Not everybody sees turning 60 as cause for celebrating big time, but Tom Rush sure does. And he's having his party on St. Thomas.
That might not seem so remarkable save for the facts that Rush lives in Wyoming and that 40 resort rooms worth of friends, fans and fellow musicians will be joining in the celebration – for a whole week.
Now, if you don't know who Tom Rush is, you're probably saying, "Duh?"
But to anybody who was into the coffeehouse folk music scene in the 1960s, especially in the Boston area, Rush is something of an icon.
He was performing and recording songs by Joni Mitchell, like "Urge for Going" and "The Circle Game," before the world knew who Joni Mitchell was. And songs by James Taylor and Jackson Browne. And songs by old-time blues artists from the road houses of the South. And songs of his own composing.
He's still performing them – to still delighted audiences not entirely dating from the '60s.
This week, he was in Sarasota, Fla., one night, playing to a full house of about 500 folks, and in Atlanta the next, at Blind Willie's, a blues club that fits folk music in once a week. On Feb. 2, he'll perform in St. Louis's Sheldon Concert Hall, and the next day he'll fly to St. Thomas for his Feb. 3-10 "birthday bash" at the Wyndham Sugar Bay Beach Resort.
In addition to nightly "hootenannies, jam sessions and concerts," the birthday bash schedule includes guitar workshops and other music-related events, as well as fun in the sun. Part of the proceeds will benefit National Public Radio station WUMB, Boston Folk Radio at the University of Massachusetts, one of the country's top folk and acoustic music stations.
Why St. Thomas? His web site message, "I'm looking forward to seeing everyone on the sandy beaches of Saint Tom," suggests the name might have had something to do with it. Not so, he says.
Nor does the fact that he visited St. Croix several times as a child, staying with his parents and a school chum at a small hotel in Frederiksted. Nor that, in his late 20s, when his doctor told him he was working too hard and needed a break, he spent a couple of weeks on St. Croix again, on his own. That was over 30 years ago; he hasn't been back since, and he has never been to St. Thomas before.
Friend and fellow guitar player Dan Betty came up with the idea of mixing musical events and travel. "We kicked around ideas," Rush says. "I liked hiring a train, but you can only get about 50 people into a car. We settled on going to an island, and St. Thomas had a lot going for it." He began promoting the trip last August via his web page and messages to fans who had signed up at concerts to be on his e-mail list.
Now, the bad news for V.I. folk music fans: It's all private, strictly for those who booked the birthday bash week at Sugar Bay.
If he had it to do over again, Rush says, he would probably have included one ticketed concert open to the public – after the excursion week, if not a part of it.
Rush grew up in New Hampshire and went to Harvard University, where, despite a love of marine biology, he majored in English literature. Soon a fixture at Club 47, the "flagship of the coffeehouse fleet," he had two record albums out by the time he graduated, and his future in music looked good. "There's no clear career path for an English major," he quips. "The recruiters are not exactly lining up at your door. So I decided, ‘I'll try it [music] for a while until I decide what I really want to do.' Thirty-nine years later, my mom still wonders when I'm going to get a job."
He toured with his five-member band in the '70s then retreated for a while to the New Hampshire farm he still owns (but is selling). Returning to the concert scene in 1981, he tried something risky – performing not in the intimate setting of a coffeeshop or club but in the cavernous expanse of Boston's prestigious Symphony Hall. The concert was a sellout.
A year later, again in Symphony Hall, he did his first "Club 47 Concert" – a forum that caught on and continues today, giving emerging talent the opportunity to perform with established artists. Among the early "unknowns" sharing the stage with such stars as Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris were Alison Krauss and Mark O'Connor.
Recent Club 47 competition winner Christopher Williams is among the featured artists at the birthday bash. Also performing will be Jonathon Edwards, who lives on St. Croix and commutes to the mainland to tour, Patti Larkin and Fritz Richmond. Rush will do one solo show and take part in the Club 47 concert another night.
At 59, Rush has a low-key yet charismatic presence. He performs standing firmly on both feet, alternating among two custom Epiphone Texas guitars and another handmade by Don Musser. His Sarasota concert is in a theater where "Oklahoma" is in rehearsal. The set – a faux farmhouse and painted prairie sky – becomes the setting for his show, a blend of personal anecdotes, one-liners and song. His husky voice does justice to the "gotcha" lyrics – "I know the heart has reasons that reason cannot know," "His lips were writing lines I could not read," "A good man'll get ya home before your man knows you're gone," and Joni Mitchell's "We're captive on the carousal of time." The crowd loves it all.
He narrates, rather than sings, the last song of his first set, a blues ballad about a lover leaving on the Panama Limited that features complex guitar work imitating train sounds. He's nearly done when he breaks a string. "And so she left him," he quips, lowering the guitar. But when he comes back for the second set, his first order of business is to "let you know how the story ends," as he finishes the train song.
His latest CD, released 16 months ago on the Columbia/Legacy label, is "The Very Best of Tom Rush: No Regrets." Sixteen of the 17 tracks are remastered recordings dating from 1962. The 17th is "River Song," which he wrote for the album about his recently adopted home in Moose, Wyo., in Grand Teton National Park.
"I started out with traditional folk tunes, mongrelizing existing tunes," he says. "I don't think in terms of ‘my songs' or ‘their songs.' What matters is they're good songs."
He thinks the prospects of a "Very Best," Part 2, album are good, although there are no immediate plans to produce one. And he thinks he might come back to the Virgin Islands "to perform for folks here, if there's interest."
Anyone wanting to express an opinion on that can contact him via e-mail at mail@tomrush.com.
