Primus

Primus has announced an extensive, 46-date, coast-to-coast extension of its wildly popular ‘A Tribute To Kings’ Tour, paying homage to pro-rock legends, Rush. ‘A Tribute To Kings’ will find the Bay area trio performing Rush’s 1977 album ‘A Farewell To Kings’ in its entirety, following a set of their own music. As bassist Les Claypool told Rolling Stone, the tour is about paying tribute to a band that has given him so much inspiration over the years.

“Hemispheres was my first concert,” Claypool said, referring to Rush’s 1978 album and tour. “Originally we’d always kind of joked around about doing Hemispheres…but we settled on Kings, because A) it was the first Rush record I ever heard and B) it contains ‘Cygnus X-1,’ which has always been my favorite Rush tune. It seems to be a good one for us to tackle; 2112 seemed a little obvious.”

The announcement follows the massive success of the first leg of ‘A Tribute To Kings’, which was long-delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s just the latest in a long series of Rush-related milestones for Primus, who first opened for their musical heroes in 1992.

“Geddy, Alex and Neil had been superheroes to Larry, Herb and I in our teens,” Claypool recalled, “so when we all became pals while touring together in the early ’90s, we were pretty delighted; partially because of the musical geek-out factor but mostly because the three guys whom we had admired so much from afar, turned out to be truly great, down-to-earth humans, and like us, a tad eccentric.”