Lawrence Gowan spends his casino winnings on a cartoon

Keeping score of the 1980s Canadian Content comeback trail has supplied recent stories on Martha and the Muffins and the Spoons and Platinum Blonde, why not Lawrence Gowan? But, for the past decade, his gig has taken him to all the casinos and state fairs and cruise ships of America, because of a decade-ago recruitment in the rare case of a rock group whose departed keyboardist singer Dennis DeYoung has zero likelihood of coming back. “A Criminal Mind” has therefore been identified since then with the repertoire of Styx, whose 2000s incarnation tried conjuring up a few tunes that wouldn’t send the audiences scurrying for the concession stand, and you know how that usually goes. Gowan was quite ready to break out of Canada when he got a chance to open for Tears For Fears at the Hollywood Palladium in 1985 — then some guys in the front row started gobbing on his piano, so he had to settle for being a hit record only in Cleveland. But, look: Return of the Strange Animal, complete with his own homemade animated film fixated on the passage of time. Based on the most frequently snickered question in small-town articles about Styx, though, someday he will be forced to learn the lyrics to “Mr. Roboto”.