[225] Looking forward, looking back with Tom Rush

One is hard-pressed to name someone who embodies the term singer-songwriter more than Tom Rush. Armed with a guitar style that was equal parts twang and summer breeze and powerful tenor voice, Rush emerged out of the Harvard folk scene in the early 1960s, introducing the songs of emerging writers like Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and James Taylor along with his own timeless songs, such as “No Regrets,” on his early albums. His reputation was on par with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in the early 1960s, but his finest hour was 1968’s The Circle Game, which Rolling Stone magazine names as having ushered in the singer-songwriter era with its sun-dappled orchestration, killer songs and Rush’s honey smooth delivery.

Tom Rush returned to the stage in 1982 after a hiatus, hungry to find new songwriters to work with as he’d done decades before. He started a series of “Club 47 Concerts,” named for the Boston club where he started out, and shared the stage with established contemporaries and jumpstarting the careers of household names like Shawn Colvin, Nanci Griffith and Alison Krauss. Rush said these concerts were about “looking forward, looking back, one generation introducing the next.”

On his June 13 stop at Manship Theatre, Rush will join two longtime collaborators from Baton Rouge: Duke Bardwell, an masterful singer-songwriter in his own right and a member of Elvis’ band in the mid 1970s, and Casey Kelly, founding member of legendary local rock band the Greek Fountains and writer of country classics such as T.G. Sheppard’s “Somewhere Down the Line” and “Anyone Who Isn’t Me Tonight,” a No. 1 hit for Kenny Rogers. Both artists have toured with Rush throughout their careers, and this show should be a stirring homecoming and great night of song.

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