Remembering an ANR Smokefree Hero
Lewis McTush brought to light a simple truth: the blues cannot survive without the people who play it. And the people who play it were being slowly, quietly poisoned.
Known to everyone in the music world fondly as “Mr. McTush,” he spent years as a fixture in Atlanta’s entertainment industry, working in music promotion and building deep roots in the blues community. He watched musicians night after night take the stage in smoke-filled clubs and bars, breathing in clouds of secondhand smoke as the price of doing their life’s work. He watched gifted artists get sick. He watched careers cut short. And eventually, he decided he wasn’t going to watch anymore.
He was a proud member of the Atlanta Blues Society, an organization he helped steer toward a bold stance: it would only hold its monthly events in smokefree venues. It was a quiet but powerful declaration that protecting musicians wasn’t optional; it was a precondition for everything else.
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