Rush beer partner Henderson Brewing Company will be hosting their 3rd annual Rush Day event TOMORROW, Saturday, August 23rd at their Toronto location. The event will kick off at 11AM and run through 7PM, with tickets available here. It will include Rush stage props, artifacts and a pop-up art gallery; a Rush X Henderson merch shop; a pop-up Rush tattoo studio (limited pre-booked sessions); "Become a Beer Genuis" Tasting Sessions; "Something for Nothing" Live Podcast Recording, a charity silent auction; and more. Here's the full schedule of events:

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

11:00am - Rush Day 2025 OPENS
12:00pm - Ivar Hamilton DJ Set (90mins)
2:00pm - Howard Ungerleider & Ivar Hamilton In Conversation
2:30pm - Rush Karaoke
3:00pm - Rush Day Raffle
3:15pm - Rush Trivia with Ray (Round 1)
3:45pm - Ivar Hamilton DJ Set (60mins)
4:45pm - "Permanent Ink" Rush Tattoo Competition
5:00pm - Rush Karaoke
5:30pm - Rush Trivia with Ray (Round 2)
6:00pm - Winners Announced (Trivia, Crossword, Silent Auction)
6:30pm - Brewery Screening of "Exit... Stage Left"

Buffalo's 97 Rock is hosting a Rush tribute show dubbed The Great North American Rush-off on Saturday, September 6th at Sportsmen's Tavern. Headlining the event will be Analog Kids along with supporting acts Garden Party (with Grace Lougen, Sue Kincaid, and Peter Vincent), Stavo, The Knight Crew, Wilcox Mansion and Crikwater. Tickets start at $21.12 (+fees) and VIP tickets are $50 (+fees). VIP gets you a Peart family meet & greet with sister Nancy, your first drink free and special seating near the main stage for Analog Kids. Gates open at 3PM with the show running from 4-9PM. The event aims to raise money for The Neil Peart Memorial at Lakeside Park in Port Dalhousie, which has been struggling to raise the $1 Million required for the Memorial. They are also seeking bands both local and national to submit Rush cover songs for a compilation curated by 97 Rock's Shredd & Ragan with proceeds benefitting the Memorial. For all the details, visit 97 Rock.

Artovision is a Wisconsin-based company that creates 3-dimensional collectable artwork inspired by popular culture, video games, food and Americana. Over the past few years, they've released several sets of officially-licensed pieces based on Rush album art including Moving Pictures, Roll the Bones, Hold Your Fire, A Show of Hands, Signals (this desktop art piece too), Hemispheres, Clockwork Angels and Counterparts, Rush's debut album, Grace Under Pressure, Vapor Trails/Snakes & Arrows, and Caress of Steel/Fly by Night. Instead of album art, their latest offering celebrates Le Studio in Morin Heights, Quebec where Rush recorded many of their most iconic albums, including Permanent Waves, Signals and Moving Pictures. The studio unfortunately went into disrepair over the years and ultimately was destroyed by fire in 2017. The 4.5"x6" desktop art piece depicts the iconic Le Studio logo and is printed on 3/4" thick optical-grade acrylic with vibrant UV cured inks. The piece is officially licensed by Souvenirs of Le Studio (who own the rights to the Le Studio logo) and is available to purchase at this location. For more information on Artovision, and to see their complete line of officially-licensed Rush pieces, visit their website at artovision3d.com. You can also follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and watch a YouTube video demonstrating the 3-D effect of their Shadowbox art here.

Back in late 2023, Geddy Lee wrote a book of baseball stories titled 72 Stories from the Collection of Geddy Lee that he included as part of a package given to the winning bidders in a baseball auction that included much of Ged's extensive collection. He then announced via Instagram back in October of last year that he would be releasing the book for wide distribution sometime in 2025. A special, limited-edition version of the book was briefly made available around Christmas at the Rush Backstage Club. That edition is autographed, and comes encased in a red cloth-bound slipcase which includes an exclusive, custom-made Geddy Lee baseball, created specifically for this project. The standard version of the book will be available next month, with a slated release date of September 30th (just in time for the MLB playoffs) and pre-orders are available here. And if you missed out on the special edition last year, it's been made available again, and you can order one at this location. John at Cygnus-X1.net has posted an excerpt from the book's Introduction and made it available online here.

