Author: djfrosty

Trending on Billboard

Thirty years ago, Toronto’s 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’s Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Ever since then, the band’s Dave Bidini tells Billboard, “We’ve always bandied about, ‘How can we do something like that again?’ So we’ve been searching for a while, and one night I literally had my head on the pillow, and I thought about the Great Lakes.”

The Great Lakes Suite, out Friday (Nov. 21), is the Juno Award-winning Rheostatics’ first album since Here Come the Wolves in 2019.  The album’s seven core members — Bidini, Barenaked Ladies’ Kevin Hearn, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, Hugh Marsh, Dave Clark, Don Kerr and Tim Vesely — 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 — including Laurie Anderson, Lifeson’s Envy of None bandmate Maiah Wynne, Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq and, posthumously, Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie — were also incorporated into the mix.

“Canada 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,” Hearn explains. “I 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…On this project we decided to skip the artists and just go straight to the source and straight to nature and straight to something we’d all grown up with.”

Bidini feels that impact could extend across the border, too. “In our geopolitical times it’s important to point towards things that bring us together rather than tear us apart,” he says. “The 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.”

Lifeson’s involvement, of course, raises the project’s visibility — especially after the recent announcement of Rush’s Fifty Something Tour for 2026. “The timing was great,” Bidini acknowledges. “When I first emailed Alex to tell him about this idea, he said he’d actually woken up that week thinking to himself, ‘I can’t play golf for the rest of my life, right?’ So he started to think about, ‘OK, maybe I should be making some music here.’ 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.”

Lifeson — who’s released two albums with Envy of None, including Stygian Wavz in March — says he certainly was. “I have been getting together with the guys occasionally over the years to play for the joy of it,” he notes. “There 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.” Lifeson’s enthusiasm, meanwhile, further fueled the other Rheostatics.

“He acted musically and personally like a big brother throughout this whole project,” Hearn says. “He 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’d be listening in your headphones and playing and going, ‘Oh my God, THAT’s the guy! There he is!’” Lifeson, meanwhile, enjoyed some new experiences of his own, most notably Tagaq’s performance on the track “Tasiq.”

“I introduced them and they had a sweet conversation,” Hearn says, “but 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, ‘I LOVE her!’”

“There are no rules or expectations,” Lifeson — who also mixed one track, “Lake Michigan Triangle,” featuring Wynne — says of The Great Lakes Suite sessions. “Everyone arrives, has a hug and sets up their gear. As soon as you’re set up and making noise, you play. Rush and Envy of None are different recording requirements that demand more traditional studio approaches.”

The first trial session for The Great Lakes Suite took place about a year and a half ago — which Hearn and Bidini say nobody had the temerity to record at the time. “There was no plan and there was nothing prepared; we just got together to make some noise,” Bidini recalls, with Hearn adding, “From there we went, ‘This is how we do it…but next let’s do it in a studio and just have everyone miced up properly and record everything.’ It was almost six months later before we were able to do it again.” In all, the Rheostatics convened for four full-day sessions, yielding more than 20 hours of music.

“Each improvised peace was between 10 and 20 minutes,” says Hearn, who began writing the album-closing “The Inland Sea” in Duluth, Minn., near the shores of Lake Superior, while on tour with Barenaked Ladies, partially inspired by Michigan-based marine artist Robert McGreevy’s book The Lost Legends of the Lake. (His images were incorporated into the song’s music video.) “It took me days to go through, and make notes. There were some obvious standouts and Tim Vesely started shaping them.”

Bidini adds that, “One 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.”

The Suite incorporates spoken word pieces as well, by professor and former Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation Chief Stacey LaForme and Hearn’s uncle Neil O’Donnell, a geologist, among others. The piece by Downie for “The Drop Off,” meanwhile, came from a presentation at a fundraiser for Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, a Toronto-based environmental justice advocacy group. “I remember hearing it and it always stayed with me,” Bidini says. “Not a lot of people knew (Downie) as a public speaker; it was out of the context of his (music) performances, and he didn’t do that a lot. But he was great speaking to large rooms. Gord was always an advocate for water, conservancy, advocacy — 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’s 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.”

Rheostatics will gather to celebrate The Great Lakes Suite‘s 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’s enough unused material to possibly fashion additional songs from. Despite their own busy schedules, Rheostatics’ core crew is hoping that won’t be the last you see of the Suite in concert.

