The following story is courtesy of Jane Stevenson from Sun Media:

Veteran Toronto prog-rock band Rush is going through a major renaissance right now.

Together for 33 years, singer-bassist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer-lyricist Neil Peart are enjoying their most successful single in a decade, Far Cry, from the band's just-released studio album, Snakes & Arrows.

Meanwhile, ticket sales for the accompanying tour, which kicks off June 13 in Atlanta and hits Canada for a slew of dates in July and September, are up 35% from the last time Rush hit the road in 2004.

Lee said there were two key ingredients in making Rush sound fresh again: Recording the 2004 EP of '60s covers, Feedback, and recruiting Grammy-winning co-producer Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Velvet Underground) for Snakes & Arrows, which was recorded in the Catskills and mixed in L.A., where Peart has lived for the past six years.

"It felt fresh," said Lee, relaxing in a back room recently at Rush's management offices in Toronto.

"A couple of things happened. The way we recorded Feedback was so basic and so back to roots, you know the three of us just in a studio playing together, that made us realize how much more exciting recording should be, rather than computerizing the whole thing and belabouring it. And also, playing those songs from that period was a great way of reminding us about certain truths that existed about writing rock songs back then, that shouldn't have changed. But in our own way we got very dense about our songwriting, and that was a way of bringing us out of ourselves a little bit more and reminding us about some of the fundamentals that go into writing a great rock song."

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