The notes Richard Williams plays on guitar to begin “Dust in the Wind” have kept an air all to their own all these years.

Kansas, the group he co-founded in the Sunflower State’s capital of Topeka, will kick off the Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center’s “Rockin’ Summer at the PAC” series at 7:30 p.m. June 11. With Christopher Cross playing there July 30, and Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers on Aug. 20, that will make up a trio of concerts with stars on their closest stops to Myrtle Beach.

Other venues across the Carolinas have filled their calendars for summer to welcome a bevy of big tours. They include Sir Paul McCartney, June 25 in Columbia; the Rolling Stones, July 11 in Raleigh; and Shania Twain, July 18 in Greenville.

Speaking by phone last month from his home in Atlanta, Williams recalled how Kansas’ biggest hit after “Carry On Wayward Son” in the later 1970s never lost its velocity in the spirit and feeling.