{"id":2170696,"date":"2025-11-21T17:08:47","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T17:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2170696"},"modified":"2025-11-21T17:08:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T17:08:47","slug":"alex-lifeson-talks-rheostatics-new-album-there-are-no-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/alex-lifeson-talks-rheostatics-new-album-there-are-no-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Lifeson Talks Rheostatics’ New Album: ‘There Are No Rules’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tThirty years ago, Toronto\u2019s Rheostatics went high-concept with Music Inspired by the Group of Seven<\/em>, a National Gallery of Canada commission to pay homage to early 20th century Canadian landscape painters. It was an arty and abstract conceptual piece, incorporating free-form composition and recorded dialogue from the painters and historical figures such as Britain\u2019s Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.<\/p>\n

\n\tEver since then, the band\u2019s Dave Bidini tells Billboard<\/em>, \u201cWe\u2019ve always bandied about, \u2018How can we do something like that again?\u2019 So we\u2019ve been searching for a while, and one night I literally had my head on the pillow, and I thought about the Great Lakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Great Lakes Suite<\/em>, out Friday (Nov. 21), is the Juno Award-winning Rheostatics\u2019 first album since Here Come the Wolves<\/em> in 2019.\u00a0\u00a0The album\u2019s seven core members \u2014 Bidini, Barenaked Ladies\u2019 Kevin Hearn, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, Hugh Marsh, Dave Clark, Don Kerr and Tim Vesely \u2014 recorded the 18-song set over four days, with Hearn and Vesely sculpting lengthy, improvised pieces into more concise tracks. A number of guest performers \u2014 including Laurie Anderson, Lifeson\u2019s Envy of None bandmate Maiah Wynne, Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq and, posthumously, Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie \u2014 were also incorporated into the mix.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCanada is such a disparate and disconnected place in a lot of ways, and there are few things that large groups of people have in common,\u201d Hearn explains. \u201cI think the Great Lakes are one of those things that bind us together. So it was right there. The Group of Seven were primarily landscape painters\u2026On this project we decided to skip the artists and just go straight to the source and straight to nature and straight to something we\u2019d all grown up with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBidini feels that impact could extend across the border, too. \u201cIn our geopolitical times it\u2019s important to point towards things that bring us together rather than tear us apart,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Great Lakes is something both countries live and share and want to protect together and make sure they continue to bind us as opposed to other things that come between us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLifeson\u2019s involvement, of course, raises the project\u2019s visibility \u2014 especially after the recent announcement of Rush\u2019s Fifty Something Tour<\/a> for 2026. \u201cThe timing was great,\u201d Bidini acknowledges. \u201cWhen I first emailed Alex to tell him about this idea, he said he\u2019d actually woken up that week thinking to himself, \u2018I can\u2019t play golf for the rest of my life, right?\u2019 So he started to think about, \u2018OK, maybe I should be making some music here.\u2019 There were challenges with timing and scheduling for sure, but I think the project landed at a time in all of our lives when we were looking to do something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLifeson \u2014 who\u2019s released two albums with Envy of None, including Stygian Wavz<\/em> in March\u00a0\u2014 says he certainly was. \u201cI have been getting together with the guys occasionally over the years to play for the joy of it,\u201d he notes. \u201cThere is no mystery or much forethought in approach; the freedom to play whatever your brain convinces your fingers to do is the charm of this project. I give no thought to the end result, only to the moment. This was an entirely organic experience.\u201d Lifeson\u2019s enthusiasm, meanwhile, further fueled the other Rheostatics.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe acted musically and personally like a big brother throughout this whole project,\u201d Hearn says. \u201cHe would wait in the weeds and play in a supportive way, always tasteful. But then there would arise these moments where he would just soar and you\u2019d be listening in your headphones and playing and going, \u2018Oh my God, THAT\u2019s the guy! There he is!’\u201d Lifeson, meanwhile, enjoyed some new experiences of his own, most notably Tagaq\u2019s performance on the track \u201cTasiq.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI introduced them and they had a sweet conversation,\u201d Hearn says, \u201cbut Alex had no idea what was about to happen in the studio. It was one of the biggest joys in this whole process to see the look on his face as she transformed, while we were improvising, into a sea monster, and she was howling and growling and singing shrieking high notes that could break windows. And (Lifeson) was looking at each of us with his eyes wide open, and then when we finished he turned to me and said, \u2018I LOVE her!’