The reborn Kansas band coming to Luther Burbank Center in Santa Rosa

For guitarist Richard Williams, Kansas is a state of mind, as well as the rock band he helped launch in the early 1970s, and recently helped relaunch with a new record and tour.

Coming through town following the release of “The Prelude Implicit,” its first new album in 17 years, the band is out on the road performing both new music and old favorites, including the entire “Leftoverture” album from 1976, best-remembered for the hit “Carry On Wayward Son.”

“We thought we’d do maybe 20 dates and that way we could people in to see us do some of the new album,” Williams said. “We had no idea we’d wind up doing 80 dates or so. We didn’t know it was going to be so well-received.”

Kansas brings the ‘Leftoverture’ tour to Santa Rosa tonight for a performance at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. The band never completely stopped touring, but this tour is only the beginning of the band’s new life.

“After ‘Leftoverture,’ our next album - ‘Point of Know Return’ in 1977 - was also a platinum album, with ‘Dust in the Wind’ on it,” Williams said. “So next year, we’ll do the ‘Point of Know Return’ tour. And we’re also going to start recording another new album.”

The band - first formed in Topeka - has reorganized since the retirement of its former lead singer and songwriter, Steve Walsh. Another Kansas mainstay, songwriter and guitarist Kerry Livgren, had already left the band.

“What’s going on with Kansas now is very much like the early days of the band, where again it’s a team of like-minded guys that is rededicated to being the band and creating, and doing what we do.”

After more than four decades with the band, Williams and longtime Kansas drummer Phil Ehart have a strong sense of what kind of material works best, but Williams finds that it’s not easily defined in a specific formula.

“I can’t tell you what a Kansas song is, but I can tell you what it isn’t,” Williams said. “For Phil and me, it’s in our DNA. We experiment, and switch things around, and we start to hear something we can work with. We know what a Kansas song is when we hear it, but we also know how to make something a Kansas song.”

Even in the beginning, when Kansas was playing versions of other bands’ music in small nightclubs, the band experimented with the songs, Williams recalled.

“There were things about songs that didn’t like, so we’d just remove ‘em and put in another part,” he said. “We’d add a different beginning. We would change the total feel of a song and change it into something else.”

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 707-521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.