REO Speedwagon are to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of the Hi Infidelity album with a special commemorative reissue. 

“Our manager, Tom Consolo, has just come across the demos we did for that record,” frontman Kevin Cronin told Classic Rock. “We thought they’d been lost forever. Now, listening to these I am surprised just how heavy some of the tracks are. We did these recordings in Hollywood without Neal (keyboard player Neal Doughty), so Gary (Richrath) put on a lot of guitars.”

The idea is to include all of the demos on the new version of Hi Infidelity.

“We want to make it something special for the fans. I hope we can release it in January 2011. That would be exactly 30 years after it first appeared.”

And there is the possibility of the band doing the whole of the album in sequence on a subsequent tour.

“We recently did this for a radio special. Man, I’d forgotten how vocally oriented it was. There’s just so much singing on there. But if I train hard, eat my vegetables look after myself, then maybe I’ll be in condition to do a tour showcasing the record. That would be fun. And if that does happen, we would certainly include some UK dates. That was our first charting album there (reaching number six).”

Right now, the band are promoting and touring around new album Not So Silent Night – a collection of (you guessed it) Christmas Songs.

For further info, go to http://www.reospeedwagon.com/