Rush finished off their 4-show homecoming residency in Toronto last Thursday before taking a much deserved 8-day respite. They'll crank the tour machine back up tonight in Philadelphia, kicking off a run that will see them play a pair of shows in 18 cities across North America before taking a break for the Holidays and picking things up in South America and Europe next year. Now that the band has all of their 4-show mini-residencies under their belt, fans are curious as to how the setlists will break down for this stretch of the tour given that they'll only be doing 2 shows per city. The only info we have to go on at this point are the 2 Echo/E and Foxtrot/F setlists that were played in Mexico City. It's probably a good guess that the 2-night rotation will look something like those. Although they might pull out some totally new setlists, or they might just continue with the 4-setlist rotation and just spread it over 2 cities. We'll start to answer all those questions this weekend in Philly. Rush's week-long break began with Rolling Stone Canada releasing an extensive cover feature on the band, including a new hour-long interview with Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, along with separate interview snippets from Anika Nilles, Geddy Lee's vocal coach Mitch Seekins, and more. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson touch on many subjects surrounding the Fifty Something tour in the candid interview, with Alex opening up about his health issues and quitting cannabis, and Geddy Lee sharing how a vocal coach helped him turn back time and both describing how joyful the tour has been thus far. Here's an excerpt from the print article discussing the difficulty involved in properly honoring the late Neil Peart on the tour:
... THERE ARE STILL SOME MOMENTS ONSTAGE when Lee glances behind him and is surprised to see a cheerful blond woman on drums. "I keep expecting to see Neil's intense mug back there," he says. In truth, Peart is still very much part of the show. The most intense moments each night are "Time Stand Still" and "Bravado," both presented as overt tributes, with his face on the video screens and his voice heard beforehand, musing on his uncompromising approach to life and art. ... Even without the overt nods, Peart's presence would have been inescapable. As he emphasized to me in 2015, Rush's long run owed everything to the trio's deep level of collaboration, with each member essential to the triangle they formed. "You know how the dynamics of bands go when one guy writes all the songs and gets all the attention," Peart said, sipping whiskey in the garage hideaway where he did all of his writing. "For me, of course, the singer does, but I'm sitting there, playing along, watching everybody sing along with Geddy to my lyrics, you know? The shared involvement in what we do and the shared reward and appreciation for what we do is huge because no bands survive. The Police. Talking Heads. Where someone is the band in every quantifiable way, it can't really endure." If Rush had toured closer to Peart's passing, it might have been trickier to include some of the lighter moments built into the show, from the comedic opening film to the tradition of South Park's Cartman counting off "Tom Sawyer" while fronting "Lil' Rush." "You have to acknowledge the absence," says Allan Weinrib, the tour's creative director, who happens to be Lee's brother. "Still, at the end of the day, this is Ged and Al going back on the road, you know? Once you decide you're going on the road, you decide you're gonna have fun again." "We didn't want it to be funereal," says Lee, who still acknowledges getting choked up during a song or two. "Because we wanted everyone to remember him happily and celebrate the fucking amazing person that he was... But I'm still processing. If I have to sing his lyrics, I feel very close to him. It's impossible not to, unless you're kind of dead inside. Even just talking about it sometimes, I can't help myself. It's hard. There's a part of him that will never... That grief will never completely disappear." Nuttall and Peart's daughter, Olivia, attended the first two shows in Los Angeles. "It's very hard for them," Lee says. "They're still grieving a lot. For them to sit through a show where we're doing it again, that's hard. I appreciate the difficulty." ...
As mentioned above, Anika Nilles was also interviewed for the feature, and relays this story about receiving encouragement from Peart's widow :
... "Now, I have a little bit of Neil in me. What I learned for myself the most is the compositional part. He was brilliant in that, really. He constantly builds, and builds, and builds the drum part to a point where you think, 'What the hell is going on?'" Her confidence increased when Peart's widow, Carrie Nuttall, made contact ahead of the first show. "I got a nice message from her, a really lovely message," Nilles said. "It was really nice to hear that she is on board and looking forward to this whole journey." She reported that she felt "really energized, and relieved" as the Fifty Something tour continues. Asked what she told herself after her first few performances, she laughed: "I made it through!"
