Welcome to San Antonio, Rush fans!
Rush’s Fifty-Something Tour comes to Central Texas this week, Wednesday September 23rd and Friday September 25th. There will be a gathering for Rush fans before the show at the Burleson Yard Beer Garden at 430 Austin St. It’s three miles almost exactly west of the Frost Bank Center, so pretty convenient for the show. The restaurant opens at noon and there’ll be people coming and going from the start, so you know the drill… look for the people wearing Rush t-shirts.

Blah Blah Blah signs in Austin, 2013
The last time Rush was in Central Texas (other than May 2015 for the R40 tour, when they played COTA), they were starting the second leg of their Clockwork Angels Tour, only a few days after they had FINALLY been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Everyone remembers Alex’s famous speech that night, consisting of nothing but repeated "BLAH BLAH BLAH" for several minutes, simultaneously the most hilarious and epic acceptance speech in Rock Hall history.

There were three guys who attended who each, independently and with no prior communication or cooperation, came to the show with a small stack of flyers that said one word in plain black: BLAH. They passed them out to everyone, mostly on the floor in the center front section, and one of them had thought to make sure the back of their flyers had instructions to hold the signs up when Geddy said "HELLO AUSTIN!".

Sure enough, right after they finished their third song (Force Ten) the lights came up and Geddy finally greeted the crowd (he actually said "Hello Texans!"), and the signs went up.

The whole band laughed at having Alex’s big joke come back to be revisited, and Geddy said “I can’t hear what you’re saying, it’s all ‘Blah blah blah’ up here!” And then they proceeded to launch into Grand Designs.

Click the links at the left to see photos of the incident, videos that caught it as it happened, and examples of the signs themselves, as well as a screenshot from Rush's Facebook page in 2019 when they share Geddy's memory of that evening.