Tom Rush brings his ballads to the Weinberg

BY COLIN MCGUIRE Special to The News-Post

Tom Rush has been around long enough to remember when people still had CD players — and cassette players, record players … you get it.

James Taylor has cited him as inspiration, and even country legend Garth Brooks once said Rush is one of his five biggest influences.

Rush will bring his catalog to the Weinberg Center for the Arts on March 17, and, as he said recently, the crowd can expect some of the best songs he feels he’s ever written.

He talked with 72 Hours about his upcoming mini-tour, how he got his first record deal, how much the music industry has changed and his video series Rockport Sunday(s), which features him performing, sometimes with a guest. This conversation has been edited for clarity and space.

I was looking at your tour dates and it seems like you’re doing just a short run when you come through Frederick. Are there other plans to get out and play more after this?

Oh, yeah, but I don’t do tours anymore. I do “tourlets.” The run that we’re on right now, we’ll be in State College, Frederick — which is the most important one [laughs] — and Alexandria, Virginia. Then I have a whole five days off and then I have two more gigs and I have a week of recording sessions. And then I go to the Midwest. So, yeah, I’m busy.

I noticed you have a Patreon. You create weekly videos, I see.

Yeah, they’re called Rockport Sunday(s), and it’s been a lot of fun. I started when the pandemic shut down all the shows I was giving. I was kind of going through withdrawal because I couldn’t play for people, and I figured, well, I’ll do these little video clips every Sunday morning. I’ll post one, they’ll stay up for eight weeks, and you can subscribe and I’ll come visit you in your home every Sunday. It’s been a lot of fun. I’ve got a bunch of subscribers that just love it.

The music industry itself has changed so much, with the accessibility people have now to listen to their favorite artists. There was a time when artists made pretty much the most money touring and being out on the road. Now you can make just as much being at home. Can you talk a little bit about that, seeing the evolution of how the business has changed?

Well, yeah, as you say, it’s been profound. When I started out [in the 1960s], if you did not have a record deal, you did not exist. The record company was your entire connection with your audience. The record company would get you on the radio shows and get you written up in the papers and the magazines. They would get billboards put up for you. If you didn’t have a record company, you were invisible.

Now, any kid with a laptop can make music in their bedroom and post it on the internet. And most of it’s terrible, but some of it is really, really good. There are people and bands that I’ve never heard of who are selling out stadiums, because if they haven’t been on the radio, they haven’t been in the newspapers, and they’re basically an internet phenomenon.

Do you think that that’s a good thing or a bad thing? Because I could see it both ways.

I think it’s a little of both. It’s a way for people to connect with music, and I think more people are connecting with more music than ever. The problem, you know, from a working musician standpoint, is that it’s really, really hard nowadays to make a living except on the road. My Rockport Sunday(s), frankly, sustained me through the pandemic, and it was wonderful. But, you know, I was looking through my royalty statement from BMI, and if 1,000 people play one of my songs on Spotify — 1,000 people — how much do you think I should make if 1,000 people play one of my songs?

Well, I would think at least $1,000, if not more, but that’s usually not how that goes, is it?

No, I get a penny. So it’s really hard to buy a cup of coffee with that kind of interface with your audience. Somebody’s making a lot of money, but it’s not the musicians.

Yeah. Everybody kind of thinks Spotify is the devil, because they hardly pay musicians at all. Do you think having a record deal or having the record company machine behind you is as important today?

I have made two albums through a record company called Appleseed, and I liked them a lot. It’s a little label; the guy does it because he loves the music, which is kind of an oldfashioned concept. The reason I do it is that I just don’t have the staff, manpower or the inclination to clear all the publishing rights and get things manufactured and get them distributed to what’s left of the stores. So, I basically make a deal where he does that, and then I buy the CDs from him and resell them at shows and through my website.

But even that’s problematic. The big companies are not anywhere near as big as they used to be. A major hit nowadays is about 10% of the sales that it would have been 20 years ago. Having a big hit is nowhere near as big as it once was. And there are a few people making big money. It’s only a handful. The problem is … they regard the artist as kind of an expendable thing. You know, if one artist starts to falter, there’ll be another one. It’s, “Goodbye. Thanks for your five or 10 years. Good luck.”

Yeah, and as you’ve seen that evolve through the years, I’m sure it has to have been deflating. It seems like it’s harder than ever to really push through all the noise.

You’re right. And that’s another dimension to the whole thing, because there’s so much going on. On the internet, just getting anybody’s attention is a major challenge. And it’s one of the reasons, frankly, that I record those Sunday episodes. I’ve kept them down to five minutes, maybe 15 minutes tops, if I have a guest on and we’re really having a lot of fun. But they’re little, short snippets. I get emails from friends of mine saying if I’m posting an hour-long show, they don’t have an hour. But, you know, almost everybody has 10 minutes, which is why those episodes are cut down to bite-sized morsels.

Can you take us back all the way to how you broke into being a working musician?

I was going to Harvard, and I got a radio show on Harvard’s radio station. It was a 30-minute show every Tuesday night, and I had to have guests on my show. So, I would go open mics, which we called the hootenanny back then, to try to find people willing to come on my radio show. I discovered that you could get in for free if you had a guitar with you. Then I discovered you could get in for free if you had a guitar case. So, I would put a sixpack in the guitar case and head out to the hootenanny and I got caught one night. The boss said, “You got to get on stage, kid. You got in for nothing.” So, I got up and I did a short set. I was terminally nervous, but I apparently did well enough that the guy called me a couple of weeks later asked me if I’d come and be a substitute folk singer because somebody got sick. I started doing shows like that.