You can read the entire piece online at this location (bypass paywall here), and watch the full, hour-long video interview below or on YouTube.
In preparation for Rush's Fifty Something tour, Geddy Lee did something he'd never done before - he hired a vocal coach to help him get his voice ship-shape for the extensive tour, and it's paid off. Ged sounds fantastic - probably the best he's sounded since at least the '90s - and he has vocal coach Mitch Seekins to thank for it. Seekins was a guest on CBC Radio's Here and Now last week and spoke a bit about how he got the gig, and his thoughts on Geddy's voice. You can watch a bit of the interview on Instagram and listen to audio of the entire 8-minute interview at this location. As mentioned above, Seekins was also interviewed for the Rolling Stone piece:
... Seekins, a longtime Rush fan, knew right away that Lee was a long way from being ready. " It was shocking," says Seekins. "I mean, it was horribly out of shape. The muscles weren't responding in the top end anymore." But the coach still had very good news for his client: "I could hear that it was there, he just couldn't do it yet. He wasn't sure if he was ever gonna be able to do what he did when he was much younger... But there was no degradation at all, even due to age." The high notes would inevitably lack some of the reckless power of the old days, but they were all accessible. The real trick was convincing Lee that he could do it. " The hardest part of the repair part is the psychological end of the thing," says Seekins, whose techniques can seem Yoda-like. "Because it is subconscious, and if you've convinced yourself that you can't do something, well, guess what? You can't." ...
Rush's complete Radio Futuro interview from a couple weeks ago is now available to watch online. In one portion they discuss the controversial new Canadian band Angine De Poitrine, as outlined in this Ultimate-Guitar.com piece:
... Speaking to Radio Futuro in a recent interview, Geddy Lee had nothing but the best to say about his masked countrymen: "Well, I think they're fantastic. I love the fact that they've gone viral, because they're so unusual, peculiar, idiosyncratic. It's a sound that no one's heard before. They've taken Primus and a bit of Rush and all the complexities and sort of boiled it down to a two-piece band using an incredible array of technology. That's the most entertaining and exhilarating bits of music that I've heard for a long, long time. And I think most people that hear them find it somehow infectious, and I don't mean that like it's poisonous. I mean good infectious." Similarly, Alex Lifeson waxed euphoric at the combination of sheer musicianship and savviness that makes Angine de Poitrine what it is: "There's something very hypnotic about their arrangements and how they write, how they present the music. You know, using the looping pedals to create a bass line, and then guitar lines over it, and keep building on it. And above all, they're just great players. They really play their instruments so well, and that whole microtonal approach just makes it sound so exotic, and and just mesmerizing." Geddy Lee chimed in: "And the drummer has a bigger nose than me, so I love it [laughs]." ...
As part of their big Rush feature, Rolling Stone chatted (bypass paywall here) with Better Than Ezra frontman Kevin Griffin about the time back in 1982 when he spent an afternoon driving Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson around Monroe, Louisiana, in a beat-up '78 Honda Civic hatchback:
We speed-walked out the doors and were suddenly face-to-face with our idols. They were polite, if understandably cautious, faced with two skinny, six-foot-plus teenagers with wild eyes. We soon learned they were waiting for a car service, but the car wasn't showing up. A good 20 minutes passed with no car, and we talked about the tour, music, guitars, and, for reasons I still can't explain, NASA. At one point, I offered them a ride, and they brushed it off. But after another 10 minutes, Geddy gave in: "So... where's your car?" What I neglected to mention was that my car was a tired little 1978 Honda Civic hatchback that I'd named the Green Barchetta, a joke inspired by Rush's "Red Barchetta" that I thought was absolutely brilliant. As we walked across the parking lot, I started to panic. The Honda was filthy. There were Sonic and Captain D's cups on the floorboards, and fast-food bags stuffed behind the seats. To their everlasting credit, Alex and Geddy didn't hesitate, and insisted they sit in the back. Joel slid in next to me, and somehow, we pulled out of the Holiday Inn parking lot with two members of Rush sitting behind us. ...
