New Rush Tribute Act Vital Signs Redefines Dad Rock 

According to Vital Signs legend, a sign posted on the window of local music venue Hole in the Wall one night caught the eye of a couple strolling down the Drag: Vital Signs – January 8th. They thought, “This couldn’t be a Rush tribute band, could it?” 

When the music began, their suspicions were confirmed by the familiar sound made famous by the legendary Canadian trio: fluttering bass, ceaseless drum fills, and mighty electric guitar, all punctuated by high, piercing vocals. The couple were so moved by the performance they relayed that night’s story to the band after the show.

Rush’s multifaceted progressive rock is a tall task to replicate, but Vital Signs’ collection of local musicians is up for the challenge. All fans since childhood, Rush’s work is baked into the DNA of bassist, vocalist, and keyboardist Nora Predey, guitarist Ben Dubois, and drummer James Caldwell.

“A big reason that I picked up a bass in the first place was because of Rush,” says Predey, who’s known for playing with local indie-folk outfits like Large Brush Collection and Little Mazarn. Performing Rush’s catalog is a different but welcome beast for the Austin Music Awards winner. Still, “Coming back to this music is really a return to roots, in a way,” she says. “It makes me connect to being a musician more than I did before this.”

It’s a return in an even more literal sense for Caldwell. Working as an audio engineer, he hadn’t performed in 10 years before joining Vital Signs to imitate one of the most revered drummers of all time in Neil Peart.

“Ben and Nora were like, ‘Hey, you want to come over and jam some Rush songs?’ And pretty quickly it unlocked that part of my brain,” Caldwell says. “Next time I came over, [they were] like, ‘Oh, by the way, we have a show booked next month. You better get ready.’”

The trio is currently hard at work practicing for their May 30 show at Radio/East. Preparation is key for the group, who prize authenticity in their performances. They even incorporate recording-specific technology that Rush abandoned in live settings, like analog synthesizers and symphonic chimes for Caldwell’s drum kit.

“My drum set is slowly growing to this massive thing that takes up my entire car,” Caldwell says. “Normally I wouldn’t like that, but since I hadn’t been playing for so long it’s just been a lot of fun to fully invest into the [band.]”

The members know the lofty and sometimes unreasonable expectations that come with being a tribute act, especially to a group that possesses one of rock music’s most dedicated followings and their own intricate mythology.

“There’s this camp of people who grew up with it and have been going to Rush concerts for the last 40 years, and they know what it’s supposed to sound like,” Predey says. “It raises the stakes a little bit. You sort of have these graders in the audience.”

“At our first show at the Hole in the Wall, there were some people there that were calling us by the names of the members of Rush, like, ‘Oh, we love you, Neil,’ ‘We love you Geddy,’” recalls Dubois, guitar player for country crooner Cactus Lee among other local acts. “It’s crazy when people project that onto you because we’re the same level of fans as they are – we’re just holding the instruments.”

But Vital Signs aren’t only playing to longtime Rush devotees. The band also hopes to connect with Austin’s broader live music community. That philosophy informed the decision to book original acts Proun and Late Wife to open their May 30 show: Predey wants the “Venn diagram between the cover band world and the original indie music world to overlap a little bit more.”

“It’d be cool for us if we could introduce this music to new people and take it away from the title of ‘Dad rock’ and make it feel like a modern thing to enjoy,” she says. 

“I’m here for it,” says Proun vocalist Jamie Weed. “When I was super young, I really did not like Rush. [But] the more I started playing guitar and being geeky about all that stuff, I was like, ‘This is one of the best bands ever.’”

“[Rush is] right on the edge of being cool or not cool, but [they don’t] care,” adds Late Wife’s Frankie Conover.

Whether meticulously re-creating complex 10-minute epics like “Xanadu” or powering through synth-filled standouts like “Subdivisions,” the band simply loves performing. What makes any performance good, they say, is the universal communication of joy both between each other and the audience.

“A month ago, we learned a new Rush tune … and after we played it the first time, we were all just laughing, and we’re like, ‘Let’s ride the ride again,’” Dubois says. “‘That was fun. I’m gonna go back up to the top of the slide and do it again.’”

Vital Signs performs this Saturday, May 30, at Radio/East. 

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