Gordon Smith, Linda Hamilton, Mike Sword, Angie Townsend RIP, Steve Brown.
The 12th RUSHfest Scotland will take place in Glasgow next year and tickets will soon become available for what is sure to be a weekend celebrating the best rock band and music ever to grace this planet!
Quite simply, this fan convention will pay homage to a unique talent.
Whether you call it rock, metal, prog, progressive metal, Canadian lullabies, or whatever pigeon-hole tickles your fancy, the three guys from Toronto have created a back catalogue second to none.
Their incredible musical repertoire, forever challenging and never standing stylistically still, combined with lyrics that dig deeper than most of their peers, just doesn’t get boring. In fact, as time goes by it demands more and more of your attention.
The dates to put in your diary are 15, 16 and 17 May 2026.
Most of the events will be hosted by the Drygate Brewery, Glasgow with its incredible selection of beers and an amazing restaurant, just five minutes’ walk from the heart of the city. Tickets here are very limited and a sell-out is assured.
On Saturday evening, the main event will, for the first time, take place in the iconic and majestic Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow..
It is without doubt one of, if not the best venues in Europe. Almost every major artist has played here on their way to superstardom, and many return there even when they’ve reached the top.
The Saturday night will feature 90-minute sets from two of the UK’s top tribute bands:
• Moving Pictures (Rush tribute)
• MacFloyd (Pink Floyd tribute)
MacFloyd are regulars on the theatre circuit and festival headliners, complete with a laser show and the Floyd circular projections.
Moving Pictures’ trajectory has been nothing short of stellar. Regularly touring the UK playing theatres and O2 Academy venues, they’ve also starred at Rush fan conventions in Europe, Brazil and Canada — including Massey Hall on 1 August 2025.
RUSHfest Scotland was founded by Moving Pictures guitarist and manager Steve Brown.
His journey began with a call in 2013 from Rush Eucon organiser Woody to book Moving Pictures for the fan event in 2014. Eucon, at that time, had taken place mostly in England but occasionally in Scotland.
Steve suggested they hold Eucon in Scotland in 2014 to save travel and hotel expenses because two out of the three band members stay north of the border. Woody rejected the idea because of the high travel expenses for English fans.
This sparked the lightbulb moment for Steve and the seeds for RUSHfest Scotland were sown.
Steve recruited long-time friend and Rush fan Mike Sword, and recent online friend and avid Rush supporter Gordon Smith, to help with the organising and practicalities.
Bands were booked and the first event took place at the iconic Dreadnought Rock Club in Bathgate on Saturday 17 May 2014.
Rush — in particular Alex Lifeson’s guitar — had been a major influence in Steve’s musical world since he first heard them while at Stirling High School.
He borrowed a few “heavy” albums from a friend’s big brother including:
• AC/DC Back in Black
• Black Sabbath Greatest Hits
• Led Zeppelin Volume Four
• Rush 2112 and A Farewell to Kings
Listening to those albums, the Rush ones in particular, was Steve’s baptism of fire. Truly life-changing.
Rush were soon due to play in Edinburgh, at the notorious Ingliston Centre, a cattle market during the day, with acoustics to suit!
But for a 16-year-old lad from a council scheme in Stirling it was mind-blowing.
Howard Ungerleider, Rush’s lighting director, put on a spectacular display. And watching just three guys on stage make that wondrous cacophony took his breath away.
Memories of that first show are still deeply embedded in his conscience.
It was the 24th May 1983 and thanks to setlist.fm he can call up the setlist from that night — and it was full of bangers!
Kicking off with The Spirit of Radio, Tom Sawyer and Freewill.
He found a bootleg video from the Montreal show on that tour a few weeks earlier, on the 9th of April. There was only one change in the setlist. In Montreal the band had added Chemistry after Closer to the Heart. Steve reckons it might have been dropped due to time constraints in Edinburgh.
But it didn’t spoil his night. He was hooked for life.
In the mid-1980s he formed his first band with schoolmates in Stirling, punk rockers Political Asylum.
In the summer of 1987, after returning from a European tour, Steve knew he wanted to become even more involved with music.
He took a year out from studying Chemistry at Edinburgh University to form a classic rock band, but he needed a singer/co-writer. He’d just met and befriended Angie Townsend.
Angie had already been singing for a few years. At the time she was backing vocalist for an Edinburgh band called The Big Wheel.
His girlfriend at the time, Moira Leonard, knew Angie’s then boyfriend, the aforementioned Mike Sword. A meeting in the iconic Preservation Hall in Edinburgh brought them all together. Lifelong friendships were made and the rock band Seeing Red was formed.
Mike was a rock DJ, playing the clubs around town such as Madison’s above the Playhouse — and he had a show on Radio Forth RFM 97.3 called Edinburgh Rock.
Angie had time to write songs with Steve and form the new band, which went on to record a couple of jingles for Mike Sword’s radio show.
The band had a modicum of success with TV appearances, a Marquee Club gig and an album release. But no major labels showed interest and they disbanded in 1993.
Steve then turned professional, playing the pubs, clubs, weddings and corporate function circuit around Scotland.
He still kept his hand in with original material and other songwriters — one of which, Fjaere, culminated in a week in Japan playing to an audience of 3,000 and being televised to 3 million viewers on MTV Asia.
By the time he joined forces with Angie again, she was suffering from breast cancer.
In order to support her, it was decided that all profits made from RUSHfest Scotland, including the events, merch sales and Songs for Neil albums should go to charity.
Angie chose the first charity, MacMillan Cancer Support, and over £3,100 was donated to them from the first event.
In 2012 the pair reformed Seeing Red. But only weeks after their reunion gig, Angie’s cancer was found to be terminal.
Not long after the diagnosis, Steve, who has a recording studio at home, offered to help Angie with anything she might want to do musically. Angie told him she wanted to write and record a new album, from her current, daunting perspective.
She was living outside Edinburgh at the time and Steve was in Arisaig, a small village in the Highlands on the west coast of Scotland. Angie wrote the lyrics and, with ideas for melodies, visited Steve once or twice a month.
They eventually created the full recording with a little help from some friends, including old Seeing Red bandmates.
The album Butterfly was released in 2015.
She passed in January 2016, aged only 49.
Since then, her memory has been honoured by charitable donations every year.
This year the beneficiaries were Funding Neuro, who raise money to help further research into brain cancers. This Glasgow-based charity is dear to Steve and his fellow bandmates’ hearts.
Rush drummer Neil Peart died as a result of glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, on January 7, 2020, in Santa Monica, California.
By contributing to Funding Neuro, Moving Pictures know they are honouring his memory, while also keeping Angie’s legacy alive.