A Conversation with Tom Rush – HuffPost 8.26.13

Mike Ragogna: Celebrates Fifty Years Of Music is the album, Tom Rush is the artist and the man. Tom the artist and man, how are you?

Tom Rush: I’m doing well, how are you?

MR: I’m also doing well, thank you. You have a new album celebrating fifty years of music. I can’t believe it’s fifty years. What is all that about?

TR: I don’t know! I don’t know how that happened. It came out of nowhere.

MR: Before we get into the album can we talk about the early days, just to teach those one or two people who don’t remember when you hit the music scene?

TR: Well, I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attending Harvard and there was a very vibrant, active coffehouse folk music scene going on. I’d already decided that I loved folk music through the work of Josh White and people like Odetta and The Kingston Trio. So I got sucked right into the coffeehouse scene and pretty soon was playing on a regular basis at a couple of different clubs and neglecting my studies, needless to say. From there, I started traveling a little bit outside of the greater Boston area, a little bit further and a little bit further, and it’s been downhill ever since.

MR: [laughs] No, I’d say your popularity peaked pretty high and you’ve been maintaining that solid peak ever since, sir! Okay, you recorded this live album in Boston Symphony Hall. Did you play Boston Symphony Hall in the early days?

TR: Yes, I had. I played there several times. Back in the early eighties, I actually started a string of shows in between Christmas and New Year’s that became the prototype of The Club 47 concerts. The Club 47 was one of the main coffeehouses in the Cambridge area and kind of the flagship of the fleet. I named a concert series after them wherein I put together some well-known artists as well as some newcomers. This past December, the subject of the CD and DVD set, was one of those shows.

MR: You had some interesting guests on here. You had Jonathan Edwards, mister sunshine himself, and Buskin & Batteau, who I will always remember as Pierce Arrow, and you also had Mr. “Carolina Chocolate Drops,” Dom Flemons.

TR: Dom Flemons…and David Bromberg was there as well.

MR: And David Bromberg, another one of my favorites. These are all personal friends of yours from over the years. You’ve played with all of these people in the past, right?

TR: Yeah, Buskin & Batteau were my backup band for a while. Dom Flemons is the new face who I’d never met before, but the rest of the guys were old buddies of mine.

MR: Tom, while your music is very much rooted in the folk and singer-songwriter genres, your vocals so lend themselves to country. Over the years, were you ever encouraged to focus more on having a country career over the folk career?

TR: I’ve always loved a lot of different kinds of music. I think it’s one of the things that was hot about me in the Cambridge scene, because almost everybody else was a specialist. People did nothing but Woody Guthrie or nothing but Delta Blues or nothing but jug band music, but I did a little of this and a little of that. I’ve always loved country music but I’ve never really been inclined to try to focus on it to the exclusion of other stuff.

MR: The material on your album represents different parts of your career. “Child’s Song,” “No Regrets,” “Driving Wheel” and, of course, “Urge For Going,” perfectly represent what was going on in the singer-songwriter field. Your recordings shone a light on a lot of great up-and-coming songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, et cetera. What was that whole scene like? Did you feel, at the time, like you were introducing important talent as you were recording those songs?

TR: To tell you the truth, I was just looking for good songs. I was not thinking in terms of discovering or giving a boost to new talent, although it seems to have worked out that way. I was just looking for a track for an album. I was a couple of years overdue, I was desperate for songs, and I found some good ones by these fabulous writers.

MR: I’m imagining that over the years, you’ve crossed paths with some of them. Did they ever express their feelings about your versions?

TR: James Taylor’s been very vocal about my role in his career. Joni and Jackson, I see once in a while, and we’re friends. We don’t go bowling all the time, but we’re friendly.

MR: [laughs] “Child’s Song” by Murray McLauchlan, that song really resonated with me at the time because I discovered it as I was leaving my home. A lot of this material must resonate with you in deep ways, too, right?

TR: Oh yeah, absolutely. When I first learned “Child’s Song,” it was such an emotional song that I couldn’t perform it because I’d burst into tears halfway through. I know a lot of kids would play that song for their parents as they were out the door. Now I still play it and now all the mothers cry.

MR: [laughs] “No Regrets” is a song you’ve recorded a couple of times, but my favorite version of it was on the album Tom Rush on Columbia. That album is probably my favorite, with songs like “Indian Woman From Wichita” and “Claim On Me,” things like that, that to this day, still pop into my head. Your fans must be telling you things like this all the time, especially with songs like “Child’s Song.” At first, you couldn’t get through singing “Child’s Song” live, now imagine the people that are hearing it in the audience. They must have a very emotional reaction as well. My real question here is, do you see how your material resonates with your fans?

TR: I think so. If it wasn’t resonating, I probably wouldn’t still be in business on a pragmatic level. But yes, I think the key is to find really good sounds and then if you do them properly and just get out the way, people will respond to them.

MR: When you’re writing a song these days, is it a different process than when you first started? It’s fifty years later, so are you conscious about what may have changed in your process between then and now?

TR: I’m probably too close to it to give you a coherent answer. I don’t write anywhere near enough; I should be writing a lot more. But one of the things that I’ve learned is to not try to push the song into existence. It’s more of trying to pull the song out of the shadows. I’m not good at writing songs to order. Either they come of their own accord or they don’t.

MR: Great answer. What do you think when you look at the folk scene these days?

TR: I think there’s a very diverse singer-songwriter scene going on. To me, the word “folk” means traditional material, and there is a lot of that as well, that’s also a vibrant scene. But what most people mean when they say “folk” is the earlier singer-songwriter side of things, the acoustic singer-songwriter side of things. There’s a lot of wonderful talent out there.

MR: When you look at the young talent that are coming up, are you looking at them and going, “Hmm, if they tweaked this or that, then that song would be better?” You have fifty years behind you, you absolutely have the ability to be a mentor.

TR: Well, I wouldn’t dream of trying to coach anybody in their songwriting, but in terms of stage presentation, I think I might feel like coaching people a little bit.

MR: What is your advice to new artists?

TR: Play in front of audiences as much as you possibly can. You’ll learn more in thirty minutes in front of an audience than you will in thirty days rehearsing in a garage.

MR: Wow. That’s a song right there! That’s excellent. What do you think about your body of work when you look at it now? All these albums, classics that fans play to this day. I’m not sure if you listen to your own material, a lot of artists don’t do that.

TR: I don’t.

MR: Do you have any thoughts about your career?

TR: I wish I’d written a lot more songs. Other than that, I can’t complain too much.

MR: Yeah, although it does seem that a lot of great material came through you or came your way.

TR: Well, I think, yeah, and when I’m putting together a setlist or a song list for an album, I don’t much care who wrote the songs, I just try to do the best songs I can find and do them as well as I can, so I’m quite comfortable doing other peoples’ material.

MR: Where do you picture Tom Rush this time next year? What are your upcoming goals?

TR: Oh, I’ve got about three or four albums in mind that I’d like to make. Different projects. The fact that there are so many different ones is what’s throwing me down. I’m working on a book along with everybody else. I’ve actually been asked to write an autobiography and I keep trying, but it keeps veering off into different directions, one of which is a manual for people who’d like to be performers.

MR: Thus, advice for new artists.

TR: Exactly.

MR: All right, well I appreciate your time, Tom. Thank you very much and all the best. I really do love your material.

TR: Thank you so much.

MR: Be good, take care, have a great day.

TR: I look forward to speaking with you again in the future.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne