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The Who guitarist Pete Townshend is once again on the road, joining Roger Daltrey for a 17-date North American tour. At 80 years old, life on the road can start to feel a bit solitary, Townshend recently said, but he’s also thankful for the opportunity, even as he and Daltrey look ahead to what the future of The Who might hold.

“It can be lonely,” Townshend told Rolling Stone in a recent interview. “I’ve thought, ‘Well, this is my job, I’m happy to have the work, but I prefer to be doing something else.’ Then, I think, ‘Well, I’m 80 years old. Why shouldn’t I revel in it? Why shouldn’t I celebrate?”

Townshend’s ambivalence about touring life at 80 is well-earned. The Who rose to fame decades ago, and it’s only natural that these shows might start to feel, for lack of a better word, transactional, with the music industry and other logistical details at the fore and the interpersonal, creative aspects of touring taking a back seat. But as Townshend is also quick to point out, The Who has long ago become more than a band—it’s a brand, one with a sense of history, meaning, and gratitude that transcends specific musicians.

“It’s a brand rather than a band,” Townshend told Rolling Stone. “Roger and I have a duty to the music and to the history. The Who [still] sells records — the Moon and Entwistle families have become millionaires. There’s also something more, really: the art, the creative work, is when we perform it. We’re celebrating. We’re a Who tribute band.”

In addition to The Who’s storied late drummer, Keith Moon, and bassist, John Entwistle, Townshend seems to acknowledge a wider legacy at play. He talked with The Times recently about life after touring, and how his stage work has made him re-evaluate his priorities. “It does whet an appetite to think about how we should bow out in our personal lives — what we do with our families and our friends and everything else at this age,” he added. “We’re lucky to be alive. I’m looking forward to playing. Roger likes to throw wild cards out sometimes in the set, and we have learned and rehearsed a few songs that we don’t always play.”

Townshend and Daltrey are far from lost in The Who routine. As Townshend said, they’ve both put in the work and are still experimenting with underplayed songs and setlists, which goes a long way toward combating rote performances.

Roger Daltrey on Health, Touring, and What’s Next

Roger Daltrey has said similar things about his own band experiences. Touring is hard work, he told fans during a June performance with Townshend at a Teenage Cancer Trust charity event in London, particularly given his advancing age. “Fortunately, I still have my voice, because then I’ll have a full Tommy,” he said, referring to the title character in The Who’s seminal 1969 rock opera. He then quoted from the song: “Deaf, dumb, and blind kid.”

Daltrey has expanded on those remarks in a recent interview with The Times. In it, he said that this current tour with The Who would likely be their last of its kind. “This is certainly the last time you will see us on tour,” he said. “It’s grueling.”

For Daltrey, the physical requirements of performing every night, particularly with a group of classic rockers, come with a cost that has become difficult to ignore. “In the days when I was singing Who songs for three hours a night, six nights a week, I was working harder than most footballers,” he said.

He told The Times that he wasn’t sure if the group would play one-off concerts in the future, though he didn’t completely rule out that possibility, even as he stopped short of confirming or denying whether the group might one day perform together again. “As to whether we’ll play [one-off] concerts again, I don’t know. The Who to me is very perplexing,” he said.

Nonetheless, Daltrey has assured fans that his voice has not yet left him. “My voice is still as good as ever,” he said.

While audiences across North America might be getting what will likely be the last opportunity to see Daltrey and Townshend under The Who banner in a tour setting, for the musicians, the time is both a bow out and a send-off, an occasion to acknowledge the shared life, art, and music that brought them to the here and now. “We’re lucky to be alive,” Townshend said.