Tom Rush - The Circle Game

The title owes to a Joni Mitchell composition, which is appropriate, as Rush has been one of Mitchell's best interpreters--his languorous, sweet version of "Urge for Going," (included here) case in point. This '60s folk classic is also notable for the haunting originals, particularly "No Regrets" (covered later by Emmylou Harris), with its matching of dark guitar lines and Rush's hushed baritone. --Roy Francis Kasten Amazon.com

"Urge for Going" by Tom Rush --

The girls loved him. But the most annoying, boring recording of all time is Tom Rush's "Urge for Going". How anyone can sit through it from beginning to end, without having to take a week or two break, or shooting her- or himself in the head, has always puzzled me.

If you want to yell, put that song on your player, and in no time at all you'll be yelling at Rush, "Then go, goddam*t! Go!"

He keeps singing, "I've got the urge for goin'" -- but he never does get around to leaving.

"Gad, Tom -- there's the door! USE it!"

The girls loved him.
July 8, 2008

And the Seasons They Go Round And Round

If I were to ask someone, in the year 2008, to name a male folk singer from the 1960's I would assume that if I were to get an answer to that question that the name would be Bob Dylan. And that would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Dylan was (or wanted to be) the voice of the Generation of '68 but in terms of longevity and productivity he fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other male folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Dylan, today continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review Tom Rush is one such singer/songwriter.

The following is a question that I have been posing in reviewing the work of a number of male folk singers from the 1960's and it is certainly an appropriate question to ask of Tom Rush as well. I do not know if Tom Rush, like his contemporary Bob Dylan, started out wanting to be the king of the hill among male folk singers but he certainly had some things going for him. A decent acoustic guitar but a very interesting (and strong baritone) voice to fit the lyrics of love, hope, and longing that he was singing about at the time. This was period when he was covering other artists, particularly Joni Mitchell so it is not clears to me that he had that same Dylan drive by then (1968).

As for the songs themselves. I mentioned that he covered Joni Mitchell in this period. That is represented here by a very nice version of Urge For Going that captures the wintery imaginary that Joni was trying to evoke about things back in her Canada home. And the timelessness of Circle Game, as the Generation of '68 sees another generational cycle starting, is apparent now if it was not then. The Rockport Sunday (instrumental) combined with the sadly haunting No Regrets used to get much play by this writer after some `relationship' problems didn't get thrashed out satisfactorily in the old days. This is classic Tom Rush. Get It.
June 13, 2008

Where it started, where it ends: the record that sums him up

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

When Joni Mitchell showed those lyrics to Tom Rush, she was a 23-year-old nobody. He was the most famous folk singer ever to graduate from Harvard --- the king of a category of one. But he had a record deal, and she was two years away from one. And so, when it came time for him to go into the studio again, he not only used three of Mitchell's songs, he took "The Circle Game" as the title of that 1968 record.

1968. If you're of a certain age, that year sparks so many memories. But if you're younger, just the opposite --- you're almost surely sick of hearing about "The Sixties". Well, here's a surprise. I'm of a certain age, and I published a book about my generation in 1968 --- Notes from the New Underground, if you must know --- and, believe me, I too am way over that terrible/wonderful year.

Or was, until I started listening to Tom Rush again. "The Circle Game", his first record to get a big label push, was released late in 1968, and it sure fit the mood of my gang. Rush was a baritone, his voice reassuring as oatmeal. He was as unhurried and relaxed as Leonard Cohen. But he was a folkie who was only gently electric; this was no Dylan, rocking your world at every turn. And Rush had an ear for talent. In addition to Joni Mitchell, he more or less discovered the as yet unrecorded James Taylor and Jackson Browne.

But there was something more. Tom Rush was just 27, but he seemed to... know stuff. For "The Circle Game" was a song cycle. Not trippy like "Sgt. Pepper" but oddly mature, charting the enthusiasms of youth --- love and energy and what Joni Mitchell calls the "urge for going" --- and then moving on to breaking up with a lover and leaving your parents and being okay about being alone. And maybe, given the title song, even looking down the road a few years. Or decades.

Now the decades have passed, and Tom Rush is still at it. In his 60s, he has a young daughter --- "I thought I'd have my own grandchild and cut out the middle man" --- and gives a sane number of concerts a year. He has impressive restraint. He made ten albums in the first dozen years of his career, but either the stream dried out or he became allergic to recording. No matter. New material is unimportant when we're talking about Tom Rush; the old more than suffices.

