Growing Up With Tom Rush

I remember vividly sitting in the Mooncusser Coffee House on Circuit Avenue in Oak Bluffs at the clumsy, awkward age of 15, spending my diminutive salary from the Chilmark Community Center on flavored caffeine drinks and seeing Tom Rush. The set would invariably end with "Wasn't That A Mighty Storm?"  Imagine my surprise when I channel surfed past WGBH the other day and discovered Tom playing " Mighty Storm" just the way he did back in Oak Bluffs, sliding a knife up and down the guitar neck, belting out the chorus-" Wasn't that a MIGHT-EE storm in the mornin-now-" Except this time, he was backed by a string of musical luminaries including Jonathon Edwards and David Bromberg, not to mention several guitars electric and acoustic, violin, mandolin, bass,drums and two keyboards.Unbeknownst to yours truly, Tom is marking 50 years of being Tom Rush. He explained that "Storm" had been adapted by the legendary Eric Von Schmidt from a recording by the Reverend Sin-Killer Griffth on Easter of 1942 in a Texas prison.

"Panama Limited", the other show ending virtuoso slide tune that I remember  from the Circuit Avenue era, had to do with two lovers, the man waiting for the train with the woman, who keeps begging him not to part. Rush would create different sounds witn the strings, at one point imitating the sound of sticking your ear on the rail to hear the train coming, another duplicating the engine slowing as it pulled into the station. Bo Diddley's classic "Who Do You Love?" was yet another Mooncusser favorite brought back to life in the 2013 concert, Tom's sardonic vocal -"I walked 47 miles of BARBED WIRE - Got a brand new house on the ROAD SIDE - Made outta RATTLESNAKE HIDE!" - and precise picking complemented by a rocking back up band, blending into a few choruses of "Hey Bo Diddley" in the mix.

The emotional high point that evoked a plethora of memories was Rush's mostly solo versions of "No Regrets" - "Rockport Sunday" - taking me back to many long solo rides down endless interstates fleeing dead relationships. The emotional content of the fragile chords and understated vocal wasn't lost on the immediate audience as well. His playing has always been measured and just about flawless, so each languorous chord seemed to hang effortlessly only to be replaced by the next, a lonely yet somehow reassuring melody, Ever since I started writing about the song two days ago, I have been unable to get it out of my head. I remember when this music was my companion,  alone in my prep school garret, or driving around aimlessly during the twelve hour stretch of weekend that was typical of my alleged radio career, evoking pleasing images of afternoon sunlight glinting on blue fall ocean, of gentle but rocky North Shore coastline, of two pairs of footprints on a broad swath of sand.

I wouldn't be fair to Tom Rush if I didn't also mention "Joshua Gone Barbados" , his Caribbean flavored blues song that also dates from the Mooncusser days, the story of a labor organizer who abandons striking sugar cane workers on the island of Saint Vincent, with its' sad, sad refrain: "Joshua gone Barbados / Just like he don't know / People on the island / They got many a sad tale to tell." Another personal favorite of mine has always been "On the Road Again", no relation to the country anthem, but an understated road hymn to traveling musicians.

I realize now that there is very little continuity in my life, so hearing Tom Rush 50 years after the fact was strangely reassuring, providing my own kind of internal unity, linking past and present. His music may not be as well known as the Beatles or Bruce Springsteen, but Tom Rush's impact on the folk music scene was just as powerful and just as lasting.