Toto returns to road to promote ALS awareness

Since it was founded in 1977, the Grammy-winning rock band Toto has gone through plenty of members, with musicians coming and going and coming back again. But the band’s current lineup is the closest it’s been to the original ’77 formation.

When founding bassist Mike Porcaro died after a battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease earlier in the year, Toto’s initial lineup decided to reform and raise awareness for ALS. They’re still on the road together, and they stop by Northern Quest tomorrow night.

“We really wanted to do this for brother Mike,” said David Paich, one of the band’s original members, from his home in Los Angeles. “Normally we wouldn’t be getting back together because so much time has passed. People have different lives and are doing different things. But they all refocused on Toto as a band. It feels like it did when we were first going out on the road. … It was like finding an old glove that fits perfectly.”

Paich has been with the band for most of its run – he left in 2005 and returned five years later – and the current lineup also includes founding members Steve Lukather, Steve Porcaro and David Hungate, as well as singer Joseph Williams, who joined the band in the mid-’80s. Paich says that shuffling lineups typically upend the musical chemistry, but that wasn’t the case this time.

“There ends up being a lot of musical shorthand,” he said. “People just know what to play. You don’t have to say, ‘Play it like the guy on the first album did,’ because it is the guy from the first album.”

The band recently released “Toto XIV,” its first studio album in nine years. The record features 11 new songs, and some of the tracks, including the Steely Dan-esque ballad “Chinatown,” had been started in the ’70s and ’80s and only recently finished.

“We’d jump into these great collaborative sessions,” Paich recalled. “We’ve got a good group of the main guys that were there on the early albums. I gotta tell you, the band’s sounding better than ever.”

Toto is probably best known for its 1982 album “Toto IV,” which sold more than 3 million copies and boasted the Top 10 hits “Rosanna,” “Africa” and “I Won’t Hold You Back.” The band is now co-headlining a tour with Yes, a band that occupied the same radio waves back in the early ’80s.

Paich says the current live show features a mix of the old and new: You’ll hear tracks from the new LP mixed in with classic cuts like “Hold the Line” and “I’ll Be Over You,” as well as more obscure selections for Toto super-fans.

“You’ll have some of the main hits in there that people come to see, but we’ve decided to dig down for some deeper cuts,” Paich said. “Touring with Yes allowed us to get outside of our comfort zone and out of the box with some of our more prog-type stuff. It’s going to make for an interesting set.”

When he was writing songs like “Africa” several decades ago, Paich said he never expected them to still be relevant today. He also never expected to still be playing music with more or less the same group of guys.

“Hey, if we’d lasted 10 years, that would have been a great thing,” Paich said. “We’re approaching our 40th anniversary in a couple years here, and we start saying, ‘We must be getting old.’ But I figure as long as we’re younger than Springsteen and the Stones and they’re still out there touring, then it’s good enough for us.”