Newsletter

November 30, 2010

Gang,

I hope your Thanksgivings were all marvelous and that the relatives and in-laws behaved themselves as well as could be expected. It was a quiet weekend here, which was just lovely and bucolic. A flock of wild turkeys has started hanging out just outside the kitchen window. Of course they had the good sense not to show up until the day AFTER Thanksgiving.

I’m headed out for the last weekend of shows for the year, and will be trying out two (!!TWO!!) new songs. One is the kids’ song I talked about in my last missive (“The Fish Story Song”). It concerns a talking fish, and I’ll be bringing along the coloring book-with-CD I mentioned. It got good reviews from the neighborhood tykes and is now all dressed up with a cover picture by one David Jorgenson (who illustrated the Velveteen Rabbit, and many others, and happens to be a neighbor). If you’d like a sneak peek-and-listen go to our secret web page at TomRush.com/TheGreenRoom.html, which is just for folks on this mailing list. (The book is not yet available at the store at TomRush.com, but will be soon – and there’s all kinds of other good goodies there right now.)

The other song I’ll be trying out is a bit of social commentary written by my friend Josh Brackett, which addresses what I feel is an urgent issue confronting this great land of ours. I don’t want to give away too much, but the chorus goes

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with America,
I’ll tell you why times are so tough,
The poor have too much money,
And the rich don’t have enough!

It’s a rouser, and I expect the audiences will take a break from toasting each other with the Krug and Cristal and lighting their cigars with $1000 bills to join in and sing along. Come on by and lend your voice!

Thursday Dec. 2 (I don’t like to give you too much advance notice) is the Landing at Pine Point, Scarborough, ME; Friday will be Tupelo Music Hall in Londonderry NH; Saturday will be the Bull Run in Shirley, MA with Eric Lilljequist and Dean Adrien joining me for our annual reunion, and; if it’s Sunday it must be the World Café Live in Philadelphia, PA. And then I do have one more show at the new Tupelo Music Hall in White River Junction, VT (just a few miles from home) on Friday, December 17, which I’m thinking of as my very own Christmas Party for friends and neighbors – and anyone else who wants to stop in.

Stay warm, let the ones you love know you love them.

All the best,

Tom Rush

Link of the month: Renée shared this with me – the text very thought-provoking talk by Bill Moyers on the reassignment of wealth in America.

Visit the store at TomRush.com where all kinds of cool things are offered.

Gang,

I’m just coming off of a whopping 5 and a half weeks in a row at home – this hasn’t happened for a LONG time, and it’s been great. Getting to know my family better, catching up on that long to-do list (but not entirely), writing a book. A BOOK?!?! Well, sort of. It’s for kids. (I love Steve Martin’s comment upon having finished his first kids’ book: “I never knew a book could be so short!”)

I sort of accidentally wrote a kids’ song a while ago. Now, I don’t do kids’ shows or kids’ albums, so I was afraid it would die of loneliness. It dawned on me during this recent sabbatical that it could be made into a children’s book/CD combo. Since I have NO skill whatsoever as an illustrator, I thought I’d just put a verse on each page and leave some blank space for the kid to do their own pictures. My thought is to do a small run of home-made copies and give them to any of the K-4 set that we know, see how it goes over. If it’s well received we might “roll it out,” as they say, and do a proper press run. Or not. Still, it’s my first book. I’m an AUTHOR!

A starting revelation was recently served up to me by one Barry Nester. We’d had a short email exchange about Sim Webb, Casey Jones’ fireman who survived the train crash that made the engineer famous in song. Then Barry sent me a link to an article showing that Casey was, in fact, not driving his own train, the Cannonball Express, when he died. He’d brought the Cannonball into Memphis from Canton, and then agreed to take another engineer’s train, Train #1, back south since that guy had called in sick (or whatever they did before telephones). Here’s the sentence that blew my mind: “Train No.1 was known as ‘The Chicago & New Orleans Limited,’ later to become the famous “Panama Limited”.” CASEY JONES WAS DRIVING THE PANAMA LIMITED WHEN HE DIED!

There may be those among you who can receive this information with a degree of calm, but for me this unexpected confluence of my two favorite train songs is earthshaking. Thank you Barry!

I’m heading out this weekend to see if I still remember how to sing and play and all that other stuff. Friday’s Jim Thorpe, PA, which is in the throes of the annual Foliage Festival – I expect scenic grandeur and lots of it. Saturday is the Carnegie Lecture Hall in Pittsburgh, with the show being organized by the Calliope Folk Music Society. Great hall, great folks! Then off to Toronto for Sunday and Monday at Hugh’s Room, a very cool club where I get to catch up with my Canadian buddies.

Come on by or send a friend! And get that cordwood in.

All the best,

Tom Rush

Link of the Month: Here’s the Casey Jones link. Note that at the top of the piece they say he was driving the Cannonball Express in the crash, but go down to the section headed, ominously, DEATH to get the real skinny: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Jones

Visit the store at TomRush.com where all kinds of cool things are offered.

September 9, 2010

Gang,

Having got the summer wound down from vacation and the kid wound up for school I’m just all wound around. I find that “doing nothing” is far more strenuous than working, especially when it involves doing nothing with a bunch of other people who are similarly exhausted. The only thing to do is go back to work and recharge!

Tomorrow night, Friday the 10th, is Norfolk, CT, at Infinity, a simply marvelous room that I played for the first time last year. I’ve been eagerly looking forward to a return engagement ever since. An old vaudeville hall (Sam Clemens once performed there – hallowed ground indeed) that’s been lovingly restored, complete with a ghost named Vivian. I didn’t get to meet her, but dedicated a song to her just to be on the safe side. If you’re anywhere within striking distance and can mobilize I’d urge you to get there. And if you can’t get there tomorrow, get there to see SOMEBODY soon – it’s really a treat!

Saturday I’ll be in Franklin, MA at the Circle of Friends, for the first time in a LONG time – 1998 was my last visit there. I suspect that I misbehaved badly but they’ve finally forgotten about it. I don’t remember doing anything bad, but sometimes that’s a strong indication that it actually happened. In any case it will be fun to see my South Shore and 495 buddies again!

And if it’s Sunday it must be Ogunquit, ME, Jonathan’s to be exact, another of my favorite places. Great food in a great room in a great town – what’s not to love? Come on up, or over, or down east. I’ve never not had a great time at Jonathans!

The very best to you all!

Tom Rush

Quote of the Month: The best way to behave is to misbehave. Mae West