Lindsay Rush promoting what she sings about -Ft. Washington (PA) Bucks Central Life

By: Craig Ostroff, Managing Editor
10/11/2007

Having grown up amidst the hustle and bustle of Northeast Philadelphia, the then-15-year-old had a hard time adjusting to her family's move to the smaller, more intimate community of New Hope.

Self-admittedly a painfully shy child, Rush found it wasn't easy to break into the ranks of peers who had known each other since grade school.

So she turned to songwriting.

"I had a really hard time fitting in," Rush said during a recent interview at a New Hope Starbucks. "You go to big school, there's a wide range of people. Here, everyone knew everyone from kindergarten.

"I was always writing. I would sit in the hallway after school writing, writing in class. If you listen to my old, old songs - some of the things from my first album and even some from before that - I can tell you what class I wrote the song in, because that's what I had to do."

It was around that time that Rush penned "Inside of the Outside," a song about feeling like an outsider, and one she still performs.

But that set the stage for what has become the direction that the 21-year-old singer-songwriter's career has taken - writing and performing music with messages and trying to give voices to those who have none.

"I always wanted to be a child psychologist," said Rush, who has written songs from the viewpoint of a child with autism, a song written from the perspective of a rape victim facing her attacker in court, and her latest addition to her myspace library, "Child With Child," about a 14-year-old who gets pregnant. "I always wanted to help people, always wanted to contribute to society. This is my way.

"I think I've always been able to tap into people's emotions and thought processes. I do research a lot for songs like that. It's what I love, to give people voices who feel they don't have one."

And Rush does more than write music with meaning. She's also promoting her causes when she performs.

A few years ago, Rush signed on with Mental Health America and its mpower program of musicians promoting mental heath. Rush conceived a tour of local elementary, middle and high schools that would be part concert, part presentation on mental health. She performed two shows last October, one at the New Hope-Solebury High School and one at the middle school, which were met with overwhelming positive reaction.

"The parents and administrators welcomed it," Rush said. "And we made sure all the kids got goodie bags with printed materials. That way, every kid would get the information they needed without anyone knowing they needed it."

Rush was aided in this endeavor by NHS High School Principal Dr. Stephen Young.

"I knew from my previous experience with Lindsay that she is a responsible person," Young said via e-mail. "I felt confident that she would deliver on any commitments made. When we discussed the possibility of a schoolwide assembly, Lindsay was well-prepared and offered to take the lead in coordinating all the arrangements. The notion of linking an important message with popular music was an approach that I thought had the promise of being successful. I gave Lindsay some preliminary tasks to complete as a test of her commitment. Lindsay met these challenges and one thing led to the next.

"I am pleased that it worked out. The assembly was a real success; our students enjoyed it."

Rush - who counts Michelle Branch and Lisa Loeb as friends and supporters in the business - recently returned from a similar tour of five schools in Gaithersburg, Md.

How successful was her time in Maryland? According to a recent blog on Rush's myspace page (www.myspace.com/lindsayrush), Oct. 5, 2007, was declared Lindsay Rush Day in the city.

"I was so honored and later found out that I am the only person in the history of Gaithersburg, Md., to be honored with his/her own day," Rush posted in the blog. "Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day walking on air."

She's back home now, and looking forward to another first, her debut at the prestigious Tin Angel in Philadelphia Oct. 13, where she will open for Josh Joplin. Showtime is 7 p.m. and tickets are available for $15 each at www.ticketweb.com.

"It's going to be a big homecoming for me, and I'm really hoping for a good crowd," she said. "I can't wait 'till I can share stories from Maryland. There will be some new merchandise, and new songs. There's a song called 'Civil War,' which is much more rock-y, but we put the cello in it. It sounds really cool."

Rush, who has already performed at venues such as World Café Live and New York City's famous The Bitter End, has a show slated for Dec. 1 at MilkBoy Coffee in Ardmore and a trip to Minneapolis next May for the Higherself Girls Expo.

In the more immediate future, Rush will be working hard to brush up her skills on the saw (yes, the saw. It's a long story, but Rush assures that it adds a sounds that is "almost ghostly, but really cool") and spending her Halloween in Salem, Mass. There's probably no better place for a history buff to spend Oct. 31, particularly one who will walk you through the streets of New Hope and eagerly tell you about the haunted room in New Hope's Logan Inn.

And through it all, Rush will continue to write and look for new, creative ways to get her music and her message out to the masses. She's working on expanding her school tours to the college level as well as to other school districts in Pennsylvania.

"The mental health school tours, as far as I know it's the first one of its kind," said Rush, who is eager to try her hand in just about every aspect of the music business at some point in her career. "I feel like I have a lot to bring to the table with this. I still do everything that singer-songwriters do - I play, I'm on myspace - I just have a little extra because I created a concept that is a vehicle ... it's like a monster truck, actually."

And as long as she keeps both eyes on the road ahead, there seems to be nowhere that Rush can't go.

"I think the fact that music has helped Lindsay find her own inner person is a powerful message for others," Young said. "If young people can find something about which they feel real passion, then they are much more likely to be constructively engaged and healthier. Lindsay's desire to share this message with others is commendable."

Rush is no longer an outsider.

The 10th-grader who had trouble making friends when she moved into the New Hope-Solebury School District now has close to 5,500 myspace friends who receive bulletins from her several times a day, on average. She's no longer the shy teenager turning to songwriting as a way to deal with the pain of loneliness, but a confident young woman looking to do her part to make sure that others know that they're not alone, and that feeling down is not the end of the world.

In fact, it just might be the beginning.

"Everyone has untapped interests and talents," Rush said. "I love the process and being able to create something that wasn't there a minute ago, being the first one ever to know it exists - whether it's good or not.

"The more involved I got with songwriting, I got addicted to it. The more I got into it, the more I wanted to make of it.

"I've always looked up to someone musically. For someone to be able to look at me the way I look at my musical influences, to see me in that light, it's such an honor. That's something that really keeps you going."