'Hope' Remains

Gary Pihl has been involved with every tour by the band Boston. For every tour but the very first two, he was even a member.

Pihl met band founder Tom Scholz and his crew in 1977, during the second half of the tour that supported the massively successful album "Boston," which has sold more than 17 million copies. That makes it one of the best-selling debut albums of all time. At the time, Pihl was lead guitarist in the touring band of Sammy Hagar, who served as an opening act on Boston's first tour. One of his first-ever gigs with Hagar was during the first Boston tour, Pihl says by phone from Denver before a tour stop. The current tour will bring Pihl, now a member of Boston, to Rogers tonight for a show at the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion.

Hagar's band got invited along for the second tour, too. Then Hagar left the group about the same time Boston guitarist Barry Goudreau left that band. Scholz, Boston's chief songwriter, engineer and innovator, tabbed Pihl to join both the touring band and the team at Scholz Research & Development, the latter a company dedicated to making high-tech sound equipment.

That such a company existed makes sense when listening to the intricacies of Boston's sound. Scholz spent hours in the studio tweaking each song into his vision of perfection.

"Soaring" is an apt word for both the guitar and vocals, Pihl agrees. It's the blend of the two, originally created by Scholz on guitar and Brad Delp on lead vocals, that found favor with fans.

"He (Scholz) has this great ear, and he's a great songwriter," Pihl says.

Pihl, now having worked with Scholz for nearly 30 years, says Boston's sonic architect has a knack for precision. Scholz will alter a tune by the slightest amount -- such as lowering the sound of guitar by a single decibel -- to make something better.

But that's a slow process, meaning the release of a new Boston album is a rare occasion. The band followed the self-titled debut with "Don't Look Back" in 1978. The third full-length, "Third Stage," dropped in 1986.

The band followed those albums with two more offerings, each about eight years apart -- "Walk On" in 1994 and "Corporate America" in 2002. Neither sold nearly as well as earlier releases.

The band's lineup keeps changing, and Scholz and Pihl remain as the longest-tenured members. But that was always somewhat the case, Pihl explains. In an age when fully realized, full band solo projects were not common, Scholz led the way, and Boston was always his creation. Scholz and the band's trademark voice, Brad Delp, were the only two members signed to Epic Records for the band's first record deal.

But even that arrangement has changed. Delp committed suicide in 2007, leaving Boston without a lead singer. But because of Scholz and his notoriously slow recording pace, several original songs featuring Delp's lead vocals remained. Four such tracks appear on the December 2013 album "Love, Life & Hope."

On tour, and on several tracks on the new album, Tommy DeCarlo takes over lead vocals. Pihl says the band found him courtesy of MySpace, which was at the time the social media platform of the day. DeCarlo's recordings of him singing Boston songs led the band members to contact him. They eventually hired DeCarlo, even through he'd never previously been in a band.

Pihl says Boston will balance tonight's set list with several new songs but will also perform the bulk of the early-era hits.