Rush Are Doing Fine on Tour, So They Added Four More Cities

The fog rolls in, Alex Lifeson’s opening figure to “Xanadu” rings round the arena, and Rush are back where few expected to hear them again. Nearly four months into the Fifty Something tour, Geddy Lee and Lifeson have found that the road is treating them better than they planned for, and they have added four more cities to prove it.

On 31 August the band announced new arena shows in Houston, St Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, according to the official Rush announcement. The first of them is on Thursday 1 October at the Toyota Center in Houston.

Why Rush Added Four More Cities

The reason is simple, and the band gave it themselves. “When we initially booked this tour we didn’t know how well we would hold up to the rigours of the road,” Lee and Lifeson said, explaining that they had “played it safe with lots of days off to recover”.

That caution turned out to be unnecessary. “Life is nothing if not surprising and we’re doing fine and having a blast,” they said, “so why not try to hit a few more of the cities that have always treated us so well.”

The four new dates are:

• 1 October: Houston, Toyota Center
• 21 October: St Louis, Enterprise Center
• 23 October: Cincinnati, Heritage Bank Center
• 15 November: Pittsburgh, PPG Paints Arena

Tickets and VIP packages for the four shows went on sale on Friday 4 September at 10am local time, after presales that began on 1 September. Tickets for every other 2026 and 2027 date were already on sale.

What a Fifty Something Show Sounds Like

Each night is billed as “an evening with” Rush: two sets and a setlist drawn from a catalogue of more than 40 songs, with each show featuring a distinct selection. Fans who caught both nights in Boston heard setlists that were markedly different from one evening to the next, according to Boston.com’s review of the 14 September show at TD Garden.

That Boston night opened with “Xanadu”, then moved through “Dreamline”, “Subdivisions” and “Headlong Flight”. After the interval, “Tom Sawyer” arrived with its customary South Park intro video, and Lee told the crowd the band would play 1981’s Moving Pictures in full, including “Witch Hunt” and “The Camera Eye”. “Time Stand Still”, “Closer to the Heart” and an abridged “2112” closed the second set, with “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” and “Working Man” as the encore.

The tour’s first show on 7 June in Los Angeles leaned on the deep catalogue too. Its first set opened with “Xanadu” and took in “Limelight”, “Far Cry”, the instrumental “La Villa Strangiato” and “The Spirit of Radio”, and the second opened with three parts of “2112” before “Red Barchetta”, “Natural Science”, “Red Sector A” and “YYZ”, according to the opening-night setlist published by BraveWords. That night “Time Stand Still” featured Aimee Mann live for the first time.

The reviews have been kind to the voice. Boston.com’s reviewer wrote that the 73-year-old Lee’s vocals sounded even more polished than they did in 2015, and noted that he took the higher octave on the bridge of “Freewill” the way he sang it decades ago.

The Band Behind Lee and Lifeson

The line-up has grown for this tour. The German drummer, composer and producer Anika Nilles, who played more than 60 shows as Jeff Beck’s drummer and has released four solo albums, sits behind the kit, according to the band’s tour announcement. The veteran keyboardist Loren Gold plays keys and sings backing vocals beside Lee.

Nilles was not hired to replace Neil Peart, and the band have been careful to say so. When the tour was announced, Lee said: “It’s been over 10 years since Alex and I have performed the music of RUSH alongside our fallen bandmate and friend Neil.” He described Peart as irreplaceable, and introduced Nilles as someone “adding another chapter to our story while continuing her own fascinating musical journey”.

Peart’s family backed the project from the start. “We are thrilled to support the Fifty Something tour, celebrating a band whose music has resonated and inspired fans for generations, and to honor Neil’s extraordinary legacy as both a drummer and lyricist,” said Carrie Nuttall-Peart and Olivia Peart, his widow and daughter.

How the Show Honours Neil Peart

The tribute runs through both sets. In Boston, an audio clip from an old interview with Peart played over footage of him drumming, leading into “Bravado” while a photo montage of his life filled the screen. Lee introduced “Headlong Flight” by talking about how Peart’s lyrics developed over the years. “[Peart] became a philosopher,” he told the crowd. “Wise to the ways of the world.”

Peart died in 2020, and for five years that loss looked like the end of Rush as a touring band. The Fifty Something shows are the first time Lee and Lifeson have toured together since the R40 tour ended on 1 August 2015 at the Forum in Los Angeles, which is why the new tour began back at the same venue, now the Kia Forum, this June.

From a Handful of Cities to 86 Nights

The size of the tour is itself the story of the past year. When Lee and Lifeson announced their return in October 2025, Lee described the plan as “performing a vast selection of RUSH songs in a handful of cities”, and the first routing covered multiple shows in seven cities across Canada, the United States and Mexico, beginning on 7 June at the Kia Forum.

Demand changed that quickly. Citing incredible demand, the band soon added two more dates in each of Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Toronto and Fort Worth and one more in Cleveland, according to the tour announcement. By the end of August the run had grown into South American, European and UK legs, and then into the four extra US cities.

The show keeps a sense of humour about its own return. Boston.com described an opening video featuring a “second-hand” sausage vendor, cobweb-covered versions of Lee and Lifeson, and cameos from the actors Jason Segel and Paul Rudd, both known Rush fans, before the fog rolls in and the band walk on.

Where the Tour Goes After Houston

After Houston, the 2026 run heads to Denver on 5 and 7 October, Seattle on 10 and 12 October and San Jose on 15 and 17 October, before the two new Midwest dates in St Louis and Cincinnati. Washington, Uncasville, Hollywood and Tampa in Florida, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Atlanta and Glendale follow, and the year ends in Canada with two nights each in Edmonton and Vancouver in December, according to the full schedule published by Louder.

The 2027 leg starts in South America on 15 January in Buenos Aires, with shows in Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Brasília. Europe follows from 19 February in Paris, and the UK gets seven nights in March: two at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow, two at Co-op Live in Manchester and three at the O2 Arena in London. The tour is scheduled to end in Helsinki on 10 April.

Boston.com counts the whole run at 86 nights across three continents and 17 countries. There are still gaps on the map: Louder notes that no dates have been announced for Japan, where Rush have played only four shows, all on the Grace Under Pressure tour in 1984, or for Australia and New Zealand, which the band have never visited.

What It Means for Rush Fans Now

For fans in Houston, St Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, the extra dates are a second chance at a tour they had been left off. For everyone else, the announcement is a signal about the band’s condition: two founding members who booked a cautious schedule found they could carry more of it, and chose to spend that on more shows.

Rush are not the only band finishing the story of a lost member. We reported recently that Soundgarden now expect the final Cornell album in 2027. Rush are telling theirs on stage, and this week the story reaches Houston.

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