Tom Rush - Live At Symphony Hall (2001)

This compilation is drawn from two Tom Rush LPs of the early 1980s, both of which were, as the title here has it, recorded live at Symphony Hall in Boston. As annotator Bill DeYoung points out, Rush made an important marketing discovery nearly 20 years into his career, when he figured out that the audience for his music hadn't so much disappeared as aged and become less interested in pressing into the little clubs he was playing. Well-heeled white-collar professionals who had grown up on his brand of folk music, they were, however, amenable to the idea of spending a night out at, say, Symphony Hall (and spending more for tickets than they would have at those little clubs, too). Thus, Rush mounted a "celebration of 20 years of music" at the prestigious hall in 1981, which served as the basis for his self-released album Tom Rush: New Year, and two years later he filmed a PBS special there that also resulted in the LP Late Night Radio. That album was never transferred to CD, but about half of it is here, along with the best from the earlier Tom Rush: New Year (which has been issued in full on CD). Rush sings good songs of his own, such as "Merrimack County" and "The Dreamer," harks back to his roots in traditional music ("Wasn't That a Mighty Storm"), and recalls his penchant for pushing good songwriters who, when he discovered them, were practically unknown (Joni Mitchell's "Urge for Going," Jackson Browne's "Jamaica Say You Will"). It all makes for a good collection of folk-rock music, or rather two, combined and abridged onto a single CD here.