Rush Techs and Road Crew Featured in Online Articles

There certainly hasn't been a shortage of articles published on Rush over the past few years however the vast majority of those articles focus on Geddy, Alex and Neil. When it comes to Rush on tour, most people know that the magic on stage couldn't happen without quite a bit of magic (i.e. hard work) behind the scenes.

So it's nice to see that two separate online articles have just been published that focus on Rush's Road Crew. In the first, titled Six-String Wizards: Meet the Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll, The Globe and Mall chat with Scott Appleton; Alex Lifeson's guitar tech from the Clockwork Angels tour. Scott has been in the business for over twenty years and reflects on just how much work has to go in to make sure Alex - and his guitars - are at their best:

Appleton works up to 14 hours a day on concert days, starting at 11 a.m. (changing strings, tuning the guitars and setting up Lifeson’s rig), continuing to a soundcheck at 5 p.m., then being on call during the show – during which he wears a custom-fitted in-ear monitor, with the same audio mix as Lifeson’s – and, finally, helping with the load-out.

You can check out the entire article at this LINK which also includes conversations with other guitar techs including Elwood Francis who is currently the guitar tech for ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Jeff Ousley, the tech for Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson.

MIX Online also posted an article titled All Access: Rush where they talk with several members of Rush's road crew from the Clockwork Angels tour including FOH engineer Brad Madix (pictured), Geddy Lee’s Bass Tech is John “Skully” McIntosh, Monitor engineer Brent Carpenter and the long-time road crew member Tony Geranios, Rush’s Keyboard Tech:

Tony Geranios is Rush’s Keyboard Tech: “Onstage, Geddy uses three MIDI controllers: a Roland X7 and two Korg MPK 130 MIDI pedals. Alex has two MIDI controllers onstage: one Korg MPK 130 and a Roland JUNO DI. These five controllers are routed to my workstation off stage right. The gear I use consists of two racks with three MacBook Pros with solid-state HD, two Anatek Studio Merge, two MIDI Solutions M8, four Roland MKS 900 MIDI displays, two MOTU 828s and one Radial SW8 Audio Switcher. I run Ableton Live for sample playback. I also have a Moog Little Phatty to test and edit the patches and samples. During the show I monitor the samples and change the song patches.”

Check out the entire article at this LINK.

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