Kansas have reacted to the use of their classic song Carry On Wayward Son during a sketch on the long-running variety show Saturday Night Live over the weekend.
In the sketch, entitled Husbands (see below), a group of girlfriends (played by Chloe Fineman, Sarah Sherman, Ashley Padilla, Jane Wickline and Veronika Slowikowska) introduce their husbands (played by SNL host Jack Black, Kenan Thompson, James Austin Johnson, Andrew Dismukes and Tommy Brennan) to each other for the first time.
While the women fret in the kitchen about what their husbands in the room next door might be up to, the men, after an awkward start, break into song. Led by Black, they're swiftly committed to performing Carry On Wayward Son together, their inability to converse defeated by their shared love of the music – and a secret costume fetish. Male loneliness epidemic? What male loneliness epidemic?
"Everybody I know is sending me the clip," Kansas guitarist Rich Williams tells Vulture. "It’s another feather in our cap that adds to our legacy. We’re still out there and working, but to be acknowledged by an institution like Saturday Night Live? Wow."
"I’ve seen so many parodies and interpretations of our work," he continues. "A capella, jug bands, all kinds of stuff. So when I first watched the sketch, it made sense to me that they would go in that direction. But still, I was like, Wow. It keeps going and going. We got a lot of airtime, and that was fantastic.
"It made me think back to recording our second album, Song for America, and how both Kansas and Saturday Night Live were born almost at the same time. They were about a year after our first record, so we have a lot of shared history in Americana in general. To be acknowledged in a sketch in a funny way felt nice. It wasn’t mocking us. It was very cool. And Jack Black is one of a kind. He’s very serious, but he’s very talented. He’s a jack of all trades."
Carry On Wayward Son, written by then-Kansas guitarist Kenny Livgren, reached No. 11 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in early 1977 and has gone on to become a much-loved fixture on classic rock radio.
"It’s an autobiographical song,” Livgren told Classic Rock in 2016. "Parallel to my musical career, I’ve always been on a spiritual sojourn, looking for truth and meaning. It was a song of self-encouragement. I was telling myself to keep on looking, and I would find what I sought."
