Over the years, in more than half a dozen interviews, we’ve talked with two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Graham Nash about the old days, changing lineups and forgotten classics.
But at 82, Nash remains focused on today. His latest solo album is appropriately called “Now,” and it includes his trademark ability to mix protest music, love songs and close harmony.
Nash’s fall tour brings him to the Academy of Music in Northampton on Oct. 4, The Egg in Albany on Oct. 6, and The Flynn in Burlington on Oct. 10.
So it's a new band on this tour?
Yes, yes. Here's what's going on. I have three people playing with me, Todd Caldwell, my dear friend, who was the you know, keyboard player in Crosby Stills and Nash band, he put together this band for me, and it includes a man called Adam Minkoff. And Adam, on several songs, plays drums bass and sings at the same time, I have another guitar player with me, Zach Djanikian. He plays, acoustic guitar, you know, electric guitar, mandolin, saxophone. So with Todd Caldwell and Adam and Zach and me, it's four people.
How's it sounding to you so far?
I can't wait to play again. We just finished a five-week tour about, let me see, a week and a half ago, maybe two weeks, and I'm ready to rock again.
I read somewhere you said they were kicking your butt.
They are. They're younger than me, all of them. And I have to bring my A game. And it's great for me, because I have to really concentrate on being as good as I can possibly be.
How did you learn to play harmonica?
I've played harmonica since I was, like, 12 years old, and I love it as an expressive instrument. I think it's incredibly simple to play. You either blow or you suck, and if you blow wrong, you really suck.
Something really exciting happened to your new group, when you were in Boulder, Colorado this summer. Will you tell us the story?
We were playing in Boulder in Colorado, as you say, and about maybe five minutes before we're about to walk on stage, the electricity in the entire town went out. And it was a 7:30 show. So this was, you know, 7:30 and the promoter said, let's wait until 9 o'clock, and if it doesn't come on, you know, let's cancel the show. And 8 o'clock came: no electricity. So he said, what should we do? And I said, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll just go and sing our songs completely acoustically. There's no electricity. There was one emergency light that my mixer placed in front of us, so that was the only light. It was an emergency one on a battery, you know. And we played the entire show acoustic. And a lot of people say that it was an incredibly magical night.
How did you decide not to cancel? I mean, that's an extenuating circumstance, and not all the songs are arranged to be played acoustically, but you went forward.
That's right, we even played ‘Our House,’ which is normally on the piano, and there was no piano, no electricity, but they learned to play on their guitar, you know, right before we went on. And I wanted to play it because it had happened to me before in Santa Fe, New Mexico, several years ago, when the electricity went out and on, there was only me and Shane Fontayne playing at that point, and we did it. We didn't cancel the show. We did it acoustic. And having had the experience of it having happened before, I thought, No, we're not going to cancel. We're not going to disappoint all these people. We're not going to have to redo the date and come back, you know, after this tour is finished, to play that one date. I said, let's just do it acoustic. And we did.
How did you like the sound?
It was unbelievable, because everybody had to really listen. And maybe it was one of the only times when they weren't, you know, on their iPhones.
Somebody was because they recorded it, luckily.
Yeah, that's true, but the audience had to really listen, and we had to sing just a little louder than we normally would.
So that brings me to this question I was thinking about while listening to your new album. You know, you were in bands that really worked on complicated harmonies, and I was wondering how, when you're the lead singer when you're on solo tour, making a solo album, how do you decide how to approach the vocals and where your voice will be?
Three-part harmony is very natural for me. I've been doing it most of my life. I wanted to have singers with me that were really excellent singers, and Adam and Zach are great singers. And between me doing the melody and them doing the harmonies, or we would, we would switch on certain songs where I would take the top harmony and one of them would do the melody, but they're really brilliant at what they do, and I'm very glad.
It's been out for maybe, like, a year now. How are audiences receiving the new album?
Pretty well. They know that I'm going to play songs that they want to hear. I know they want to hear ‘Immigration Man” and, you know, ‘Military Madness’ and ‘Our House’ and ‘Teach,’ I know that, and I want my audience to know two things. One, I want to be there. I'm not going to do it half-assed. I'm not going to phone it in. I'm going to sing those songs with the same passion I had when I wrote them. Obviously, my, fans know that I might sing a song that was written that morning, which I've done occasionally, and they know that I'm going to sing a couple of songs from the new album.
So you have this famous story about writing ‘Just A Song’ in the amount of time before you had to catch a flight on a bet, basically. Has the songwriting process gotten easier harder over the years? How does it come to you these days?
It's both easy and difficult. I wrote ‘Just A Song Before I Go’ in an hour. I wrote ‘Our House; in an hour, but it took me four years to write ‘Cathedral,’ because when you're talking about people's religion, you better make sure that every single word is correct, and it took me a while to get the words exactly right. I didn't want to piss anybody off. I didn't want to upset anybody, but I wanted them to know that many, many people have died over the ages because of religion, and once again, I know that religion plays a great part in people's lives. I'm not particularly a fan of organized religion myself. I do pray to the to the to the universe every single night, but I wanted to make sure that the ‘Cathedral’ words were really right, and that's why it took me so long.
Was the music part of that complicated? It's a pretty progressive tune.
