A mysterious new project spearheaded by the Rheostatics' Dave Bidini and involving Rush's Alex Lifeson will be seeing the light of day this coming November. According to some social media posts from Bidini and others involved, the project held a listening party yesterday at Toronto's Noble Street Studios. The project was first introduced via an Instagram post back in early March teasing a project called The Great Lakes Suite, and depicting an image of the Great Lakes region with some ethereal backing music, and a list of the people involved; Dave Bidini, Dave Clark, Hugh Marsh, and Martin Tielli of the Rheostatics, along with BNL's Kevin Hearn (also a member of the Rheostatics), Don Kerr and Alex Lifeson. Alex also spoke a little about the project in a few of his interviews promoting Envy of None's Stygian Wavz. In a March AllMusic.com interview, Alex said the following:
... I'm still working on a documentary on the Great Lakes with a bunch of people - some guys from Barenaked Ladies, from the Rheostatics. We've been working on this for a while. It's an interesting project, because we get together and we jam, and then we start pulling stuff out of those jams and then building from those. And a lot of the jams, as we progress, get better and better and better, and stand alone as parts." ...
So Alex refers to the project as a documentary, despite the fact that it sounds more like a musical project. Bidini also suggests that they might do a few lift-off shows in this FB post:
Great listening session for the new album. Thanks to @noblestreetstudios for hosting. A few tweaks and we're ready to get this out for some late fall magic + a few lift-off shows. Music is the best.
