On January 8, 2020, Crown Lands’ Cody Bowles and Kevin Comeau were due to fly from their homes just outside Toronto to Nashville to hook up with former Rush producer Nick Raskulinecz to finish off a song they’d been working on for the past three years.
This was a huge deal on several levels. The Canadian duo’s Rush fandom goes bone deep and the track, a shifting, seven-minute mini-epic titled Context: Fearless Pt 1, was both homage to the Canadian prog icons in spirit and sound, and an evolutionary step away from the White Stripes/Rival Sons-inspired blues rock with which Crown Lands had made their name. They’d even started recording the song three years earlier with original Rush producer Terry Brown, and now the guy who had worked on the venerated trio’s final two albums was getting involved.
“It was kind of fitting,” guitarist/bassist and keyboard player Comeau tells Prog. “Terry had started Rush out and Nick had seen them through at the end.”
But 24 hours before the pair were due to board that plane, they got some dreadful news: Neil Peart had passed away. Given Raskulinecz’s closeness to Rush, they assumed the session would be cancelled. Then they got a text from the producer.
“He said, ‘You guys have got to carry the torch, you’ve got to see this vision through, so come on down and we can listen to Rush and cry and whatever,’” reveals the multi-talented drummer/vocalist/flautist Bowles.
And so they boarded the plane and found themselves in Raskulinecz’s studio, honouring the memory of Rush and Peart and working on their own song. “It was tough,” says Bowles. “But there was a weird magic to it.”
At some point, Raskulinecz mentioned that he had one of the kits Peart had there in the studio. Did Bowles want to play it? He didn’t have to ask twice.
