Tom Rush

Folk music icon Tom Rush, a genial man with a dry wit and a mellow voice, will continue his “65th annual farewell tour” Saturday, October 4th at 8PM at St. Andrew’s Parish, 1 Main Street in Kent as part of the annual Music in the Nave series.

“Last year we had Livingston Taylor,” said Matt Harris, director of music for the church. “When I was looking at his dates, I saw he was performing with Tom Rush and I thought, ‘Wow, another living legend.’”

The seed was planted in Harris’ mind and after much back and forth a date was set. “I am really excited it’s happening,” said Harris. “He may be the most famous of all the people we’ve had—people who have really made a mark in the music business. It’s not often someone like this comes to Kent. He’s a really funny guy with a lot of stories to tell.”

Rush’s mellow voice and quiet delivery created hits for up-and-coming artists of the 1960s and ’70s such as Joni Mitchell—he was one of the first to record her classic, The Circle Game—Jackson Browne and James Taylor. Himself a songsmith, he debuted his greatest hit, No Regrets on The Circle Game which went on to become a folk standard recorded by Harry Belafonte, Waylon Jennings, Emmylou Harris and the Walker Brothers among others.

By embracing new songwriting talent, Rush cultivated his image as both a respected folk artist and a curator of new musical talent. According to Rolling Stone magazine, The Circle Game ushered in the singer-songwriter era and both Garth Brooks and James Taylor have cited him as a primary influence.

He was also possibly the first artist to have had an official music video when his single, No Regrets was released in 1968. The Walker Brothers cover of the song peaked at number 7 in the U.K. in 1976, cementing it as a repertoire standard.

“When he recorded No Regrets the record label paid to make a little video,” said Harris. “It was a reel-to-reel motion picture that went with the song. Some people say it was the first music video. What the record company did was something that had never happened before.”

At 84 Rush says whimsically, that he is “halfway through his career” but admits that touring, while pleasurable, gets harder. And he has somewhat changed his focus. In the 1960s he was not necessarily intent on finding a broader audience for the talent he helped launch—he just had his uncanny eye peeled for songs that would resonate with his audience.

“I wasn’t looking to discover and promote,” he said in a recent interview. “I was looking for good songs and these youngsters had good songs so I snapped them up and recorded them, it helped nudge them along.”

Then, during Covid, when everyone was locked down, he began an online video series, “Rockport Sundays,” in which he appears with contemporaries such as Tom Paxton, but “mostly with kids I had never heard of who are brilliant.”

“I just want to play for people and so we perform for 15 minutes, and the programs stay up for eight weeks,” he said. “With Rockport Sundays, I have actually switched and am more interested in helping these kids get started. With music all online, there is so much noise all the time, it’s hard to get anyone’s attention.”

Much of Rush’s music is reflective and his latest album, Garden Old, Flowers New is no exception. “It’s not about my music,” he said in the interview. “It’s actually about my daughter, about the thousands of times people (who) have seen children grow and how each time it’s new.”

He wrote all the songs on his most recent album, gathering tunes he has written over the years.

Rush was born in Portsmouth NH and was “whisked away almost immediately,” when adopted by at teacher at St. Paul’s School in Concord MA. He grew up there but attended first Groton and then Harvard.

“I went back to Portsmouth recently to see where I was born—I had never seen it before—and I found it had been turned into an old-age home,” he said dryly.

At Harvard, he had ambitions of studying marine biology but, finding the program disappointing, he took a professor’s advice to enroll in English literature. “When I graduated, I realized people weren’t lining up to pay me to read books,” he said. “I was making a little bit to get on stage and play music so decided I would do that until I grew up. I’m still playing music and never figured out what to do when I grew up.”

At the time he graduated, the coffee house scene was in full flower. His early recordings include Southern and Appalachian folk and country songs, Woody Guthrie ballads and acoustic-guitar blues. He regularly performed at Club 47 in Cambridge and the Unicorn in Boston.

“I was performing with a Cambridge singing group,” he recalled, “and it struck me at the time that there was a certain irony in Harvard students sitting around singing about how rough it was in the coal mines. We figured we could make up with sincerity for what we lacked in authenticity.”

During the 1970s he toured extensively with his band before taking some years off at his New Hampshire farm. In the 1980s, however, he was back with annual shows at Boston’s Symphony Hall and sharing the stage with well-known artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris and up-and- coming ones like Alison Krauss.

He eventually took the concerts on the road and the series continues to this day.

“I've been waiting 45 years to be an overnight sensation,” he said on his website, “and it's finally happened! A video clip of my performance of The Remember Song has ‘gone viral.’ I felt terrible at first, thinking I was being accused of being a musical equivalent of Ebola, but my children explained to me that this is a good thing.”

Tickets for his Kent performance are $35 at Eventbrite. For more information, call 860-927-3486, email office.sa.kent@gmail.com or visit the link below.