“The hope is, as this project moves forward, we can bring it to other places,” Bidini says. “That’s one of Alex’s contributions, in terms of how we go about this live; he kind of said, ‘Well, I don’t know if I have the time to learn this record’ — he’s 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’re 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.”

Trending on Billboard

After the disappointing cancellation of Aerosmith’s Peace Out: The Farewell Tour 15 months ago, Joe Perry did not foresee he and bandmate Steven Tyler getting back in the saddle very quickly — and certainly not with the first new Aerosmith music in 13 years.

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

So the guitarist regards the Friday (Nov. 21) arrival of One More Time, a five-song EP in collaboration with British rocker Yungblud, as nothing short of — as the song says — amazing.

“I think it’s great,” Perry tells Billboard about the project, whose first single, “My Only Angel,” went No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart and hit No. 7 on the Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. “It’s certainly nothing we had planned. We really didn’t. It was pretty traumatic, what happened; we’ve had to cancel gigs before, but this was a big one. This was arguably the biggest tour we had ever mounted, and to have it collapse like that… was heartbreaking. It was almost more than we could get over. After the dust settled and we realized touring wasn’t gonna be part of our repertoire, it’s also a time where (we realized) there’s so many other ways to be creative in this entertainment business.”

In the wake of all that, the unexpected Yungblud hook-up came out of a confluence of connections.

The Peace Out tour played just three dates in September 2023 before being postponed due to Tyler’s vocal cord injury. It was rescheduled to begin a year later but was formally scrapped in August 2024, with Aerosmith announcing their retirement from touring. Larry Rudolph, who manages Aerosmith and Tyler for 724 Management, recalls that after that, “Joe called me and said, ‘I expected to be on tour this whole time. Now I’m sitting around in Florida, bored. If anything comes up for me to play on, I’m open.’ I said, ‘Cool, I’ll ask around a little bit.’”

As fate would have it, Rudolph’s son Gavin, who’s also part of 724, was friendly with Yungblud (real name Dominic Harrison) and his manager, Tommas Amby of Locomotion Entertainment. He learned Yungblud was a big Aerosmith fan who was up to collaborate with Perry – though Perry acknowledges he didn’t know a great deal about the upstart.

“It was like, ‘Hey, this guy wants to come over and hook up with you and get in the studio. It was vague,” Perry remembers. “I started watching some of his performances, and people were talking about him. I’d heard his name somewhere; he’s been at it for awhile in Europe, so I recognized his name but I really didn’t put it together.” Perry says Yungblud’s cover of Kiss’ “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” from The Fall Guy soundtrack and a few videos on YouTube led him to feel “this guy bears further looking into.”

Curiosity helped spur the meet-up as well. “When I heard they wanted to come over and hang out for a couple of days and maybe get something for his next album…I figured it would be fun to work with him, see how this generation is actually recording and how they work. The whole thing was just interesting. I had time, and they came in and we definitely hit it off.”

Yungblud and his producer Matt Schwartz — who helmed the high-energy EP and co-wrote its four original songs — met with Perry in Sarasota, Flor., during the summer of 2024 and worked on a handful of tracks that have yet to be revealed. But the session laid the groundwork for what was to come. “We spent a few days with (Perry) and had a great time, did a few bits,” Schwartz says. “It was a dream come true for us.”

Perry recalls that, “It was like the first time I met Post Malone; I just got a vibe, ‘This kid’s got it.’ He definitely has an energy, and he loves rock n’ roll. He loves that classic thing, and he loves being on stage and cutting loose…We only had three or four days to get to know each other, but I heard what I needed to hear. It was like, ‘Oh, yeah, next time you have some time…’ and the next thing was we had these songs on our hands.”

Rudolph says Yungblud next pitched having Perry and Tyler join him on “Hello Heaven, Hello,” the lead track and first single from Idols, which is up for best rock album at the 2026 Grammys. Perry had informed Tyler about his experience with Yungblud in Sarasota, and all concerned gathered during mid-May at Johnny Depp’s studio in Los Angeles. “It was like a love fest,” Rudolph reports. “Once it was the three of them in the room, every was calling me, saying, ‘It’s magic. These guys are just loving each other, and now they’re working on new material.’ They sent me what became ‘My Only Angel’ and I was like, ‘Holy sh-t! That’s a legitimate hit,’ and then they wrote one or two others and there was a conversation about maybe putting this all together as a standalone project,” which evolved into One More Time.

