Alex Lifeson has welcomed new musical inspiration from all manner of sources since RUSH's career ended almost a decade ago, but it's only been recently with his new band, Envy of None, that the guitarist has been interested in playing live.
For years, Lifeson was ambivalent at the idea of performing Rush music without Neil Peart, but 'starting over' with Envy of None has at least given him the itch — especially as the band prepares to release its second full-length album, Stygian Wavz.
Whether that itch gets scratched, remains to be seen, as he tells Q104.3 New York's Out of the Box with Jonathan Clarke.
"We talk about it all the time," Lifeson says of possible live shows. "Now that we have two albums, we have a plethora of material. For us to do a small theater with a nice, subtle light show with this amount of material could be an evening of really beautiful music, very cinematic and atmospheric. It could be great."
But it's not that simple. The band has seriously looked into the idea of creating their ideal live concert; he continued: "We did a little bit of investigating to see how possible it would be to do that, you know, what the numbers look like, and unfortunately, we would lose thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars (laughs)."
Lifeson added, however, that there is hope. If that album "takes off" and the band drums up more interest, live shows will become much more likely.
"At this stage in my life, I'm not ready to get in a van and drive around to gigs; I did that," he said. "I did that years ago. So I don't want to start all over again. But if there was an opportunity for us to do a handful of shows, under those conditions, where we wouldn't have to finance the whole thing out of our pockets, we would love to do it. ...I'm getting excited just talking about it. Maybe we'll get there."
Watch the full conversation via the player above!
Pre-order Envy or buy of None's Stygian Wavz here.
Watch the official video for "Not Dead Yet" below!
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