UPDATE - 10/10@11:00AM: An album will also drop on November 21st as described here:
... The album celebrates the influential band’s incredible 45-year anniversary, and features 18 tracks of primarily improvised music and spoken word, performed by longtime members Dave Bidini, Dave Clark, Don Kerr, and Tim Vesely, with newer additions Kevin Hearn and Hugh Marsh, alongside legendary guitarist Alex Lifeson.
The single “Inland Sea” arrives today, a shimmering reflection on the mystery and majesty of the Great Lakes, accompanied by a whimsical video directed and animated by JUNO Award-winning filmmaker and illustrator Sarah Legault. The piece weaves together historic maritime paintings by Robert McGreevy with artwork by Kevin Hearn, Jared Tait, Martin Tielli, and John Sherbourne, creating a dreamlike voyage.
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UPDATE - 8/10@10:27AM: Toronto Mike was at the listening party last week and wrote up a report (thanks RushFanForever):
Tonight I attended a live listening party for the new Rheostatics album. It took place at the Paradise Theatre and I saw a number of FOTMs from Kevin Hearn to Dave Bidini to Fergus Hambleton to Michael Phillip Wojewoda. I was sitting with Tyler Campbell, Jim Romanko and Darrin Cappe. One song was the band, with Alex Lifeson, improvising over top a spoken word piece by Gord Downie. The story by Gord stuck with me, and I just found it in its entirety. It's from the Waterkeeper Gala Toronto 2015. You can hear it at this link. As I get older, my relationship with the Great Lakes depends. I live near Lake Ontario, I kayak on Lake Ontario, I bike alongside Lake Ontario, and I camp by Lake Huron. It was beautiful hearing this Rheostatics Great Lakes project. And it was lovely hearing Gord again.
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UPDATE - 8/5@3:15PM: Ticket sales for the show on the 22nd went so well that they have added a second show taking place on Friday, November 21st.
UPDATE - 8/4@8:39PM: The project is holding a listening party tomorrow, August 5th at 7PM at the Paradise Theatre, according to this Facebook post.
UPDATE - 7/30@8:27AM: There is a pre-sale TODAY at 10AM EST using code GREATLAKES.
UPDATE - 7/28@1:57PM: Some more details via Dave Bidini on Facebook:
Hey everyone-- Dave here. Here's info on our Nov 22nd show. Tickets on sale this Thursday at Massey Hall site. This is the whole band minus Martin, who actually suggested we contact Alex, which we did before we did anything. Once he said yes, it all fell into place. We're still all very tight with each other as friends and we'll miss our buddy, but we are really excited about this recorded project, which is largely improvised and instrumental, built around voices like poets Anne Carson, Chief Stacey Laforme and Liz Howard as well as stories by Gord Downie and singing by Tanya Tagaq. Laurie Anderson also appears on the album. The show will reproduce some of this, but the idea is to largely create in the moment, set to cinematics by Nic De Pencier and Jenn Baichwall, who did our Group of 7 stuff. Very excited for people to join us on this next phase. Art is about moving ahead, not looking back, and that's what we've tried to do.
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A mysterious new project called The Great Lakes Suite spearheaded by the Rheostatics' Dave Bidini and involving Rush's Alex Lifeson will be seeing the light of day this coming November. Bidini announced earlier today that the project will be performing LIVE on Saturday, November 22nd at TD Music Hall in Toronto. The project held a listening party back in May at Toronto's Noble Street Studios, and Bidini recently teased that news was immenent. 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. There are still very few details as to what the project is all about or what the performance will include, but tickets will go on sale this Thursday. Alex had spoken a little about the project in a few of his interviews promoting Envy of None's Stygian Wavz back in March/April, describing it as a sort of musical documentary:
... 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." ...
