Neil Peart -- The Latest News

As of today, October 30, the Neil Peart DW Commemorative drum kit is now available to buy and take home. All you need is $30,000.

Guitar Center has updated their website with a lot of information about this kit. I've put much of the information on one handy page on my site:

DW Commemorative Drum Kit page

If anyone out there has bought one of these kits, drop me an e-mail about what you think of it--or feel free to add a comment on this blog.

With news of "2112" being included as a "MasterWork" by a Canadian trust, Neil Peart had an interesting reaction in this interview.

CANOE -- JAM! Music: Parts of '2112' make Peart cringe

Neil is interviewed in the Toronto Sun about the new Rush CD. 

TorontoSun.com - Music - Rush have a lot of faith in new CD

Chris Stankee, Neil's Sabian rep, recently visited Rush in the studio and took a few pictures. From the pictures, it appears that Neil is using his new DW kit for recording.

Here's Chris's update:

In the past few weeks Neil has been in the studio with RUSH working on a new album. They have brought in a co-producer that has worked with Foo Fighters to add to the elixir. SABIAN's Chris Stankee joined them for a couple of days. He says, "First of all- how many people get to hang in the studio with RUSH?! That was as cool as it gets! They were working hard getting the drum & cymbal sounds recorded right and the song they were working on is amazing. Neil has an interesting routine happening too. He would play the kit along to demos working out the drum orchestration. Then retire to his office to work on the lyrics and finally making his way to the couch to collect his thoughts and then start all over again. Of course he and Lorne found a little time to pick on me in between. That's OK though as I bet they still haven't found the manicotti I left inside the bass drum for added flavor to the tone. I can just picture it...Neil thinking "man, Lorne stinks today" and Lorne thinking "man, I stink today!" Ha ha! Who loves ya fellaz?"

Neil Peart answered the questions, "What are you reading, watching, and listening to" in the Christian Science Monitor.

Excerpt:

What are you watching?

I don't watch a lot of TV and movies. I watched The Life and Death of Peter Sellers the other night, and I saw Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. But they're not necessarily worth celebrating. They're just fun. I'm not much of a visual arts type person.

I just saw that Neil's interview with Eddie Trunk is now on YouTube. It's broken up into two parts.

 Part 1:

Part 2:

Pro-Mark Limited Edition R30 Drum Kit Commemorative Sticks are now available to buy.

Get all the details about these sticks at NeilPeartDrumsticks.com. See my original post about this in August 2006.