Everett songwriter Jason Webley would like you to meet Margaret Rucker.
Yes, that Rucker: Rucker Avenue, Rucker Hill Park, the Rucker mansion and the Rucker cemetery monument, all in Everett.
Webley, 39, is a well-traveled folk-punk musician who plans to tell Miss Rucker’s story through photos, poetry and song tonight.
“Margaret: Music inspired by the life and writings of Margaret Rucker” will be presented at 8 p.m. Friday at the Historic Everett Theatre, 2911 Colby Ave., Everett. Performers at the all-ages show include Webley, Shenandoah Davis, Jherek Bischoff, Led to Sea, Eliza Rickman, Zac Pennington, Lonesome Leash, “Chicken” John Rinaldi, and Mts. &Tunnels. Tickets, $15, will be available at the door.
Margaret Rucker was born in Everett in 1907 to Bethel and Ruby Rucker. Her father and her uncle settled in Everett in 1889 and bought the land that is now Everett’s central business district.
Margaret Rucker went to the University of Washington. She wrote poetry. She married a Navy man, Lt. Justus Rogers Armstrong. The couple had two sons, and another who died in infancy. They settled in California, where she died in 1959 at age 51.
The inspiration for tonight’s show is a scrapbook about Rucker’s life that was found about 20 years ago in a dumpster in San Francisco by “Chicken” John Rinaldi, who owned a bar where Webley played his first Bay Area show. The scrapbook was filled with photos of Margaret Rucker, along with her dark poetry and the sad newspaper clippings about her life. It included her birth certificate and her obituary.
Rinaldi, a former San Francisco mayoral candidate and founder of the Burning Man festival, will be at the Historic Everett Theatre to present the scrapbook in a slide show.
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