The CBC will be releasing a documentary honoring the late Neil Peart titled No One's Disciple next month. The doc will make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 16th at the Princess of Wales Theatre ahead of its airing on the CBC September 23rd as part of the documentary series The Passionate Eye. The film will include some recent footage of Geddy and Alex jamming some Rush tunes with drummers Stewart Copeland, Chad Smith, and Tool's Danny Carey. Fellow Canadians The Tragically Hip are also in the film, as seen in this clip that the filmmakers released earlier this week. And filmmaker Sam Dunn was interviewed about the film for a CTV News story as seen here:
The annual Prog for Peart charity concert took place last month at Abingdon United Football Club in Oxfordshire July 16-18. This past week The Progressive Aspect posted an extensive review and rundown of the event, which included performances by over a dozen progressive rock artists. You can read the entire review online here. Dates for next year's event have already been set; check out ProgForPeart.com for details.
Speaking of Neil Peart, up and coming drummer Victoria Acosta has been awarded this year's Neil Peart Drum Set Scholarship from the Percussive Arts Society. Victoria posted the following to IG after learning she had won:
I'm so excited and honored to receive the Neil Peart Drum Set Scholarship 2026 from the Percussive Arts Society! 🥁❤️
Thank you so much to the @percussivearts and @hudsonmusicofficial for this amazing opportunity, and a huge thank you to my teacher @officialdavestark for all the knowledge, guidance, and support that have helped me get here.
Having a scholarship named after Neil Peart, one of my biggest inspirations as a drummer, makes this even more special. I'm so grateful and proud! ❤️🥁
On the music business side of things, Influence Media Partners has signed an agreement to acquire all of the assets of Anthem Entertainment, including its music publishing catalogs, film & TV publishing assets and its portfolio of master recordings, for a purchase price of $600 million-plus. Anthem (formerly ole) has owned the rights to Rush's catalog since purchasing them from Core Music back in 2014. From the announcement:
... The catalogs include more than 24,000 released songs and 60,000+ additional unexploited works, including shares in such such as Britney Spears' "Oops!... I Did It Again"; Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack"; Timbaland's "The Way I Are"; Cody Johnson's "Til You Can't"; Rush's "Tom Sawyer"; OneRepublic's "Counting Stars"; and others from songwriters Jordan Davis, Shane Profitt, and Chris Janson. The film & TV catalog contains soundtracks from iconic movies and television shows such as the "Spider-Man" franchise, the "Men in Black" franchise, and Lego Ninjago. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in Q4 2026. ...
When Rush's tour kicked off in LA back in June, Live Nation's Fandemonium documentary crew was there to capture some footage and chat with fans about what makes Rush fans one of music's most devoted communities. Yesterday they posted the final result - a 6+ minute mini-documentary which you can check out below or on YouTube. The doc features narration from Eric Hansen of the Power Windows website (and author of Rush: Wandering the Face of the Earth), along with footage of several other fans. Rush continues their Fifty Something tour tomorrow in Philadelphia!
One of the fun things that Geddy Lee has been doing on the Fifty Something tour in order to torment his friend and bandmate Alex Lifeson, is to wear a series of t-shirts with silly photos of Alex on them. The t-shirts have Al as a balerina, a plumber, a nurse, and more. Q107 asked Geddy about the shirts and posted this short clip where he explains where they came from and what his plans for them are after the tour.
That's it for this week. Have a great weekend, and enjoy tonight's show if you are going!