Guitarist and political activist Tom Morello (RaTM, Audioslave, etc.) has created a F_ck ICE Spotify playlist in protest of US President Donald Trump and his Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)'s attacks on immigrants. The playlist includes 65 protest songs from artists such as The White Stripes, Bruce Springsteen, Public Enemy, Rush and many more. Morello chose Rush's Freewill to include on the list, which you can check out below or on Spotify (thanks RushFanForever):

Drummer Mike Portnoy was recently interviewed for Detroit's WRIF and spoke a bit about his friend Neil Peart:

.. The Rush legend wasn't just an influence-he was a friend. "His emails were pages long, so eloquently written, every word meticulously chosen. I saved them all," Portnoy said. And yes, he gets why Peart guarded his privacy. "He was humble. Everyone told him he was the best drummer ever-which he probably was-but he always wanted to get better. As I get older, I understand protecting your private time." ...

Gary McKenzie wrote a piece for Prog/Classic Rock magazines this past week that asks the question, "Was air-drumming even a thing before Tom Sawyer?" and lists off some of Neil Peart's greatest moments with Rush:

The quality and range of Peart's drumming here makes it difficult to limit our choices, but we've settled for two. Tom Sawyer is a swaggering, gut-punch of a tune, propelled masterfully as Peart builds craftily through the verses before hitting you with big main themes. When Lee and Lifeson hit the sections in 7/8, he shifts into playing what are essentially two bars of 7/16 to every one bar of theirs. And then there are those awesome fills - bombastic, thunderous and quite brilliant. Was air-drumming even a thing before Tom Sawyer?

American Songwriter posted an article this past week profiling a short-lived Canadian supergroup that came together to record a song for the 2006 Trailer Park Boys movie. The group consisted of members of Rush, Thornley, Three Days Grace, Die Mannequin, and The Tea Party, and was dubbed the Big Dirty Band:

... The group was made up of Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush, plus Ian Thornley (Thornley, Big Wreck), Adam Gontier (Three Days Grace), Jeff Burrows (The Tea Party), and Care Failure (Die Mannequin). ... The Big Dirty Band was formed in 2006 specifically to support the Trailer Park Boys movie, based on the Canadian comedy television series of the same name. The band didn't just produce the soundtrack, though. In fact, they only contributed one single song (more or less) to the entire soundtrack. Rather, the members of The Big Dirty Band were also part of the film itself. Alex Lifeson is tasked with putting together a song with bespectacled character Bubbles via their new band, Bubbles & The Sh*t Rockers. The sole song to make it to the film's soundtrack from The Big Dirty Band is a cover of "I Fought The Law" by Sonny Curtis and The Crickets. They even released a music video for it, which you can view above. However, technically, "Liquor & Wh*res" by Bubbles & The Sh*t Rockers could be considered a Big Dirty Band production, or at least a collaboration. ...

19 years ago this past Wednesday, Comedy Central hosted a Roast of actor William Shatner. One of the 'roasters' was comedian Patton Oswalt, who mentioned how someone online reacted to a joke he'd made by using a particularly long internet slang term along the lines of LMAO. The term was LMFAOWIHABFAFIMRAAMMYAMTTDMRFBNA, which stands for ... "Laughing my figurative ass off while I have a Boba Fett action figure in my real ass and my Mom yells at me to turn down my Rush "Fly By Night" album ..." as seen in this clip:

15 years ago today, on August 22, 2010, Rush played the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre outside St. Louis on the Time Machine tour. A few weeks prior, Kings of Leon played a show at the venue and had to cancel because pigeons perched on the lighting apparatus overhead were shitting all over the stage, including on the band members. So when Geddy Lee addressed the audience just before performing Faithless he made a joke about it as seen in this clip:

"So this is where they had that pigeon thing, huh? Well I can promise you that no matter how many times a pigeon shits on him (points to Alex Lifeson), we're not stopping!"

That's all for this week. Have a great weekend everyone!!