Legendary Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson and Epiphone recently unveiled the new Alex Lifeson Epiphone Les Paul Standard Axcess electric guitar. Created by Alex Lifeson and the luthiers at Epiphone in Nashville, TN, the Alex Lifeson Epiphone Les Paul Standard Axcess is now available worldwide at Epiphone.com.

To mark the occasion of his collaboration with Epiphone and the release of the new Alex Lifeson Epiphone Les Paul Standard Axcess guitar, Lifeson debuted two brand new songs titled "Kabul Blues" and "Spy House". Fans can get a first listen to "Kabul Blues" and "Spy House" in the new video below, and listen to the songs in their entirety exclusively at AlexLifeson.com.. These two instrumental songs mark the first new music from Alex Lifeson in close to a decade.

In a new interview with Sweetwater, found below, Lifeson discussed the new songs, his new Epiphone Les Paul Axcess signature guitar, his latest projects, inspirations, and the gear that made Rush a household name.

Lifeson on writing "Kabul Blues" and "Spy House":

"I think after Rush stopped touring, I really wanted to keep being active because I didn't really want to lose the chops. So I started writing shortly after the last tour, and I wrote half a dozen songs, and they are all very different from each other - one has got a country feel, one this trippy psychedelic feel.... 'Kabul Blues' was really an experiment in playing a bluesy thing with this psychedelic trippy background, and the more I got into it. I first layered all the crazy weird stuff in the background, and then the solo over it, and it was really a lot of fun to do that, and create that. A very different approach to something very traditional in music, and to add these other influences. 'Spy House' was two and a half minutes, but it's really punchy, and a simple kind of riff that I feel is really effective and gave me a chance to stretch out on the solo at the end, which you don't hear so much anymore these days. It was really a fun thing.

I'm working on another project with Andy Curran, who worked at our offices for many years. Andy approached me about four years ago, shortly after the last Rush tour, just adding some guitar on something that he was doing, and I did that. A few months later, he sent another one, did that, we started getting more serious. We found a great singer Maiah Wynne from Portland, Oregon; just a fabulous voice, a very smart songwriter, and a vocal performer. We have basically done an album's worth of material that we hope to release soon. I'm very excited about that."

According to Ultimate Classic Rock, Lifeson has in fact completed 10 songs for a new project with Andy Curran (Coney Hatch), dubbed Envy Of None. The project reportedly started with "Kabul Blues" and "Spy House".

Lifeson and Curran are joined in Envy of None by guitarist Alfio Annibalini and vocalist Maiah Wynne, with additional musical contributions coming from drummers Tim Oxford (Arkells) and David Quinton Steinberg (Dead Boys, the Mods).

Wynne is the "diamond in the rough" who helped to spawn the new project, according to Curran. He had been collaborating on songs with the Portland-based singer and Lifeson expressed interest in hearing the material. Curran sent it to the guitarist and told him, "If you hear anything, why don’t you play on it?"

From there, the collaboration began to blossom. "He played on one track and one became two, and two became three," Curran shares. "Now we have 10 songs in the can with this project called Envy of None. Those two, 'Kabul Blues' and 'Spyhouse', at this moment Maiah is singing over them, so they’re going to be part of the Envy of None project. If everything goes well, we’re hoping those songs might come out late summer or early fall."

Read the complete Ultimate Classic Rock report here.

(Photo - Joe Kleon, Kleon Photography LLC)