Rush Returns Live at Juno Awards with New Drummer Anika Nilles

The shock registered before the first note. Rush, absent as a live act for 11 years, walked out to open the 2026 Juno Awards at TD Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario on March 29, and behind the kit sat Anika Nilles: 42-year-old German drummer, former Jeff Beck touring mainstay, solo artist with a devoted following in the drumming community, now seated in front of a vintage Rush logo on a huge bass drum in the most pressure-filled public moment of her career.

The song was "Finding My Way," the opening track from Rush's 1974 self-titled debut. The choice was deliberate in ways every drummer present understood immediately. That record features John Rutsey behind the kit, not Neil Peart, who did not join until afterward. By returning to pre-Peart material, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson gave Nilles a foundation to stand on rather than a shadow to compete with. It was also, according to Setlist.fm records, the first complete live performance of the song in over 45 years. "You really can't ask us what song to play," Lee told reporters in the media room afterward. "If we have to choose one song, it's almost impossible. We have so many. So we just asked management, and they said first song, first album." Lifeson had a shorter answer: "Also, it's the only song we know how to play."

The quip got laughs. The performance underneath it did not need any. "Finding My Way" is not Rush's most technically demanding drum part, and that restraint was the point. Rutsey's original studio take is driving hard rock in 4/4, a backbeat that sits deep and fills that mark transitions rather than dominate them. That open architecture gave Nilles room to announce herself without overwriting the song. She played virtuosic fills throughout, embellishing the song's skeleton rather than replacing it. Lifeson was visibly turning to watch her as the set concluded. Lee, at 72, was hitting the top-register notes that defined Rush's earliest recordings. Behind them, vintage Rush footage, explicitly including footage of Peart, played on the screens throughout. The tribute and the comeback occupied the same frame simultaneously.

For drummers who want to absorb what Nilles modeled in Hamilton, "Finding My Way" is the right place to start. The study list runs as follows. First: the verse groove itself, a driving 8th-note pulse with an unadorned, confident backbeat, the most stripped-back drumming Rush ever released. Second: the transition fills that bridge the song's sections, where Rutsey signals momentum shifts and where Nilles layered in her own authority. Third: the chorus crashes, which demand an open, swinging feel rather than tight control. Fourth: the outro drive, where Rutsey's playing loosens and the original recording gives the drummer genuine room to push. Fifth, and most transferable to any iconic repertoire: identify the song's groove skeleton first, honor it structurally, and earn your voice in the spaces between. Nilles did not arrive at that kit trying to replace Neil Peart. She arrived to serve the songs, and it showed.

Fan reaction across drumming communities since the broadcast has split predictably between relief that Rush is playing again and serious scrutiny of how Nilles will handle the technically stratospheric Peart-era catalog across a full tour. That question gets its real answer when the Fifty Something tour opens June 7 at the Forum in Los Angeles, the same venue where Rush played its final show with Peart in 2015. What started as a 12-date announcement has expanded to 58 shows across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, including four nights at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena in August. Each concert is designed as an immersive two-set evening drawing from a rotating selection of approximately 35 songs.

Almost all of those 35 songs carry Peart's fingerprints. The Hamilton performance was Nilles' opening argument.