At every step in roughly six decades of making music, Rush Cleveland’s remained true to himself.
He doesn’t use a setlist, preferring instead to read the audience and go with his gut. And he’s a living encyclopedia of American music — “From Muddy to Merle and all points in between,” he likes to say. Yet he doesn’t copy any of his heroes. Rather, he mixes the blues, rock and country into a rugged, sweaty background for his tube-screaming guitar work and gravelly vocals.
“I’ve listened to everybody, and I’ve jammed along with the records, but to do anything note for note or try to sound like anybody else, I just don’t do that,” Cleveland said during a recent phone interview. “I’m just who I am. It’s serving me well.”
Cleveland and his band, a rhythm section composed of Will Quegg on drums and Gordy Sankey on bass, had a big year. The Central Iowa Blues Society inducted Cleveland into the Iowa Blues Hall of Fame with its 2023 class. And the Rush Cleveland Trio won the band portion of the Iowa Blues Challenge, earning a trip to Memphis in January to compete in the International Blues Challenge.
Cleveland grew up in Cedar Falls and entered the Marines at 17. Upon leaving the Corps in his early 20s, he spent much of the money he’d saved in the military to buy a raft of musical instruments, from guitars to harmonicas to banjos. During the 1960s folk music craze, Cleveland, like many of his hippie counterparts, worshipped Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. Cleveland recalls hanging out on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa to meet with other young musicians to swap songs.
But the folk music obsession faded when Cleveland encountered the blues music of Muddy Waters and B.B. King. From then on, he was a bluesman. He’s recorded songs every year since 1979, though some of those projects existed only on cassettes that he’s lost over the years. But all that recording has produced a staggering body of work that may intimidate new listeners.
His latest album, Gettin Into It, is a fine introduction. It opens with a track titled “I Don’t Know,” which seems to spell out his honesty-above-all approach to songwriting. “Take some words, I don’t care if they rhyme. I ain’t in no hurry, got plenty of time,” he rasps over a gloriously Crazyhorse-like overdriven guitar. The latest record follows the pattern of much of Cleveland’s output since 2015, jumping from 12-bar blues numbers such as “Five Long Years,” to the classic honky tonk of “Darlin,” to the chugging Americana of “Gunfighter.”
Cleveland, who now lives in Elgin, recently celebrated his 78th birthday with a freewheeling jam session on Nov. 11 at Octopus College Hill, a Cedar Falls music venue co-owned by husband-and-wife duo Barb Schilf and Dave Deibler. Octopus has hosted Rush Cleveland birthday jams for several years running, and Deibler organized a GoFundMe campaign that has helped Cleveland raise money to cover expenses for traveling to Memphis for the International Blues Challenge.
Deibler calls Cleveland a cornerstone of the Cedar Valley music scene and said this year’s birthday event got emotional as around a dozen musicians took turns jamming onstage and wishing Cleveland a happy birthday.
Cleveland’s showmanship remains a key part of his act. Cleveland often uses a long instrument cable to connect his guitar to his amp so he’s got plenty of slack to walk into the crowd as he plays, giving fans a close look at his nimble fretwork. And he never goes into a show with a setlist, giving each performance a sense of spontaneity and excitement. Cleveland said he won’t make a setlist for the January show in Memphis, either. Instead, he’ll treat it like any other gig, calling out the song that feels right in the moment and seeing what resonates with the audience.
“I look at who’s in the crowd, and we throw stuff out and see what they dance to and figure out what it is they like,” Cleveland said. “Then we kind of lean that way.”
The subject matter of Cleveland’s original compositions also invites the local audience into his music, Deibler said.
“He mentions streets and people and names that are familiar to us. Rush writes about Iowa,” Deibler said. “In folk music, you learn the song and you add in your characters. Rush does that.”
Cleveland represents a link to Iowa’s musical past while continuing to write songs that speak to here and now.
“Live music needs a champion, and in our community, Rush is a champion,” Deibler said.
