Finlay pulled out a CD from his collection, while traveling as a passenger with series namesake, Jack Reacher. “Best opening of any rock song ever,” Finlay comments as the famous a capella vocal introduction begins to play through the car stereo. “What are you doing?” Reacher asks Finlay, who air drums as the song continues to build. “I gotta say, my guys don’t get their due. They can rock out,” he replies.
Hear Kansas’ ‘Carry on Wayward Son’ in the ‘Reacher’ Trailer
The a capella vocal intro came about very naturally, Kansas guitarist and co-founder Rich Williams shares in an upcoming interview on the UCR Podcast. “I don’t know whose idea it was, but it was a unanimous decision as we were doing the vocal tracks, ‘This needs to be at the beginning. It just make perfect sense,'” he remembers, adding that they quickly recognized they had something special on their hands. “Listening to the whole album, that’s when it really hit us. ‘This is a game changer, this record.’ It was obvious that ‘Carry on Wayward Son’ was going to be a hit. We were really happy with it. We knew that finally, after three albums, our fourth album, this could make a big difference.”
The Birth of ‘Carry on Wayward Son’
The sessions for Leftoverture, the group’s fourth album, had begun with the band facing a bit of a crisis — they didn’t have songs ready to go because of their constant road work and vocalist Steve Walsh was also dealing with writer’s block. The album got its title from the sprawling epic “Magnum Opus,” which had the working name of “Leftoverture.” It earned that tag, having been assembled from pieces of music the group had come up with at soundchecks as well as some leftover bits from their previous album, Masque.
Guitarist Kerry Livgren ultimately penned five of the eight songs on Leftoverture — with “Carry on Wayward Son” being a last-minute arrival.”We were in rehearsals in Topeka and finishing up working on the material which was going to be on what was to become Leftoverture,” Williams details. “The last song to come in was ‘Wayward Son,’ on the last day. We didn’t really have much of it. We didn’t run through it and it wasn’t arranged in the form that it is now, verse, chorus, etc. It wasn’t until we got into the recording process [that we finally finished it].”
“It was kind of an assembly line. You’re working on getting bass and drum tracks and you go through all of the material,” he continues. “Then, you have keyboard days, guitar days and vocal days, working from song to song. At the end of cutting the basic tracks, we needed to get on with that new song, because we’d finished everything else. That’s when we arranged it, learned it and started rolling tape. Really, that version is probably the first time we played it correctly.”
READ MORE: Kansas Carry On in a Big Way With ‘Leftoverture’
Reacher is just the latest moment in the spotlight for “Carry on Wayward Son,” which was famously featured previously throughout 15 seasons of the drama Supernatural between 2005 and 2019. The band also performed the song in a scene from the contemporary western crime drama, Walker. The AEW wrestling team, the Elite, used it as their entrance music in recent years — and you can even discover what it might sound like if South Park’s Cartman handled the vocals, thanks to Instagram.
“It’s becoming normalized,” Williams says. “I’ll get a call from Phil, ‘What do you think about it being in this next show?’ It’s like, how many shows is this going to be in? It’s used so frequently! I learned a few months ago that it was going to be part of the season 3 preview for Reacher, but I didn’t watch it. I waited until me and my wife finally finished watching the first two seasons. Then, I watched the trailer and they did such a great job with the way they used it. I’m amazed that a song that is over 40 years old is still so relevant.”
The band finished off their long-running 50th anniversary tour at the end of 2024. Though current vocalist Ronnie Platt recently shared that he’s battling thyroid cancer, he’s keeping a positive outlook and the group is looking forward to getting back on the road. Kansas has concerts scheduled throughout 2025 including a run of summer co-headlining dates with 38 Special.
Watch Kansas Perform ‘Carry on Wayward Son’ Live in 2024
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Gallery Credit: Gary Graff
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