You Wanna Hear The Next Rush? Take A Little Mindwalk

So I’m cleaning up a little bit around my kitchen this morning and I have the TV going in the other room tuned to the local Fox channel since I want to hear when the weather report comes on.

They are talking about a band that will be performing as part of the morning news show that is on and they mention that the members of this particular band are 13, 14 and 11 years old.

“Oh great, this ought to be really great stuff,” I’m thinking sarcastically to myself and figuring they are rappers or something.

I then hear the host ask them what kind of music they play. I cannot hear the response in the other room since the kid they are talking to sounds a bit soft-spoken. I then hear the host say something like, “Straight-up rock and roll” and then asks what artists have influenced them.

This time I just make out what the kid says, and although I don’t know who the first band was that he mentioned and can no longer remember the name, the second and third influences I hear the kid mention are Kansas and Rush. Now they’ve got my attention.

I go in and see these young dudes getting ready to play. There’s the 11-year-old drummer with his double-bass drum Neil Peart kit, the bass player with some keyboards at his disposal (how Geddy Lee!) and the guitarist with what I thought was a Fender of some type but turned out to be a Carvin.

They start playing one of their originals that sounds to me like it has a lot of Rush influence, but the problem is that is sounds like crap. I don’t mean the kids’ performance, which actually sounds pretty damn good – really great considering how old these guys are!

The problem is the sound set-up in the TV studio, which obviously was not designed to provide quality sound for visiting rock and roll bands. Even so, I can tell these young guys have some serious talent in their possession.

The band is called “Mindwalk” and they are based somewhere in Massachusetts. The show’s host comes back after the performance and mentions that these guys have done some recording in a studio in Groton, Mass., which is right next to the town I lived in before moving here to New Hampshire.

The host also mentions that their website is www.mindwalkband.com and of course, I have to take a peek and download some of the MP3 files they have.

Listening to the downloaded MP3’s really tells the story since they’re nice, clean studio recordings. Of the five song snippets available for download, I was most impressed with their rendition of Rush’s YYZ and U.K.’s Presto, simply due to the fact that those are two songs I am familiar with, and these kids pull them off fabulously.

These kids are amazing. I don’t know how they found each other, but it’s a good thing that they did. They have a bright future ahead of them and a damn fine supply of accomplishment already behind them.

I’ve seen some bold claims from other bands about their being the “next Rush,” or whatever, but amazingly enough, these young guys called “Mindwalk” already may be the next Rush. It’s a little scary to think about just how good they will be in 10 years. These kids are the future of “real” rock music.