mason
rush
MUSICIAN & SONGWRITER | GEORGIA
On June 19, 2015, Mason was hit by a freight train in Marietta, GA. The last thing he remembers, he was listening to the Alabama Shakes on his headphones walking down the railroad track when he was thrown off into the rocks below, breaking most bones in his body and his skull. The local newspaper had initially reported “local man dies,” when in reality Mason Rush was very much alive.
After receiving brain surgery and being medically comatose for eight days, he started the steep slope to normalcy. “I had to relearn everything. Everything.” He couldn’t walk, or talk, or read or write. Worst of all, he couldn’t pluck the guitar like he used to. Through months of physical therapy and years of relearning the guitar, Mason developed as a stronger, more mature musician than most of his counterparts or his former self. His musical style emerged like a memory of a memory, deja vu, familiar yet unearthly. It is the sound of a man remembering himself and remembering the joy that music always possesses when we open ourselves to it.
Today, Mason plays in local Georgia venues, bars, and backyards, plying a new style focused on the upbeat, percussive possibilities of a guitar and a voice, playing with the fingerpicking and storytelling gusto of Bob Dylan, the deep throated drama of Nathaniel Rateliff, and with funky licks the likes of The Wood Brothers, but with a past, a path, and a sound all of his own hand.