Although legendary Canadian rock band Rush last toured in 2015, is not expected to release any new material, and suffered the heartbreaking and devastating loss of drummer/lyricist Neil Peart in January, the band’s music will live on as long as there are fans who appreciate the exceptionality and compelling nature of their compositions.
It will also live on in the guise of artists covering their ample and diverse catalogue of songs, which cover more than four decades and 19 studio albums. One such cover project is the recently released string quarter (with drums) version of the first side of the 2112 album, arranged and performed by Toronto’s Devah Quartet.
Comprised of the exceptionally talented founder/electric cellist/arranger/composer Liza McLellan, as well as Emily Hau, Sharon Lee and Moira Burke (both of whom play five-string electric violin/viola hybrids), the group has brought to the fore the best of classical musicianship with the intensity of rock and metal music with both their covers and their original material, making for a listening experience that defies classification and which should appeal to music loves of many tastes and preferences.
The project features the quartet recording their instrumental arrangement of the entirety of side one of the classic 1976 prog-rock masterpiece 2112, which has become one of Rush’s most lauded signature albums. Side two features an original composition by McLellan called Heaven and Hell, both of which were commissioned by California based Raellic Systems, a sort of tech R&D-company, promotional firm and record label all in one, owned and operated by entrepreneur Andrew Watters, who also happens to be a massive fan of Rush.
“The whole process of how we got to where we are today is kind of complicated, because we started the project maybe five years ago. And it was only meant to cover a small section of 2112. The whole piece is more than 20 minutes long and at the time we were thinking it was a big, big project and wondering were we good enough. So, we ended up only covering a little bit of the Overture and Temples of Syrinx, which we did at the request of Now Magazine here in Toronto. They were looking for local bands to cover legendary Canadian albums. And we are all Rush fans and we told them we wanted to do Rush, and we chose part of 2112,” McLellan explained.
“Fast forward five years later and a guy out in California sees the little video that we did for that cover on YouTube and was like, ‘where’s the rest of it? How come you just did The Overture and Temples of Syrinx?’ Well, we really couldn’t answer that. So, he said, ‘look, I would like to commission you to do the whole thing and I will put it out for every Rush fan to enjoy.’ And that’s where the genesis of the concept came from.
“Andrew has worked with some other bands and is very prog oriented. He likes to do these pet projects and he’s the one who sort of discovered us, because we’re kind of a weird act – a string quarter with drums and a lot of people haven’t figured out how to codify us yet, so we’re a little bit hidden in the mix. And originally it was just going to be the Rush cover but then Andrew started getting into our original music and was really enjoying that. We worked out an agreement to do original stuff for Side B.”
Tackling Rush is no mean feat for even a regular rock band. Converting the intricacies of the compositions of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart, with their melodic, chordal and rhythmic complexity is a task of patience and perseverance if you want to do a good job. Developing arrangements suitable for violin, viola and cello takes both guts and supreme skill.
“When I am doing covers, a lot of the time the key is really tough, and I might have to change keys to one that works for strings. Luckily, Rush’s keys work really well for strings, meaning I had the luxury of doing a lot of stuff in A, C, and B – these sorts of chords which let us use open strings. So, we’re playing the exact same pitches that you hear on the original album. And initially, the first place I always start is the bass line, so figuring out the chords and in this case what Geddy Lee was doing and following those lines before going on to figure out the melody. Sometimes there is no vocal melody, there may be a lead guitar or something to follow, because there are a lot of instrumental passages in 2112. And then it gets complicated after that because, yes, there is multitracking on the original and sometimes you have a couple of guitar parts going on at the same time: there might be both a guitar solo and the rhythm parts underneath it. Fortunately, when you count Mack our drummer, I have five pieces so I can have the two violinists basically covering two and sometimes three guitar parts, meaning I can layer the instruments the same way, even live in real time, that Rush did in the studio.
“It just takes a long time. Sometimes you can find a guitar fan who has posted a transcription of a guitar solo. I have relied on some of these transcriptions myself to find out what the heck is going on. But for 2112, there’s very little out there, which is not a lot of help because of the nature of some of Alex Lifeson’s solos, some of the sound comes from working the amp, or working the pedals and a lot of it is distorted. Often, I am not really sure what those notes are, so there was a lot of workshopping and sorting out how to do those solos, which took a long time and a lot of work.”
The Devah Quartet started a decade ago, when McLellan, a native of Regina, Saskatchewan came into contact with other recent university music graduates on the Toronto scene and, like their rock colleagues would, decided to jam together.
“None of us went to school together, but we knew each other because it’s a small scene in Toronto. We were all classically trained and pretty fresh out of university with our various degrees is music. One of our current violinists, Sharon, joined later, but the original three of us, me, Moira and Emily, were all at the same gig and said, ‘wouldn’t it be fun to play some quartets together.’ And we did, and we started off playing traditional classical music. But we found that, first of all, there are a lot of fabulous string quartets out there playing all this wonderful repertoire. So that meant there wasn’t really a market for that, because it’s already being done and its being done very well. It was a little bit of a limited audience,” McLennan said.
“It depends on what you’re looking to do with it. One option was to get into competitions; we were all pretty young and out of school so that was an avenue we could have gone down. But we didn’t care enough to do that. It’s not that we sucked or anything, it’s just that our hearts weren’t really in that. We were looking for a change, and at that time our first violinist quit because she was kind of bored with it all, and we got Sharon, who we auditioned for and we started playing more pop and rock stuff, finding arrangements written by other people. I found that a lot of them weren’t written very well or not very interestingly. They were really simplistic with boring cello lines and sometimes the melody didn’t even match, so they were very loose arrangements.
