Rick Beato has sat down with Anika Nilles and found out a bit more about her preparation in the run-up to her big gig last weekend – the opening night of Rush’s Fifty Something reunion tour.
The first show in LA on Sunday was a triumph for Rush – and Nilles personally – with fans and contemporaries of the band such as Mike Portnoy queuing up to praise her performance.
Nilles started off by talking about the new Bubinga kit she’s using for the tour. “A Maple kit is more of an all-round kit so you have all the frequencies there which is really in balance, but with the Bubinga you have that bottom end, it’s more phat and depending on the tuning you can still really have that super punchy tone. It’s what I played on the Jeff Beck tour.
"For huge stages and big venues, the Bubinga works really good. It’s not my go-to choice when I play in smaller venues, because it’s too boomy. But for this kind of stage, it’s the perfect wood.”
Asked how she learned Rush’s extensive back catalogue, she admitted: “I have no idea. Sometimes I was sitting there and thought, 'I have no idea how I'm learning that,' but somehow it's working because I learned those songs in a completely different way. My preparation was so different to how I prepare myself usually.“
"Usually I just listen, then I make a quick chart for myself to have it visually in front of my eyes and then I just listen, read and play. And I figured with this, it doesn't work right. So sometimes you cannot really write it out because a lot of it is also kind of a feeling."
Writing it out would have just taken too much time, she said. “And I thought, I don't have that time. I just have to listen, make chunks for myself and just learn it step by step and then this is how I did it. But just memorizing all the parts is one thing and then learning the feeling is a different thing.”
Nilles got the gig via Geddy Lee’s bass tech John ‘Skully’ McIntosh, who also worked with Jeff Beck. Once she signed up to joining the band it was a matter of deep research. “I was diving directly into the Rush rabbit hole and just listened to everything I could catch – music, videos, live shows – everything you could find online, just to get to know the songs a bit better, because I just knew a bunch.”
She explained that in a way they were learning or re-learning together. After all, Lee and Lifeson hadn’t played as Rush for over a decade. “We all kind of started a little bit together from scratch,” she said. “I mean, they didn't really start from scratch, but as a trio, we had to find a way to come together.
"And it's one thing when you come into a band and everyone knows everything and it's just like playing, it’s smooth because they're doing it every day onstage and you're the newbie (who) has to adjust and learn all this. It didn't feel like that. So (that) definitely took the pressure a little bit off my shoulders.”
