Fifty years have seen the band Kansas travel a winding path that has included periods of major success, lulls in the band’s popularity, the arrivals and departures of multiple band members, a long span of time where Kansas didn’t make new music and, most recently, a return to making new albums.

Through it all, guitarist Richard Williams and drummer Phil Ehart have been the constants, the original members who have weathered the ups and downs and remain invested and excited about continuing to build on the considerable legacy of Kansas.

The life lesson 50 years of Kansas has taught Williams is simple and profound.

“If you follow your passion, it never turns out bad. You’ll at least be happy,” he said in a phone interview.

The band will perform Friday night at Pikes Peak Center in Colorado Springs.

Kansas has persevered through multiple lineup changes since the original members — Kerry Livgren (guitar/keyboards), Steve Walsh (vocalist/keyboards), Williams, Ehart, Robby Steinhardt (violin) and Dave Hope (bass) — came together in Topeka, Kan., in the early 1970s.

That lineup gained major success with the 1977 album “Leftoverture” and its hit single “Carry On Wayward Son” and the follow-up release, “Point of Know Return,” which featured the gentle acoustic hit single “Dust in the Wind” — a departure from the band’s usual plugged-in sound that blended British progressive rock and heartland hard rock, with violin giving the music a unique instrumental twist.

“What we were doing was really just creating symphonic works. Instead of like a cello, violin and an oboe, we were doing it with violin, guitar and synthesizers,” Williams said.

That lineup began to fall apart in the early 1980s, but Williams and Ehart kept pushing forward and today’s edition returned to making new music, releasing two albums, “The Prelude Implicit” in 2016 and “The Absence of Presence” in 2020, after Walsh — who did not want to record new Kansas albums — retired in 2014.

Now Kansas, which is rounded out by singer/keyboardist Ronnie Platt, keyboardist Tom Brislin, violinist Joe Deninzon and bassist Dan McGowan, is on tour celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary, having released a career-spanning box set, “Another Fork in the Road.” The shows are being tailored to longtime fans familiar with more than the Kansas hits.

“We’ll pull from all of our previously recorded albums,” Williams said. “And that gives us opportunities, because that is the purpose of this, to dust off some songs we haven’t played in 45 years. So there’s a lot of excitement. I’ve been wanting to do a few of these songs for a very long time.”