You have only to watch the video of "Remember", the novelty song that is a winner when he performs and is closing in on four million viewers on YouTube, to grasp his appeal. The guy who more or less invented the persona of the laid back singer/ songwriter --- the performer who was James Taylor before there was a James Taylor --- is an evergreen. His voice holds up. His guitar is still spare and evocative. He still has the wry wit that would go so well with a mug of coffee and a thin smoke around a campfire.

That Tom Rush still has it has to be reassuring to his aging audience. His confident survival sends the clearest possible message: "You're not getting older, you're getting better." But the coin has another face. We are, as the song says, "captive on the carousel of time." And so, when boomers consider who we were when we first heard certain songs and who we are now, we blink and ask ourselves: Why do I need glasses and wear relaxed-fit pants --- where did the years go? So every Rush concert is an irony; his fans are people who first heard his music when they were leaving home and are now the ones being left.

Tom Rush isn't flashy. He never had the hit song everyone can hum. But if you're looking for a Harvard man who knows how you feel and wouldn't mind singing your feelings for you... well, here's an overlooked boomer god tipping his hat and inviting you to settle in for a listen.
January 10, 2008

Like the Finest Bottle of Burgundy.

It is hard for me to find the perfect adjective to describe this collection. Timeless, intimate, subtle, exceptional. Slightly melancholy but never maudlin, it grows more complex with each passing year. No better example of late 60's "electric folk" is available. Perfect on a coming of winter morning. June 22, 2007

A Wistful Winter Album

I believe that this was Tom Rush's final album on Elektra, coming out around 1968. Like many of the folkies of the early sixties, Tom had concentrated on updated versions of old folk and blues songs on his own early albums, which had been on Folkways (I think) and subsequently Elektra. He eventually incorporated more rock type instrumentation on top of his own acoustic style, as many of his contemporaries had done as the sixties wore on and the original folk styles fell by the wayside. I remember local Boston radio playing Tom's rock version of the Bo Diddley song "Who Do You Love", with his deep baritone going even lower than usual. Being on Elektra, he was able to record with some of the members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (as had Bob Dylan), but that style never seemed to fit him well. By the late sixties, Tom made the crucial decision to begin recording his versions of the songs of a new breed of contemporary but lesser-known songwriters, rather than the older tunes on which he had specialized. My guess is that he took that cue from Judy Collins (also on Elektra at that time), who had had some success moving from straight folk to contemporary songs on her mid-sixties albums. For his first stab at this, he put out a single of "Urge for Going", a song by a little known songwriter, Joni Mitchell. This song got extensive play on Boston radio and became a local hit of sorts. Tom put it on his subsequent album, "The Circle Game", along with two other Joni songs, a Jackson Brown song, and a couple by another relatively unknown newcomer, James Taylor. (I don't think any of these three had put out albums of their own at that point, although Jackson may have.) Add to that two of his own very rare songs, along with a couple of other tunes and the mix became musical gold. The orchestration and sensitive arrangements, coupled with Tom's baritone, made this his best and most artistic album, before or since. While a number of artists were interested in musical experimentation after "Sgt. Pepper's" came out, this album was one of the ones whose experimentation and artistic branching out worked. It raised Tom's profile nationally and marked him as a kind of taste arbiter for new songs and songwriters. The original album had very brief orchestral links between the songs that echoed some of their melodies, and they added to what was an overall melancholy and wistfulness, marking the album as very much a "winter" album, as well as proclaiming it as more than a collection of songs, but a kind of song cycle, a whole piece. I miss those links, but I don't think that, after all this time as a CD which is still an available catalog item, that we'll ever get a re-mastered version with all of the original music. In looking back at this album, it seems like a pretty daring move for Tom, career-wise, and it pretty definitely closed the door on his folkie days. Although its orchestrations and slightly baroque stylings were never repeated, for Tom this album became the transition to the more rock based style of the seventies, a style he stuck with for much of the rest of his recording career, and many people who like Tom Rush music are surprised to find that he had an earlier folk style. This is definitely one of those albums that you need to have on your shelf so you can take it out and play it on a gray day. Whenever I hear the beginning of "Tin Angel" or the notes of "Rockport Sunday", I'm transported, not just back in time, but transported completely. And, of course, "Urge for Going" and "No Regrets" are very nearly perfect renditions, with their stately pronouncements masking the heartbreaks underneath. February 21, 2007

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