The much-anticipated new documentary film featuring Canadian rock trio Rush, has picked up the number one spot in the running for the Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award. Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, topped the list of ten films that are selected as Audience Award winners.

“This must-see rockumentary about the Canadian band has been a fan favorite since we announced the film slate back in March,” reads the summary on the Tribeca Film Festival website.

I don’t know a whole lot about the Tribeca Film Festival, and am certainly no authority on movies in general, but a documentary about a rock band picking up an award at Tribeca seems like a pretty big deal. I’m willing to bet that both Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn think it’s a pretty big deal. Both are credited as directors and producers of the film.

In other Rush news, Alex Lifeson recently wrapped up a two-part interview with Gibson guitars. In addition to all the talk that appeals to guitarists, there was a bit of talk about the band, its evolution and the new album that the group is currently working on.

Rush fans will easily recall the days when the band expanded on the traditional guitar-bass-drums rock sound by adding synthesizers, which were manned by bassist and lead vocalist Geddy Lee. Albums such as Moving Pictures and Signals are good examples of the sound that Rush adopted during that phase. Eventually, as Lifeson puts it, the group “realized we went as far as we could with that.”

After getting away from keyboards more and more following the 1980’s, Lifeson says he has been inclined to bring that element back into the group’s material to some extent. Geddy Lee, apparently feeling a bit liberated by being freed from some of his synthesizer duties is said to be resisting the idea.

Fans who prefer their Rush straight up will be happy to hear that Lifeson describes their forthcoming album as “in-your-face guitar stuff,” and goes on to describe is by saying: “There’s a great energy and there’s great rhythmic funk-ability going on there and some really cool stuff and I am really, really pleased with it.”

As for the timetable, that appears to be up-in-the-air a bit for now. Lifeson says that the group has not even set a date to begin recording the new album, although they are planning to introduce two new songs during the summer tour. They are reportedly about half-way completed with the production for them and have recently begun the mixing work for them.