Neil Peart Drum Solo

This year, in Canada, Santa Claus is Rush. And that jingle up on the roof, that's Neil Peart doing a drum solo. (Feel free to drum along in unison with him.) I'm sure we will hear more about Christmas from Stephen as the special day gets closer.

Meanwhile, some words to throw out at you. Fiscal Cliff. Sequestration. Stephen was somewhat disappointed that just because Obama ran on the promise of raising taxes and just because he won the election, now he wants to raise taxes. On the show to talk about these problems and his book "Grand New Party," was Reihan Salam. And while they did talk money a bit, more importantly they discussed which was the Real America, Brooklyn or South Carolina.

Originally, I was going to name this post "Dreams Do Come True," but upon Googling that, I learned that it was the title of a song by Dolly Parton. Yes, Stephen's guest Dolly Parton! Upon remembering what Stephen had said when he introduced her, the part about being a song writer and writing over 3000 songs, I figured I had to come up with something that Dolly had not written a song about yet. Hopefully I succeeded.

Dolly did talk about her book, "Dream More," and she did talk about Imagination Library, and, (be still my beating heart) she and Stephen did sing a song together. Stephen played guitar also, and since he is so camera shy, it took a few takes for them to get going on the song. But is was wonderful to hear them sing together. I personally wonder if they won't end up going on tour together sometime in the future. If they do, remember, you heard it here first.

But I'm jumping ahead in the interview. Dolly Parton has 11 siblings and you probably know that Stephen has 10 siblings. What else could you expect from that than a sibling name-off. They both recited the names of their own siblings as fast as they could. I think Stephen won, but of course the winner could just be lucky enough to have siblings with shorter names. More research is needed to determine the real winner.

The two of them also discussed their families a little bit. Dolly suggested that Stephen probably was Catholic. Yes he is. She was right. She then volunteered a little bit of information about her family background and the reasoning behind her folks having so many kids.

Anyway, Stephen and Dolly sang, "Love is Like a Butterfly." As I mentioned, Stephen was a bit nervous to sing with Dolly, but she coaxed him along and they made a lovely duo.