A little less than two weeks after he announced he tested positive for coronavirus; folk singer-songwriter Tom Rush is officially on the mend. He told Jim Braude on WGBH News’ Greater Boston on Wednesday that his case was relatively mild.
“I’m virus-free. I’m still in quarantine, but I am now immune,” Rush said. “In my case, I was feeling crummy for about 4 or 5 days, lots of naps and then it started getting better… But basically, I’m in great shape.”
And like many other musicians, Rush said he’s not letting quarantine stop him from interacting with his fans.
“I’m going to try to set up an online weekly get-together with anybody that wants.… I’m hoping that I will sing you a song — it might be a new one … it might be an old one. I’ll answer some questions if I know the answers,” he said.
What Rush said he's most looking forward to, though, is sharing his stories from the road.
“The story part is what I think could be fun. I’m working on a book that is about being a traveling musician and part of this is going to be things that have happened. I’ve got two pages of story titles, things like, ‘Clint Eastwood and the hashish brownie,’” he explained. “I’m going to send out on a weekly basis this list of stories and I’m going to work out a way to let people vote for which story they want.”
Rush also took a moment to remember one of several musicians who died after testing positive for coronavirus recently — Grammy award-winning folk singer and songwriter, John Prine. Rush said he will remember Prine best for his poignant writing.
“It was just his writing was so real, so true. ‘The Angel From Montgomery,’ starts out with ‘I am an old woman named after my mother’ and your first reaction for about a tenth of a second is ‘you’re not an old woman,’ but then you get totally drawn in to the picture he’s painting. A wonderful, wonderful empathetic writer,” he said.
