Alex Lifeson has been hitting the interview circuit the past few weeks to promote the upcoming release of Envy of None's new album Stygian Wavz, due out on March 28th. His latest interview was with AllMusic.com where Lerxst talks mostly about his Envy of None project, but also touches on Rush's legacy, his health, and his future plans. Here he is discussing his recent health issues:
... "I went to a clinic in January in Austria, in southern Austria, called the Vivamayr Clinic. It is a wellness clinic that focuses on digestive system. As well as many other things - they have many cancer patients there, and they provide so many different therapies. And it's very calm and quiet - no phones, no music. It's just about almost zenning out and diving into this - drinking a lot of water, tea, there's no coffee, there's obviously no alcohol. And I went because I had surgery in 2023 on my stomach, and it left me with gastroparesis, which is slow motility. So, food stays in my stomach for ten or twelve hours rather than two or three hours. So, I really have to eat very carefully, and I have to be very selective about how I eat and not cross that line, because it's hard for me to get back over. Y'know, one mistake costs me two or three days of discomfort. I was nauseous for a year. I was miserable for pretty much a year and a half...until I went to Vivamayr, and they just taught me how to take control of how I'm eating, what to eat, when to eat. And it's just remarkable. Because I'm not normally that type of person. I'm lazy and I just don't work hard when it comes to things I don't want to do. But this, for the first time in my life, just changed everything, and it's been life changing for me. Since I went to see them, I've lost about 23 pounds, and I lost another I think 15 or 20 pounds before that. So I'm down close to 40 pounds in a year and a half." ...
Here he is on his future plans, teasing a couple of new projects:
... "Well, I'm gonna finish this cup of tea and have another one, and go on and do another 50 interviews today, and for the rest of the week! I'm still working on a documentary on the Great Lakes with a bunch of people - some guys from Barenaked Ladies, from the Rheostatics. We've been working on this for a while. It's an interesting project, because we get together and we jam, and then we start pulling stuff out of those jams and then building from those. And a lot of the jams, as we progress, get better and better and better, and stand alone as parts. I'm working with a young female artist on some of her stuff. I do stuff with Marco Minnemann from time to time - I have one project here on my desktop with him. So, I'm playing a lot. I play every day. I play before I go to bed for an hour, as an absolute. But usually, I'm getting at least three or four hours of guitar playing in every day. So, it's all good." ...
You can read the entire interview online here, and Envy of None's Stygian Wavz will release later this month on March 28th with pre-orders available here.
