Thursday, May 11, 2000 Older Editions

Weekend Rush expected at Club 47 show

By Neil Fater

Considering she gained national recognition at age 15 with her controversial hit song Society's Child in 1967, you might think Grammy-winning musician Janis Ian has always been used to people watching her.

You'd be right.

But it turns out eyes were always on her both on stage and off.

According to Ian, because her left-wing father, a chicken farmer, attended a meeting on egg prices before she was born, the FBI watched the family throughout her childhood years.

This is a topic that Ian attacks with some anger and much wit on her new album God & the fbi.

"There's got to be (humor). It's real easy to get bitter about something like that, especially when you realize that's why your dad didn't get tenure, or your mom didn't get a job," she says. "But I think that kind of bitterness kills art."

Fortunately, Ian sees the ridiculousness in a man with shiny shoes and a tie trying to look inconspicuous on a chicken farm.

"There is a little ludicrousness to it," says Ian.

Ian plans to feature songs from God & the fbi when she appears in Andover with legendary songwriter Tom Rush this weekend.

Rush is bringing his popular, traveling Club 47 show to Andover's Collins Center this Saturday, May 13. Tickets are still available.

Rush and Ian have done about a dozen of these shows together, and typically include one or two lesser known performers on stage with them.

For the Andover show, Rush took the unusual step of holding open auditions. Out of more than 100 applicants, Rush chose a pair of up-and-coming artists, Andover High grad Frank Morey and Les Sampou.

"It's a different dynamic. We're essentially putting a team together here," says Rush. "We've been swapping tapes and we'll get together the afternoon of the show and actually rehearse. We don't overrehearse it, because we don't want to lose the working-without-a-net vibe.

"There's a lot of sponteneity, and I think if I get really good people they never let me down."

Rush's manager, Andover resident Dan Betty, says he hopes the show will help relaunch the Collins Center as a facility that can host more than just local productions.

"We'd like to prove (media experts) wrong, the the Collins Center isn't workable," says Rush.

The Club 47 show is the biggest-name show at the Collins Center in close to a decade, according to the center's caretaker.

Morey, an Andover High grad who last performed on the stage as a student, is looking forward to the show, and to getting to know both Rush and Ian.

He says he's followed Ian's advice from her column in Performing Songwriter magazine.

Ian says they'll have plenty of time to talk backstage.

Tickets are still available for the May 13 Andover show. Betty says that people can call Ticketmaster, or buy them online by clicking on the concert on the tomrush.com Web site.

Ticketmaster will stop selling tickets by phone at 3 p.m. on Friday, May 12. Any tickets remaining for the show will be sold the next day, the day of the show, May 13, at the Collins Center box office, beginning at 4 p.m.

Longtime Ian listeners may notice a different urgency to her playing. Ian recently went through surgery and says it affected both her latest album and her current playing.

"I think anytime you come close to dying, you look up one day and you go, 'Ah! I need to get my act together.' It's the cliche that every day is precious."

"It's just made me more conscious of how short a window we all have," she says. "I think it affects me more than I'm aware of, because I don't think about it that much," says Ian.