He’s a genre-defining musician.
Collectively, Rush’s music has racked up millions of streams across all platforms, touching the hearts and minds of a new generation of music listeners. He comes from a generation of multi-hyphenates, who don’t have labels forcing them into boxes and single lanes of influence — which is good, because there’s nothing singular about Rush or his music. Blending hip hop beats and deep cuts of Folk and Americana that you’d hear on a backwoods porch in the mountains, Rush’s sound is a direct reflection of his life experience — non-linear, inventive, expressive, and progressive — just like his life on the river.
Lessons in Folk Hop
New album available now
New videos.
“It’s refreshing to work with a guy who doesn’t think he’s a great musician but he actually is. I find his songwriting process fascinating.”
— STEVE BERLIN, 8x Grammy Award Winning Musician
Finding his voice in music.
Like all musicians, there’s always an origin story — and for Rush, it has shaped everything about his sound.
Surrounded by wilderness, Rush grew up in small community in Northern California called Forks of Salmon – a place where everyone has to generate their own electricity and the closest sizeable town is about a two-hour drive away.
No stranger to isolation, he went to a one room school house with 10 other students.
As a kid, he lived for the town hall dances. A time to see adults set down their worldly worries and concerns and let the music take them on cosmic a journey.
This meant that his early years were filled with folk music, rock-n-roll classics, and the type of music that fills wild backwoods parties – all genres that still influence him today.
Memorizing Beastie Boys — a songwriter is born.
As he got older, and began to expand his life perspective, his passion for music spanned new genres like hip hop.
Public Enemy and Wu Tang became his baseline.
At 12, he was memorizing Beastie Boys lyrics like it was his job, and not long after his own lyrics started to pour out of his pen.
As time went on, he began recording songs in high school for his friends, releasing them under the alias “Adrenaline Rush” and eventually putting out an EP alongside a family of singles.
Early 1990’s
His First Studio Album — “A Life Worth Living”
In 2016, Rush dropped the Adrenaline alias and released his first studio album “A Life Worth Living” under his given name Rush Sturges.
A nod to the personal journeying that he had done, stepping out with this new album signaled that his music was no longer just a side project to paddling and filmmaking — it was a real commitment to expression and evolution – just like progressing in sport had always been for him.
In addition to the album, Rush began working even more closely with composers to score his feature and documentary films – going on to win numerous awards for these original compositions.
2016
What’s Next – “Lessons in Folk Hop”
Deep in the studio with his team, Rush’s second studio album “Lessons in Folk Hop” is set to release in late 2023 with singles released throughout the year.
Produced by longtime friend and collaborator Rudy Slizewski and 8x Grammy winner Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, this sophomore album features guest appearances by John Craigie, Shook Twins, Blitzen Trapper, Sapient, Matthew Jo, Marv Ellis, Vaughn Sims, Tapwater and more.
A glutton for exploring new and uncertain terrain, Rush is diving even deeper sonically into his favorite influences: Hip Hop, Folk, Americana – and this humble and educational journey has earned the album’s namesake: “Lessons in Folk Hop”.
Lyrically, the album is filled with what feel like field notes for everyone out there navigating the new normal. Feeling, perhaps, that life is passing by faster than ever before. Experiencing new levels of both love and grief due the panoply of forces at play in modern society.
The song, “Riding on a High,” reminds us that energy begets energy: “I’ve seen the smallest ripples turn into tumultuous waves”.
In “Growing up,” we’re reminded that age is a state of mind, bucking up against mainstream consumerism's constant pressure to look and feel young: “a body should be used and weathered”.
While each track is filled with beauty, vulnerability, heart and reflection, what you hear in this album is an artist who has lived at the edge of living and dying. And not just as an athlete, but as one of those rare people who are courageous enough to meet life with raw resolute openness – facing the gauntlet of love, aging, and living in the fringes with a consciousness that says, “hello emotional upheaval, hello transformation, hello hardship — you’re welcome here.”
Because befriending the darkness will always lead us to the light.
The album was independently recorded and produced at Red Rockets Glare in Portland, OR.
(Words by Audrey Buchanan)
2023