Snakes & Arrows Tour News Archive

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Album News Archive - Tourdates & Setlists

In Their Own Words

2007 Leg

"Rehearsal kind of takes three different stages. We do a couple of weeks of rehearsing on our own so that we can know all our notes and get them all in right order. Then we do four weeks of rehearsal as a band in a small hall. That's where we fine-tune the music. Then we spend two weeks in an arena with the full production while everybody tweaks the audio-visual. At the end of that, the show's ready for public consumption." - Geddy Lee, EdmontonSun.com, May 6, 2007

"We rehearse from 12 pm to 5 pm every afternoon, five days a week, for about four weeks. Before that, we’ve each already had about three weeks of individual rehearsal so we know our parts—or we think we know our parts." - Geddy Lee, Bass Player, Aug. 2007

“After doing the 30th anniversary tour, which was very much a nod to the past, we needed to go back and refresh the whole show...We felt pretty happy with the new material so we ingested a lot of it, and then went looking for songs we hadn’t played in a while. You can play it safe, but I think our fans like to be surprised. They look deeper into the albums than just the radio hits." - Geddy Lee, BostonHerald.com, June 26, 2007

"...we typically only do about four new songs a tour, but this time we're doing nine total. This album is such a joy to play and the response has been overwhelming to it. We did the greatest hits nostalgia thing on our 30th Anniversary Tour in 2004, playing all the old stuff that we hadn't done in awhile - we didn't need to do it again." - Alex Lifeson, The Arizona Republic, July 24, 2007

"Neil triggers a lot of sounds with electronic drum pads. Now he’s happy to call himself a drummer, a bass player, and a guitarist. In 'Far Cry,' there is one great big chord Neil triggers. I told him that every time he plays that part, he has to stick his arm in the air—if you’re going to sound like a guitar player, you’ve got to look like one!" - Geddy Lee, Bass Player, Aug. 2007

"They were up in Toronto filming a special for the CBC called the '2-4 Anniversary' (a 2-4 is what we Canadians call a case of beer). So they did this crazy special and they called me up and asked me if I would do a little cameo on the show. ... I've known Rick since I was a kid and I hadn't seen him in awhile and it was a blast doing this little segment with them. Then after we finished taping, I was leaving the building and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great for them to do an intro to one of our songs?'... They said that they'd love to, so I sent them some titles of our songs and that's the one they chose." - Geddy Lee on the McKenzie Brother's intro to "The Larger Bowl", Austin American-Statesman, April 17, 2008

2008 Leg

"Early in March I will have to start preparing for another series of concerts, a 'continuation' of the Snakes and Arrows tour. (The Snakes and Arrows 'surge,' I call it.) We had planned to end the tour in Europe last fall, but apparently more people want to see us, or see us again, so we were asked to do more shows. Some of them will be in places we haven’t got to for a while, like New Orleans, Oklahoma City, and Winnipeg, and that is nice, plus we plan to make a few changes to the setlist and presentation to freshen it up a little. Although the world knows by now that I’m not crazy about touring, I sure don’t discount the good fortune that we can still do it, personally and professionally — that we can play better than ever, and that people will come and see us. That’s not something I have ever taken for granted. As I have said to friends who might be having their own work difficulties, 'At least if I have to work, I’m glad I can.' And not just any old job, of course — pretty much the best job there is — but none-the-less a hard one." - NeilPeart.net, March 2008

"Lee says this current leg sees four or five changes in the set list, with some rarities played last year replaced by more signature material. 'We're playing more cities on this tour that we haven't played in quite some time, and I think those fans kind of want to hear more of the classic tracks.'" - Geddy Lee, Jam!Showbiz, April 14, 2008

"Those are part of the secret to my bass sound. Those roasters give me a hotter and tastier sound." - Geddy Lee, National Post, April 15th, 2008

"Normally at the start of a tour, we're coming off a fairly long break. We'll spend two months in rehearsals, between the individual stuff we do, then as a band for three or four weeks, then full production rehearsals for 10 or 12 days. This time around, because we're really just picking up the tour, we only blocked in a week and a half (in Toronto) and managed to get up to speed very quickly." - Alex Lifeson, New Orleans Times Picayune, April 19, 2008

"...as Cartman from 'South Park' says in the hilarious sample that Geddy uses in 'The Trees,' 'Real guitars are for old people'..." - Neil Peart, News Weather & Sports, July 2008

"We all really wanted to do 'Faithless', and we talked about actually doing it on the last half of the tour. We prepped it and we ran through it a couple of times, but in the end we just decided to kind of stick with what we had and just change up some of the older stuff." - Alex Lifeson, Crawdaddy, Oct. 22, 2008

"We tried to rehearse 'A Farewell To Kings' on the last tour and I couldn’t successfully sing that without hurting myself, so we gave up. So yeah, there are moments of the past I cannot sing anymore." - Geddy Lee, Blender Magazine, April 2009

