Biography

TOM RUSH
"Celebrates 50 Years of Music"

The master folk performer and song-finder marks his half-century career with live concert CD and accompanying DVD featuring his classic repertoire and musical guests David Bromberg, Jonathan Edwards and others!

Since Tom Rush’s 1962 debut as an unknown folk-blues musician on the Boston/Cambridge music scene, he has established himself as a consummate performer and singer-songwriter well-known for his “golden ears” in discovering new talent (he was the first to record songs by then-unknowns James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and Joni Mitchell).

To mark his five-decade career anniversary, Tom chose to revive his much missed annual “Club 47 Series” (named after the Boston coffeehouse that was the city’s early folk HQ). He organized a holiday concert at Boston Symphony Hall last December, playing his own set and hosting old friends (fellow Appleseed artists David Bromberg and Jonathan Edwards, Buskin & Batteau) and new (Dom Flemons of the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops string band) as featured frontmen and as backing musicians for himself and each other. .

The highlights of this historic and delightful concert at now available on Tom’s new live CD, Celebrates 50 Years of Music, which is accompanied by a DVD with bonus tracks. On the 13-song CD, Tom displays his intimate, conversational baritone vocals, adept guitar-work, relaxed charm and droll humor in a program encompassing all phases of his career – the folk-blues of “Drop Down Mama,” a rocking “Who Do You Love,” his best-known composition, “No Regrets,” the definitive version of Joni Mitchell’s “Urge for Going,” and recent original “Hot Tonight,” among other signature songs.

Tom is backed by a stellar house band that includes many of his guests when they’re not in the spotlight themselves. David Bromberg steps out front on the acoustic “Statesboro Blues.” Jonathan Edwards contributes a heartfelt rendition of the ’60s anthem, “Get Together,” and New England-based folk veterans Buskin & Batteau perform the delicate “Lancelot’s Song (Guinevere).” The “new guy,” singer and multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons, makes himself at home on the old-timey “Your Baby Ain’t Sweet Like Mine.”

Performers in the house band besides the guest artists include Dean Adrien (harmony vocals) and Eric Lilljequist (acoustic guitar, harmony vocals) from the late '60s/early '70s Boston-based band Orphan, often opening for or performing with TOm back in the day; Tom's frequent touring accompanist Joe Mennonna on sax and piano, Tom's long-ago touring partner and accompanist Trevor Veitch on electric guitar, Paul Guzzone on bass and Marshall Rosenberg.

(Sorry, but the DVD is not being serviced to radio.)