It was actually an interesting thing because in 1962, a guy came down the steps to one of the clubs I was playing and said, “Do you want to make an album?” I said, “Yes, sure.” I had heard that before and nothing ever came of it. But he actually showed up with his tape recorder the size of a washing machine and recorded two nights and put up an LP on this little nonexistent label that he had. It all of a sudden made me more legitimate than anybody else in town because I had an LP and nobody else did.

That didn’t last for long because pretty soon, everybody else was getting signed to real labels like Vanguard, Elektra, Prestige. Finally, I did get signed to Prestige and then moved over to Elektra and then to Columbia. It was a way to reach a lot more people than I was going to ever reach with my radio show. I think my radio show probably on a good night had an audience numbering in the dozens.

It can be a good transition from radio into music or performance, I would think. At least you’re comfortable behind a microphone.

Well, yeah, that’s true. It was a good experience. Although my nickname on the radio was “Dead Air.” Whenever I couldn’t think of anything to say, I wouldn’t say anything. To contrast that with something today, I’m going to have an accompanist with me at the show and Frederick and his name is Matt Nakoa. This guy is a monster talent. He’s one of the most talented people I’ve ever met, and that is saying something. He’s got his own career going on the side, and he is, to his credit, getting busier and busier, so I know I’m not going to have him as my accompanist for long. This guy should be playing stadiums. You know, if this was 20, 30 years ago, he would be playing stadiums. But now he’s playing clubs and he’s also got a cover band. He likes cover bands. Now, I’m trying to figure out how I can be my own cover band [laughs].

Was there ever a time where you thought maybe you wanted to do anything else rather than the hustle and bustle of the music world?

Not really, no. I love performing

Catch The Live Show

Singer-songwriters Tom Rush and Loudon Wainwright III, joined by Matt Nakoa, will bring storytelling, melancholy ballads and gritty blues to the Weinberg Center for the Arts at 8 p.m. March 17.

Tickets start at $27 and are available at weinbergcenter.org, by calling the box office at 301-600-2828, or in person at 20 W. Patrick St., Frederick. Discounts are available for students, children, military and seniors.

for people. The way I look at it these days, I play for free. I get paid to travel. I get paid very well to travel, thank you very much. But, no, seriously, I just love playing for people. And I don’t plan to stop anytime soon. I was talking to Tom Paxton about retirement, and he said, “What would you do? Sit around and play the guitar all day?” Well, yeah, I would. But now, I can get paid for it.

Speaking of that, there’s no real retirement plan for musicians. Unless you’re playing stadiums at some point in your life, but even then, it might not always work out either. Was there ever a time when you said, “Man, it’d be nice to have a fallback?” Did you want some other type of career to ensure that you would have gotten the stereotypical benefits and the retirement package and all of that?

Well, yeah, it’s true. I’m selfemployed. So, you know, I have a good boss but no retirement package. I plan to keep doing this for as long as I can do it. And if I’m being honest, I think the shows I’m doing now are the best I’ve ever done.

I know you’ve worked with a lot of people through the years. Is there anybody you have you’ve not worked with who you really want to work with?

I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that, but one of the cool things about Rockport Sunday(s) is that I’ve been having guests on, and it’s getting to where, you know, Gordon Lightfoot wants to come on the show. And that would be very nice. I’d have to go to Toronto to tape him. I would love to get some of my old colleagues.

James Taylor credits me as being a major influence and I’m friends with Jackson Browne. I’d like to get some of those guys on my Sunday show and work with them in that way.

Are there any modern-day artists you like to listen to?

You know, I’ll be honest, I don’t listen to a lot of music. I should listen to more stuff. Again, Matt Nakoa is an amazingly talented guy. He writes great songs, and he plays piano like nobody I’ve ever heard. He’s also a monster guitar player. He sings like an angel and he’s handsome, and I basically hate him [laughs].

What does the rest of 2023 look like for you? Is there a new release in the works?

Actually, Matt Nakoa has gotten tired of me talking about making a new album, so he just decided that he’s going to take charge and make it happen. So at the very end of March, early April, we’ve got a studio booked and some musicians to come in to play. I think it’ll be a very low-key production, not a lot of horn sections and backup singers and stuff, because I’ve really come to like the Sunday thing because it is very low-key. It’s just me plus a guest sometimes playing together, but it’s not big production stuff at all. It’s very casual, informal. And I kind of need to make an album that way. I’ve got some songs that I think are the best I’ve ever written. I’ve written more songs in the past 10 years than I did in the first 50 years, so I’m looking forward to that.

Then the question becomes, what do you do with it?

Yeah, OK. Recorded 12 songs. So what? People come up and say, “I don’t have the CD player.” Yeah, so what do you do with it? And I think we will be shooting video at the same time as we’re recording the audio, which gives you the option of doing some stuff online. One of the most challenging things about making an album is sequencing the songs. What songs should come first? What comes next? And how do you build the sequence of the songs? It’s kind of irrelevant, because nobody listens to an album from top to bottom anymore. They pick a couple they like the best, and that’s it. As you were pointing out, it’s a very different world.

Colin McGuire has been in and out of bands for more than 20 years and also helps produce concerts in and around Frederick. His work has appeared in Alternative Press magazine, PopMatters and 72 Hours, among other outlets. He is convinced that the difference between being in a band and being in a romantic relationship is less than minimal. Contact him at mcguire.colin@gmail.com.