RQ Redis : Connection Refused after a successful connection - redis

Question

My redis server is running under ubuntu 16.04 and I have RQ Dashboard running to monitor the queue. The redis server has a password which I supply for the initial connection. Here's my code:
from rq import Queue, Connection, Worker
from redis import Redis
from dblogger import DbLogger
def _redisCon():
redis_host = "192.168.1.169"
redis_port = "6379"
redis_password = "SecretPassword"
return Redis(host=redis_host, port=redis_port, password=redis_password)
rcon = _redisCon()
if rcon is not None:
with Connection(rcon):
DbLogger.log("rqworker", 0, "Launching Worker", "launching an RQ Worker - default Queue")
worker = Worker(list(map(Queue, 'default'))) # this works - I see the worker registered in RQ dashboard
worker.work() # this eventually fails with the Connection error:
"""
16:28:49 RQ worker 'rq:worker:steve-imac.95379' started, version 0.12.0
16:28:49 *** Listening on default...
16:28:49 Cleaning registries for queue: default
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/redis/connection.py", line 177, in _read_from_socket
raise socket.error(SERVER_CLOSED_CONNECTION_ERROR)
OSError: Connection closed by server.
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/redis/client.py", line 668, in execute_command
return self.parse_response(connection, command_name, **options)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/redis/client.py", line 680, in parse_response
response = connection.read_response()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/redis/connection.py", line 624, in read_response
response = self._parser.read_response()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/redis/connection.py", line 284, in read_response
response = self._buffer.readline()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/redis/connection.py", line 216, in readline
self._read_from_socket()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/redis/connection.py", line 191, in _read_from_socket
(e.args,))
redis.exceptions.ConnectionError: Error while reading from socket: ('Connection closed by server.',)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/redis/connection.py", line 489, in connect
raise ConnectionError(self._error_message(e))
redis.exceptions.ConnectionError: Error 61 connecting to 192.168.1.169:6379. Connection refused.
"""
I've tried removing the password and enabling the unixsocket in the redis.conf -- neither seemed to help. This seems to be happening in some sort of timeout, since in other testing the worker actually loads a task and executes it before eventually dying with this error.