The Rheostatics will be releasing their new album The Great Lakes Suite featuring Rush's Alex Lifeson on November 21st. That same weekend the band (including Alex) will be hosting a pair of SOLD OUT shows at TD Music Hall in Toronto where they'll be performing the album live. This past week they announced the album release along with the debut of the album's first single, Inland Sea. From v13.net:
... 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.
The project had hosted a listening party for the album back in August, and Toronto Mike gave this report:
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.
Rheostatics' Dave Bidini provided some more details regarding the live shows via Facebook back in late July:
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.
