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Tom Rush: THE singer-songwriter |
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Written by Glenn BurnSilver
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Thursday, 25 January 2007 |
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Peter Simon
Photography for NEXTnc
Tom Rush plays his guitar at Martha’s Vineyard.
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Tom Rush is credited with ushering in the singer-songwriter era in the late 1960s. It’s ironic to some degree, because Rush dislikes songwriting.
“When I can I steal (songs), it’s much easier,” he explained with a laugh by phone from his Santa Barbara, Calif., home. “The songwriting process is painful and frustrating and I avoid it whenever possible. I don’t really write the song, I feel the song already exists and I’m just trying to figure it out and pull it in off some distant crackly radio station. … Eventually the song takes shape and reveals itself. Or it doesn’t. It reveals itself and it sucks. It’s a long, difficult and frustrating process, but once in a while it actually works.”
It worked in the 1960s anyway, and it was his 1968 album, “The Circle Game,” which featured his own material, but more importantly introduced the world to then unknowns like Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and James Taylor, who reshaped folk music for the next generation.
“The singer-songwriter thing kind of grew out of the folk scare, as Tom Paxton put it, but I don’t know if I ushered it in,” Rush said.
“The Circle Game” broke things open for Rush and, when folk shifted to folk-rock in the 1970s, he pulled together a band, soundman, truck full of gear, and at one point, five guys backing him on stage.
“I went along with the spirit of things,” Rush said with another laugh. “I became a folk rocker.”
While Mitchell, Browne and Taylor became — and remain —household names, Rush gradually shied away from the spotlight halfway through the decade.
“I decided if I didn’t drop out I was going to burnout,” he added. “I went to New Hampshire, bought a farm, got a tractor and rode it around. I had fun for a year or so and finally got back into it little by little, but at a much slower pace.”
These days, that pace remains casual. Rush releases vintage concert performances through his own label, Nightlight Recordings, and enjoys the ease of performing solo shows in smaller venues like the Rialto. But Rush is not resting on his laurels; he’s taking the modern approach to audience building, trying to drum up a new audience on MySpace (www.myspace.com/club47).
“There are bands that are getting tens of thousands of people coming to their shows without having ever putting out a record, without ever being written up in the newspaper, and without ever getting on the radio,” he said.
So you should be getting tens of thousands of people coming to your shows then?
“That hasn’t worked yet, but I’m offering free tickets to the first five people with student cards who contact me through MySpace. …
“Who knows? It just might work.”
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TO GO TO THE SHOW
Tom Rush concert
Doors 6:30 p.m., show 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, Feb. 1
Rialto Theater
228 E. 4th St., Loveland
$21, 962.2120 | Only registered users can write comments.
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