Classic rock band Boston performs at Van Wezel on April 17

A song from their classic debut album says that they’re “just another band out of Boston.”

That was then — more than 40 years ago — and this is now.

Only a couple of members of Boston, the band, actually live in the Boston area.

“We hardly ever see each other,” said Gary Pihl (pronounced “Peel”), who has been the “other” guitarist in Boston since 1985. Other band members, he said, live in North Carolina and Arizona. Singer-keyboardist Beth Cohen lives in Florida.

Only one member of Boston’s classic lineup remains in the band that will play a concert Monday at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota. But it’s the one member that really matters: Tom Scholz, the guitar whiz who is the architect of Boston’s distinctive sound and the writer or co-writer of almost all of its songs.

The current band members, Pihl said, were selected partly because they can re-create that classic Boston sound, including the soaring vocals of the late Brad Delp. The current lineup uses three singers to handle Delp’s range.

“Obviously there are a lot of high parts,” Pihl said. “As a matter of fact, even with a female in the band, it’s our drummer who sings the really high parts. It’s not even our woman singer who sings the highest parts.”

Pihl joined Boston after his stint playing guitar for Sammy Hagar. Hagar and his band toured the country opening for Boston, and Pihl got to be friends with Scholz.

Scholz is known for his perfectionism, and partly because of that Boston has released only six albums since 1976. Pihl plays on the last three, “Walk On” (1994), “Corporate America” (2002) and “Life, Love and Hope” (2013).

Even though Boston only releases an album every seven years or so, on average, the band has created enough big hits to make the show appealing to the casual fan. “More Than a Feeling,” “Rock & Roll Band,” “Smokin’” “Peace of Mind,” “Don’t Look Back” and “Foreplay/Long Time” are among the Boston songs that were radio staples in the 1970s and ’80s.

“We’ll certainly do all the songs that people love to hear and sing along with,” Pihl said. “But there are some surprises, too. We do some new songs and deep cuts.”

Among the deep cuts (relatively obscure songs from albums) that Boston has been playing in recent shows, Pihl said, are “Don’t Be Afraid” from the second album and “I Think I Like It” from the third. Serious fans of the band respond to those songs because they’ve seldom had the chance to hear them in concert, Pihl said.

“We also do the song ‘Walk On,’ which was the title track from that album, but it didn’t get a lot of airplay,” Pihl said.

Besides Scholz’s guitar work, the key to Boston’s signature sound has always been the vocals. The band’s current singer is Tommy DeCarlo, who replaced original singer Delp.

DeCarlo was only 12 when the first Boston album came out, but he immediately loved the band. He later started recording covers of Boston songs and posting them on his MySpace page. Scholz became aware of those recordings and asked DeCarlo to join the band after Delp’s suicide in 2007.

Details: 8 p.m. April 17, Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 777 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. $84.04-$137.54. 941-953-3368, vanwezel.org.

This story was originally published April 10, 2017 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Classic rock band Boston performs at Van Wezel on April 17."