4 | APRIL 22 - 28, 2022 | WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM
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Veteran singer-songwriter Tom Rush at BrickBox Theater for an ‘annual farewell’ Richard Duckett Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
Early in 2020, veteran folk/blues musician and singer-songwriter Tom Rush announced his “First Annual Farewell Tour.” “Emphasis, ‘annual,’” Rush said during a recent telephone interview. The tour didn’t get very far. Indeed, Rush came up with a T-shirt, the “Farewell Tour, Pandemic Edition,” with all the gigs that didn’t happen crossed out (67 of them), plus the 14 that did happen in bold. (You can buy the T-shirt on www.tomrush.com.) But despite what he called “a curious couple of years,” Rush is back touring, and will perform at the BrickBox Theater at the JMAC in Worcester at 7:30 p.m. April 23 accompanied by Matt Nakoa. “I just did three out west,” said Rush, 81, who lives in Southern Maine, about some shows earlier this month in Arizona and California. “I think I’m on the fi fth annual farewell tour at this point.” In addition to the pandemic shutting down all the venues for the fi rst annual farewell tour, Rush went down with COVID. “I got the virus early on, mid-March, 2020. I do not recommend it at all. I got off lightly. It was four weeks of feeling crummy,” he said. During the pandemic he launched an online weekly series “Rockport Sundays.” Rush lived in Rockport until recently and one of his best known songs is “Rockport Sunday.” The series is still ongoing (details at www.tomrush.com). He’s also had four vaccinations, and slowly started performing live again, fi rst at private outdoor gatherings, then public events outside, and now indoors. He noted that most of the venues he’s played at have restrictions and requirements, including the wearing of masks.
In Case You Go What: Tom Rush, accompanied by Matt Nakoa When: 7:30 p.m. April 23 Where: BrickBox Theater at the Jean McDonough Arts Center, 20B Franklin Street, Worcester How much: $50 general admission. www.jmacworcester.org
Rush still enjoys performing live and in-person, and his shows have always had the reputation of Rush being amusingly engaging with stories for the audience. “The travel is the hard part ... The couple of hours I get to play on stage, that’s the fun part. They don’t call it ‘play’ for no reason,” he said. Besides which, “I learned when you tell a joke to a video camera it doesn’t laugh.” On his tours, whether farewell or otherwise, Rush has been a fairly regular visitor to Central Massachusetts. In 2018 he gave the inaugural concert to the Grafton Performing Arts Series at Apple Tree Arts’ Great Hall, One Grafton Common, in Grafton. The historic Great Hall had been renovated as an intimate 150-seat venue. He returned there for second concert in 2019. The BrickBox Theater at the JMAC in Worcester is also still a relatively new performance space, coming into play gradually since 2020 when a big opening was nixed by the pandemic. “I’m looking forward to it. I hear it’s a fabulous space,” Rush said. Rush was born in Portsmouth, N.H., and grew up in Concord, N.H. where his father was a teacher at St. Paul’s School. Rush was an English major at Harvard University and while a student he began his musical career in the early 1960s playing the Boston-area clubs including See RUSH, Page 5
Tom Rush is back touring, and will perform at the BrickBox Theater at the JMAC in Worcester. PHOTO COURTESY MICHAEL WISEMAN