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are no rules or expectations,\u201d Lifeson \u2014 who also mixed one track, \u201cLake Michigan Triangle,\u201d featuring Wynne \u2014 says of The Great Lakes Suite<\/em> sessions. \u201cEveryone arrives, has a hug and sets up their gear. As soon as you\u2019re set up and making noise, you play. Rush and Envy of None are different recording requirements that demand more traditional studio approaches.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first trial session for The Great Lakes Suite<\/em> took place about a year and a half ago \u2014 which Hearn and Bidini say nobody had the temerity to record at the time. \u201cThere was no plan and there was nothing prepared; we just got together to make some noise,\u201d Bidini recalls, with Hearn adding, \u201cFrom there we went, \u2018This is how we do it\u2026but next let\u2019s do it in a studio and just have everyone miced up properly and record everything.\u2019 It was almost six months later before we were able to do it again.\u201d In all, the Rheostatics convened for four full-day sessions, yielding more than 20 hours of music.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cEach improvised peace was between 10 and 20 minutes,\u201d says Hearn, who began writing the album-closing \u201cThe Inland Sea\u201d in Duluth, Minn., near the shores of Lake Superior, while on tour with Barenaked Ladies, partially inspired by Michigan-based marine artist Robert McGreevy\u2019s book The Lost Legends of the Lake<\/em>. (His images were incorporated into the song\u2019s music video.) \u201cIt took me days to go through, and make notes. There were some obvious standouts and Tim Vesely started shaping them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBidini adds that, \u201cOne of the challenges for the record was flow and sequence. Sometimes we would record 18 minutes because it took 14 minutes to get to where (the song) had to be. I think we landed where we needed to land in terms of it being a journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Suite<\/em> incorporates spoken word pieces as well, by professor and former Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation Chief Stacey LaForme and Hearn\u2019s uncle Neil O\u2019Donnell, a geologist, among others. The piece by Downie for \u201cThe Drop Off,\u201d meanwhile, came from a presentation at a fundraiser for Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, <\/a>a Toronto-based environmental justice advocacy group. \u201cI remember hearing it and it always stayed with me,\u201d Bidini says. \u201cNot a lot of people knew (Downie) as a public speaker; it was out of the context of his (music) performances, and he didn\u2019t do that a lot. But he was great speaking to large rooms. Gord was always an advocate for water, conservancy, advocacy \u2014 especially around the lakes, and it seemed like something we could try. We wanted to give that story some air and some attention. Ultimately if there\u2019s any kind of consciousness raising in terms of how people view the lakes, coming through him, it can be a powerful voice for good in that sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRheostatics will gather to celebrate The Great Lakes Suite<\/em>\u2018s release on Friday and Saturday at TD Music Hall in Toronto, which will be accompanied with visuals custom-made for the presentation. Hearn says there\u2019s enough unused material to possibly fashion additional songs from. Despite their own busy schedules, Rheostatics\u2019 core crew is hoping that won\u2019t be the last you see of the Suite<\/em> in concert.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe hope is, as this project moves forward, we can bring it to other places,\u201d Bidini says. \u201cThat\u2019s one of Alex\u2019s contributions, in terms of how we go about this live; he kind of said, \u2018Well, I don\u2019t know if I have the time to learn this record\u2019 \u2014 he\u2019s got a lot of stuff going on, as we all do. We realized one of the joys of creating this record was creating something out of nothing, so we\u2019re going to lean on that a little bit live, to just create and invent stuff in the moment, as a template for how we do this moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.billboard.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirty years ago, Toronto\u2019s Rheostatics went high-concept with Music Inspired by the Group of Seven, a National Gallery of Canada commission to pay homage to early 20th century Canadian landscape painters. It was an arty and abstract conceptual piece, incorporating free-form composition and recorded dialogue from the painters and historical figures such as Britain\u2019s Queen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2170697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[310617],"class_list":["post-2170696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-genre-rock"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Alex-Lifeson-Talks-Rheostatics-New-Album-There-Are-No-Rules.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2170696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2170698,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170696\/revisions\/2170698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2170697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2170696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2170696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2170696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}