Schwartz, meanwhile, confirms that, “We just got on like a house on fire. Dom’s very energetic, like ADD energetic…He and (Tyler) are very complementary. When we did the first session, Dom was really encouraging him — ‘Come on, let’s do this together, and that!’ It was infectious. And Steven just went in and did it and everyone in the room was, clapping, like, ‘Oh. My. God.’ Things just happened really quickly, and organically. Everything just landed. Every idea we had came out on this EP, which is rare. We were just inspired by their presence, their aura, whatever you call it. It was just amazing, the whole process.”

Tyler and Yungblud both wound up performing at the Back to the Beginning concert for Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath on July 5 in Birmingham, England — the latter releasing a single of his rendition of the band’s “Changes.”

“We got to hear all the stories that were absolutely incredible from Joe and Steven,” Schwartz adds. “What rock life used to be like before socials and everything else. I’m still pinching myself to think we’ve been spending all this time together with those two.”

Equally organic was the addition of Steve Martin on banjo for “My Only Angel (Desert Road Edition).” “We did this acoustic version,” Schwartz recalls, “and I said, ‘I’d like to try banjo on it, why not?’ And Steven goes, ‘Hey, why don’t we call Steve Martin?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, why don’t we.’ (laughs) The next thing you know Steve Martin sends me over this banjo part that was amazing, and he said, ‘Should I go record it?’ I said, ‘It’s done. You already recorded it.’ He’s like, ‘What? I did it on my phone!’ But it sounded amazing, and Steve Martin’s on the record as well.”

As to determining what Aerosmith should sound like 13 years after its last album, Music From Another Dimension!, Schwartz explains that “the easiest trap with Aerosmith is to go for the ballads, which we know and love. But they’ve got ‘Sweet Emotion,’ so many other records that are phenomenal. We tried to go back to the ‘70s rather than the later era and tried to be inspired by those moments. The main thing was to make sure it sounded authentic. The whole idea was to push things forward — take things from the past and bring them forward as if they were done today.”

Work on the EP went into October, Schwartz says, with “Wild Woman” as the last of the original songs written. “Back in the Saddle (2025 Mix),” meanwhile, was the idea of Perry’s wife Billie and is the only track to include Aerosmith’s other classic members — Tom Hamilton, Brad Whitford and Joey Kramer, whose parts were taken from the original recording and mixed with new contributions from Tyler, Perry and Yungblud. Matt Sorum (Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, the Cult) plays drums on the four originals.

“That was nerve-racking,” Schwartz says of the remake. “I didn’t want to overly change it, or completely transform it. I wanted it to sound like what would’ve happened if we recorded it today in a studio, with today’s approach and technology. When you listen to it, it’s supposed to be a similar feeling — just modern.”

Rudolph adds that “Back in the Saddle” solidifies the Aerosmith imprimatur on the endeavor. “We very much consider it an Aerosmith project versus a Steven and Joe side project,” he explains, “in the sense that Steven and Joe are Aerosmith and that ‘Back in the Saddle’ is on it, with everybody playing. The intention is that moving forward, if and when, we’ll certainly get Tom and Brad involved. Joey’s sort of retired from playing with the band. But it’s all very fluid at this point.”

There is every intent on moving forward, it seems.

Schwartz says that Tyler, Perry and Yungblud — who performed together at this year’s MTV Music Video Awards — “started a new song” after the EP’s four original tracks were done. “We haven’t completely finished it, but it’s really exciting.” Perry certainly sounds game as well. “The obvious (thing) is maybe we can go in and write some more music. I haven’t really talked to Steven about it, but I know that in our conversations over the last couple of months the words, ‘We’re never gonna do this again’ never came up, so that’s a good sign. I guess that’s part of the adventure; I’m too young to retire…(and) I know he’s got more in him. We’ll see.”

Rudolph — who’d be counseled by a predecessor that Aerosmith would never make new music again — says One More Time has given both band and brand a jolt of new excitement, and purpose. “Listen, they have an album called Nine Lives — I think they’re proving, living out that title at this point,” he says. “They’ve been around for 55 years as a band. It doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere any time soon. This (EP) turned out so far above and beyond whatever expectations we had going into it. It was supposed to be the guys just going in and featuring on Dom’s single. And now it’s a whole new Aerosmith record.”