“I remember thinking, ‘hang on, this is an avenue we could do, and we could do it better because there was a lot of junk out there.’ And that’s really what started Devah Quartet. I just started writing all these arrangements and being very, very particular and careful in making them really, really good, and not wanting to cheapify them in any way. It also allowed me to write in genres I really love and I was coming into my own as a composer and the band started to say they liked my originals better than the covers ,so that’s what led us to doing our first EP [self-titled] in 2013.”
That project was produced by music industry veteran Robert Berry, known for his work with The Greg Kihn Band, as well as the E3 project with prog-rock legends Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer.
“We met Robert through a mutual friend, and he is so cool and so wonderful. We went down to his studio and did the EP recording with him, and then a couple of years later he came up here and we recorded some more at The Chalet, near Uxbridge, where Rush has actually recorded. We did a bunch of singles that we put out bit by bit. He is so generous and very creative and really easy to work with,” McLellan said.
The Devah Quartet took a bit of a hiatus because of expanding family commitment but have been busy working on new material leading up to the release of the 2112/Heaven & Hell project, with another album of all original material, entitled Prometheus, in the works. The current album is also steeped further in the Canadian rock and roll firmament, as it was recorded at Metalworks Studios, which was built initially as the personal studio for another venerable Canadian rock trio, Triumph, and is still owned and operated by Triumph’s Gil Moore as a recording studio and recording school.
McLellan believes the band clicks both as a musical entity and as people because they are share the same commitment to their craft and to the success of the band, as well as having a deep mutual respect for one another.
“I am not going to say that we don’t have our disagreements because we certainly do, but we’re all very respectful of each other. After having done music and worked in the music industry since we were just out of school, there is a flexibility that you develop. You can’t just be rigid about always thinking that you’re always right. And it’s also about knowing when to stand down, and we all have that,” she said.
“And we’re just lucky I guess that we actually haven’t had any major disagreements. The only time that happened was with our previous violinist who was not into it, and she left and then we found Sharon. We felt that Sharon was the perfect fit for us the moment she walked into the room. I don’t know exactly what it is, but you can tell how personalities will work or don’t work and she just worked right away. And we all remain friends and we have a great time. We bicker a little bit, but its always very respectful and we’re always very careful of what we say and how we act. And most importantly, we like to have fun. We love to interact with each other on stage. It’s not pretend; we are truly playing with each other in the best sense of the term.”
As well as McLellan, Hau, Lee and Burke, the band is rounded out by the percussion expertise of the only male in the group, Mackenzie Longpre, or Mack, as he is called.
“We came to know Mack through just knowing a lot of people in Toronto. It’s a very small music scene so everybody knows everybody, pretty much. My sister is a musician as well and had a rehearsal in her house and I happened to be there and was like, ‘wow, this drummer is really good. We need a really good drummer for all the crazy weird things we’re doing with all the different time signatures and stuff,’” she said.
“When we chatted with Mack, we said, ‘Mack, I think we’re going to do this 2112 project.’ And he said, ‘oh my God, I have been wanting to do this my whole life!’ He is one of those crazy drummers who has been playing Rush in his basement since he was first able to play the drums. He has been working and learning about Neil Peart and all these other great drummers. He is a super drum nerd who loves Rush, so he was excited not intimidated at taking on 2112.”
After a decade, McLellan feels that Devah Quartet has definitely homed in on its unique sound and approach to blending classical music with rock and metal, in a way that is different than many of the prog-metal and symphonic metal outfits coming out of Europe. They are more akin to the work of 2 Cellos than the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in that regard, having worked hard to not only hone their sonic signature, but also their stage show, approach and overall aesthetic.
“Honestly, it’s taken us some years to figure all that out. Starting from the classical scene and really working towards feeling liberated and feeling comfortable on stage at a bar or in an arena or theatre, it doesn’t matter; it’s the way you connect with people. And I think we do so in a way, I have to say, that is different than with most classical audiences. And we love it,” she said.
“It boils down to also just loving the genres, loving what we’re playing. And then for me it’s so gratifying to be writing my own stuff, because I love prog rock, and I love metal and I sort of have this massive opportunity to develop that side of my writing. I think there is a huge intersection between metal and classical, I really do. I think they all kind of come from the same place, essentially. And this is something I have thought about because I also find it interesting how well those two styles of music fit. My education is in Beethoven and Bach and Brahms and Wagner and all of that kind of stuff, which I still love. And when you analyze that music, that’s actually metal and prog. Those guys were heavy. Shostakovich was metal for his day.
“And when you talk to a lot of the musicians who play in the metal genres, they listen to that music, whether or not they play it is irrelevant, it’s what’s inspiring them. And the people that enjoy metal and enjoy prog, for them anything else is too simple, too repetitive. I also find that people who are really into those genres are a little more open minded and listen to more things that the average person. There’s a lot of complexity in metal, even something that sounds simple that is just a great riff, there’s a lot of intelligence that goes into making a great riff, and how to build a song off of that riff – that’s Beethoven right there. I think it’s all linked.”
Due to the pandemic, as with most musicians and bands, Devah Quartet has had to cancel or postpone any tour dates and is also unable to even rehearse together because of social distancing and self-isolating protocols. But McLellan said she will continue to write material for Prometheus, and that they will release little YouTube videos from time to time, as well as continuing to do press to promote 2112/Heaven & Hell.
For more information on the Devah Quartet, visit their social media channels or www.devahquartet.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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