Tom Rush's Voices is the CD that fans of modern folk music and contemporary singer-songwriters have been waiting for for fifty years. Well known for his golden ear for significant new songs by little-known writers, the New England-based singer-guitarist, one of the last giants of the early '60s folk boom, was among the very first to record future standards by then-fledgling performers Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Jackson Browne on 1968's The Circle Game.
On that album, he staked his own claim as a major writer with “No Regrets,” an instant classic and subsequent chart hit in multiple genres by other artists, and one of less than two dozen top-notch Rush originals that would tantalizingly surface on his eleven studio albums. Tom's new Voices is the first album of his 55-year-plus career consisting of all Rush-written songs, ten relaxed, tenderhearted, amused and sometimes thoughtful songs that perfectly reflect Tom's wry persona. Harkening back to Rush's early '60s roots in Boston as a folk/blues interpreter are two traditional tracks, “Corina, Corina” and the opening “Elder Green,” included because “I didn't want to compromise my folksinger credentials,” Tom explains.
His own compositions are shorn of elaborate metaphors, usually evocative story-songs in everyday settings, and his warm baritone, tanned by experience, humor and melancholy, shines right through the lyrics, warming them from within.
As on Rush's previous studio album, 2009's What I Know (Appleseed, APR CD 1141), his first studio release in 35 tour-filled years (which sold 25,000 copies), his smiling, understated delivery, and exemplary skills as an acoustic guitarist are sympathetically framed by a crew of Nashville-based studio musicians helmed by musician-turned-Grammy-Award-winning producer Jim Rooney, who has worked with Nancy Griffith, John Prine and Iris DeMent, among others. Sidemen include Dobro/pedal steel ace Al Perkins (ex-Flying Burrito Brothers, Stephen Stills' Manassas, Emmylou Harris), bluegrass great Sam Bush (New Grass Revival, Bela Fleck's Flecktones) on mandolin, fiddle, country/bluegrass singers Kathy Mattea and Suzi Ragsdale (backing vocals), and Matt Nakoa (keyboards, backing vocals), a solo artist who has become a frequent Rush tour accompanist.