Review: In Clearwater, Graham Nash cuts deep into his fabled catalog’s folklore, and honors David Crosby, too

“I don’t know anybody who wrote songs like David Crosby. He was an amazing musician,” Graham Nash admitted to a sold-out Bilheimer Capitol Theatre on Wednesday night, introducing both movements of Crosby & Nash’s “To the Last Whale…”

At the time of his on-and-off bandmate’s death last January, the two were on the path to reconciliation. “I know we had a couple of rough years towards the end, but towards the end, we were actually getting together and emailing, voicemailing and stuff,” the 81-year-old added.

Luckily for Nash, the vast majority of his music industry friends are still alive. But with Crosby gone, Stills hardly performing anymore, and Neil Young hardly ever playing CSNY tracks at his smattering of annual gigs, he’s pretty much the gatekeeper of all the stories behind the supergroup’s body of work. But at the very least, he’s more than willing to share his wild tales.
Following a slightly strained but still sentimental warmup of “Wasted On the Way,” Nash, rocking a denim button-down and black pants, told his first story of the night, revolving around the origins of “Marrakesh Express.” While in the latter portion of his time with The Hollies, Nash took a brief vacation to Morocco, where he literally had a first-class ticket on a train from Casablanca to Marrakesh. During his ride with two American ladies who had dyed their grey hair blue, Nash got bored and headed to third class, where he came across the ducks, pigs, and chickens mentioned in the song.

“That’s where Snoop Dogg was having a party of his own,” he joked. “Lots of smoke.”

While introducing “Bus Stop”—the only Hollies number dusted off all night—Nash took the opportunity to plug his friend and fellow ex-Hollie Allan Clarke’s recent resurgence by explaining how it came to be. After having lost his voice around the turn of the century and stepping away from music, Clarke was so excited to get it back in the last five years that he asked Nash—his friend for over 75 years—to add some backing vocals on two of his comeback tracks.

“He absolutely loved them. So what does he do? He sends me two more songs,” he recalled, later adding that he appears on ten of Clarke’s new tracks.

While Nash’s tenor has aged, he still sings a good chunk of the original vocal parts heard on the classic recordings. In a recent interview with Creative Loafing, he revealed that he doesn’t engage in vocal training or lessons, and he’s completely stumped as to how an 81-year-old’s voice can still sound just as angelically distinctive as it did 50 years ago.

As for his three-piece backing band, I’ve never seen an ensemble multitask as much as this one.

Guitarist and Woodstock, New York resident Zach Djanikian would strum a mandolin on 4 Way Street track “Right Between The Eyes” and headed behind the drum kit for the based-on-a-true-story “Immigration Man,” written about Nash’s struggle at the immigration desk in Vancouver at the end of a 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tour. “They let Crosby in, they let Stephen [Stills] in, and holy shit, they let Neil Young back in,” he explained.

Adam Minkoff—whose hair and mustache make him look a bit like a young Croz from a distance—started off behind the drum kit, just to pick up the bass on “Love Of Mine,” a new track Nash wrote for his wife of four years, Amy Grantham, after an argument. He’d later hold a bass behind the drums during “Better Days,” originally written with Rita Coolidge in mind and featuring a saxophone section from Djanikian.

Keyboardist Todd Caldwell—who produced Nash’s new album Now—would differentiate between a keyboard-and-organ rig and the boss’ centerstage classroom piano, but when the time came for the organ solo on “Love The One You’re With,” he pounded (and I mean pounded) the high octave on the end of his rig.

Following a quick intermission, Nash returned to the stage by himself to perform a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” an artist he’d later express extreme joy over “coming back to life,” while also specifically shouting out her homie, Brandi Carlile.

Nash later introduced “Oh! Camil (The Winter Soldier)" with a lesson on Scott Camil, a Vietnam veteran who helped pioneer the idea of throwing medals over the White House fence. “They tried to have him killed,” Nash remembered. He then went back to friendship mode by dusting off "Wounded Bird," which was his way of telling Stephen Stills that he had his back during a tumultuous relationship with Judy Collins.
But perhaps the most memorable story—on both ends—told was the one behind Crosby-Nash’s “Southbound Train.” During a stay in England for a few gigs at the Royal Albert Hall, Bob Dylan was invited to Crosby and Nash’s hotel room, and he asked if the guys were working on any new music. Nash had recently finished writing the track and played it for Dylan, who sat in silence for a full, deafening minute, just to ask his friends to play it for him again. “I love that compliment,” he said.

Someone in the crowd even remembered the story and asked Nash to play the song again once he was finished. “Sometimes, the show isn’t up here. It’s down there,” he jabbed, playfully rolling his eyes.

The rest of Nash’s set mainly consisted of the hippie bangers he harmonized on with his supergroup confidantes. He sat at his piano for the atheist anthem “Cathedral,” (which is apparently the only song he’s ever written on acid) and strummed a transposed version of the written-on-a-whim “Just A Song Before I Go,” announcing that the family of the drug dealer who bet him $500 he couldn’t write the song had recently given him a check with the money he was owed.

If only Croz could see him now.
Setlist
Wasted On The Way
Marrakesh Express
I Used To Be a King
Military Madness
Bus Stop
Right Between The Eyes
Love Of Mine
To the Last Whale...Critical Mass/Wind on the Water
Immigration Man
Better Days
Love The One You’re With
—
Case Of You
Oh! Camil (The Winter Soldier)
Wounded Bird
Find The Cost of Freedom
Taken at All
Southbound Train
A Better Life
Prison Song
Cathedral
Just A Song Before I Go
Our House
—
Chicago
Teach Your Children

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