John Rush Performs “Accoustic Karaoke”
On Thursday, Apr. 26, performer John Rush made his second appearance at Wilson this year. In September, Rush performed his “Human IPod” show. This time around, he played an “Acoustic Karaoke” that involved the students of Wilson more. Students signed up to sing a song with him in front of an audience. There were four ways to perform a song: straight karaoke with Rush singing back-up, straight karaoke with Rush singing with you, audio karaoke where he played the original song in the background with the original artist’s voice playing lowly, and audio karaoke without the original artist’s voice.
When it was time for him to go to college, he decided pursue classical guitar performance. Rush began playing guitar when he was 12 and started singing when he was 21. “I’ve always wanted to be a musician,” he commented. Rush has been performing now for “a couple years.”
After college, he moved to Nashville and started performing in bars six nights a week. A booking agent approached Rush and told him he could get him booked at colleges all across America and Rush jumped at the chance.
Rush stated, “I started playing colleges and [became known as the human IPod] because I could play pretty much anything. I started doing the Human IPod show which turned into doing a bunch of shows.”
About a year and a half ago, Rush launched his “Acoustic Karaoke” show.
“I would get people up to sing with me and have fun doing it. It’s a fun show, surprisingly,” commented Rush. “It’s really fun because we get to do songs that I’d never do on my own.”
Rush enjoys the freedom of traveling and playing for different audiences, stating that “Audiences you think I wouldn’t be able to reach, I can almost always reach them. I mean, I got almost every kind of song. There’s almost no audience I can’t reach becasue I know so much music.”
The “Acoustic Karaoke” show started with Rush explaining how the show worked and a performance while students signed up to sing. A few notable performances included “99 Red Balloons”, “Someone Like You”, “Toxic”, “Exs and Ohs” and “The Lazy Song”. Rush played the guitar and sang back-up when needed, sang along, and let the students sing along with the song. He played an acoustic guitar the whole performance and used special paddles to change the sound of the guitar to match the song.
It was Rush’s first time performing the “Acoustic Karaoke” show at Wilson. Though it was his first time, he did not feel nervous.
“I don’t take myself too seriously. It’s just having a good time,” Rush said.