Show Notes

  • The dryers from the previous tours have been replaced by three rotisserie chicken roasters which are as tall as Alex's stacks of H&K amplifiers and say "Henhouse" across the front of them. Like the previous two tours, before the encore the band throw t-shirts to fans in the crowd. The t-shirt used for the 2007 leg of the tour is black and does not say Rush anywhere; the front has an image of a waitress holding up a roast chicken while saying 'Feel like chicken?', while the back has the same phrase in six other languages: Dutch, German, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish; listed in the same order as they tour the respective countries. The t-shirt used for the 2008 leg of the tour has a detailed display of a Henhouse roaster demonstrating how to get that "hot tasty sound", etc., while the front simply reads "Henhouse". The image used for the tshirt was later published on Rush.com.
  • There are multiple "Barbie Doll" groupies known as "Big Al's Babes" standing on stage in front of Alex Lifeson, holding "Post-It" signs with various sayings on them, apparently created by the roadies. Sayings have included: "I Like The Drummer", "My Grampa Says Your Cool", "Can I Roll Your Bones?", "I'm A Dino-Whore AKA Suckasaurass", "I Was Conceived While My Dad Was At A Rush Concert", "I'm Not Wearing Any Panties", "My Mom Thinks Your Hot!", "I'm Only Doing This To Pay For College", "Freebird!", "I Thought ZZ Top Had Beards", "Bass Player's Cute! Is That His Real Nose?", "I Golf Naked", "Nice Dinosaurs-You Must Be A Caveman", "If It's Too Loud You're Too Old".
  • The opening video begins with a dream sequence of Snakes and Arrows images, then Alex sits up in bed, saying, "Snakes? Who would dream about snakes, that's so creepy. Honey? Honey - wake up. I had this weirdest dream, it was a snake..." then the person lying next to him sits up and its Neil. They look at each other and yell in surpise...then after another sequence, Geddy wakes up in a chair and says "What did they do to my food?" and then in walks a man in a Scottish costume who speaks with a Scottish accent who tells Geddy he doesn't care how he is feeling, to "...wipe that chicken off your face and get out there!" after which they all ran out. The guy in the Scottish costume is actually Geddy, dressed in make up and wig. At the end of the show, another video of Scottish Geddy, aka "Harry Satchel" plays, where he tells people to go home because he wants to get back to eating his chicken, and we hear "Limelight" played on the bagpipes!
  • For the first leg of the tour, the video intro for the second set is "The Plane of Dharma", featuring Alex in rare, comical form, playing several characters on the Snakes and Arrows Leela board. The board shifts around the screen and highlights certain lines to which Alex pops up and executes various Alex rants.
  • For the second leg of the tour, a new video intro was used for the second called "What's That Smell", which includes Geddy and Alex, as well as Barbie Dolls, fried chicken, and the return of both Harry Satchel (aka Geddy Lee in Scotsman garb) and Jerry Stiller; unfortunately, this video replaces Alex Lifeson's "Plane of Dharma" video. After the first two nights of the tour, a new outro video was introduced featuring Harry Satchel and Jerry Stiller, as well as a short appearance by Alex's "swami head in a box", with guest appearances by "Neil's head in a box" and others, with lots of inside jokes for Rush fans. And at the end of the outro video, where during the first leg of the tour "Limelight" was played with bagpipes, during this leg it is played with Indian sitar music. All other videos from the first leg remain, although some have been modified (for example, one of the televisions from the Power Windows cover is seen blowing with the tumbleweeds during "When The Wind Blows").
  • There is a video of Bob & Doug McKenzie to introduce "The Larger Bowl"; "The Larger Bowl" has video snippets showing alternating images between the rich and the poor, etc.
  • Alex plays a mandola mounted on an Omega stand during "Workin' Them Angels"; "Workin' Them Angels" had a video accompaniment similar to the album art of various types of workers and soldiers with angel wings.
  • There is a South Park video intro to Tom Sawyer; during the video, the South Park characters begin playing Tom Sawyer but Cartman sings the wrong lyrics, "...floated down the river on a raft with a black guy", which leads to an argument with Cartman saying he's read the book and that's how the story goes, but the other quickly corrects him saying "that's Huckleberry Finn, stupid!". Cartman then says "I am Geddy Lee! And I will sing whatever lyrics I want!". They then start again to count off the beginning where Rush takes over and plays.
  • During "A Passage To Bangkok", a video plays showing footage of far east trains, poppy fields, marijuana plants and many other scenes related to the lyrics.
  • Geddy Lee is playing his 4001 Rickenbacker bass on stage for the first time in 25 years (last seen on the Signals tour).
  • Geddy Lee is using a minature Snakes & Arrows drum as a cup holder!
  • "Digital Man", last played on the Grace Under Pressure warm-up tour, has a new arrangement and is missing the first "He's got a force field" lyric.
  • The drum solo has been completely revamped: the "Scars" and "Pieces of Eight" sections have been dropped; there are a slew of new marimba samples which gives the middle section including the "Momo's Dance Party" bit an Oriental percussion feel; instead of "One O'clock Jump", the solo includes a complete big band triggered sample of "Cotton Tail" which Neil performed with the Buddy Rich Band on Burning for Buddy Vol. I.
  • "The Trees", added for the second leg of the tour, Geddy triggers a sample of Cartman from South Park saying "Real guitars are for old people".
  • Added for the second leg of the tour, located on a pedestal near Geddy was a minature model of Neil Peart at his Snakes & Arrows drum kit.
  • Click here for Neil's House Music List

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