True, but that's what came out. I’m a musician. That's the way it turned out.
You were, in recent years, as you said, touring with Shane Fontayne, and you guys were writing a lot of stuff together. Are you working on new songs with the current group?
I haven't started, but I do have several of their changes that they sent to me that are very interesting changes, and I'm working on them in my mind.
So I was hearing your song ‘Chicago’ a lot this summer, because the Democratic Convention, obviously, was back there. How are you feeling about the election these days?
Well, I was incredibly, incredibly depressed when Biden debated Trump. I realized that he was old and that he was, you know, losing his thread, and I was very disappointed, as many Democrats were. When Joe Biden decided not to run in the race and Kamala Harris took over, it changed my life in a very joyous, great, happy way. I feel much better about the election. I do believe that that what Kamala and Tim Walz are bringing to what they want to do, it's much more positive. It's much more dedicated to people. It's not like the Republicans that seems to be darker and they seem to want us to go backward, and they're certainly bitter and they're certainly angry, and that's their campaign. And it's not the America that they're talking about. Donald Trump is always talking that America is failing. It's low. People are laughing at us, and it's just not true. And I really hopeful that Kamala and Tim win.
You know, you've never made a secret about your politics and the things that you stand for. That's been your whole career, but I was wondering what you think about the rhetoric around immigration in this election. After all, you know, you're an immigrant to the U.S., and then you became a citizen. You've written about this experience ,too. What do you think about when you hear the way they're talking about the Springfield, Ohio situation, for example?
Well, that's, that's insane. You know, when Trump first said that, you know that all the Haitians are eating dogs, I mean, that's typical of him. It's lying. It's racist. It's really, really awful. The fact is that we're all immigrants. Probably every single one of us is an immigrant. We didn't own this country. We all came from different parts of the world, and I know that we have to have a sensible immigration policy that will allow people to come and emigrate to the United States legally. I know it's a very difficult situation. I don't think there are millions of people from insane asylums and prisons coming across our border. There may be some, of course, but it's not like Trump says, and I believe that we're all immigrants, and this country is made of immigrants.
So to bring it back to music, there's a new vinyl release coming of, I think, the second CSNY show. It was really early on, right?
Yep, it was, I think, a couple of days after Woodstock. Woodstock was only the second time that we'd ever played in front of people. And the new record, which is CSNY at the Fillmore East in 1969, is incredibly early in our experience as a band. I mean, it may have been only the fifth, the fourth or fifth time that we'd ever played in front of people. And I love the album. In listening and putting the album together with Stephen and Neil, obviously we dedicated it to David because of his passing, I realized how, you know, in listening to particularly the acoustic set, just how much we loved each other and just how much we loved the music that we were making. There were times that, and people will be able to hear it if they listen closely, that if one of us hit a note that was strange or beautiful, we would laugh in the middle of the song. I mean, it was very, very loose. And of course, when we added Neil and played electric, it was monstrous.
I listened to ‘Helplessly Hoping.” which was the first single released, and there is a break for some laughter in the middle of it, which, if you know the song, it kind of stops you short a little bit.
Yeah, well, that's how we that's how we were. It was incredibly lose at the very beginning.
So I know you've told this story before, but never on our show. Can you tell the Neil Young more barn story?
Sure,I was visiting Neil up at his ranch to south of San Francisco. He had a lake with a lot of black, red winged blackbirds that on lake. And Neil said, Hey, do you want to listen to my new album ‘Harvest?’ And I said, sure. And I thought we were going to go into his studio and blast it out, you know. Uh-uh. This is Neil. He said, Get in the boat. I said, What? He said, Get in the rowboat. So I got in the rowboat. And I thought he may have brought a little listening device or something, so that we hear it the way people are going to hear it if they take it to the beach, you know. What had happened is that he had microphoned his entire barn on one side as a left speaker, and his entire house as the right speaker. We rode out into the middle of the lake. He blasted it out. It was phenomenal. We got to the end of the album, we rode back to the edge of the lake, and Elliot Mazer came down and said to Neil, so Neil, how was it? And Neil shouted ‘More barn!’
Favorite Neil Young song?
‘After The Gold Rush.’
Tough to beat that.
I mean, he has written many beautiful songs, of course. I remember going down in London when he played with the London Symphony on ‘A Man Needs a Maid.’ Yeah, Neil. Neil is a great songwriter. He really is, but I think my favorite Neil Young song will be ‘After The Gold Rush.’
I like the version, and there are a few versions that exist, you and Crosby did it, of course, but ‘Taken At All’ with the just the four of you, what are your memories of recording that?
I played them the song. David and I had sung the song a couple of times, and it's the first take that we did. And I’m with Neil: I really think that when you played a song 20 times, you're not emoting the same way as you do the first couple of times. I'm a big fan of early takes, and that's a perfect example.
Neil Young and Stephen Stills are doing a show this month with John Mayer in California, and you and David sang on ‘Born and Raised,’ which was John Mayer's kind of Laurel Canyon album of about a decade ago. So just wondering, you know, obviously David's gone now. Is there any way of you and Steven and Neil doing anything together new?
David was as Neil said once the heartbeat of the band, and it would be…I don't think it'll ever happen, because, you know, if Stephen and Neil and I did anything, people would be expecting David to be there, or singing songs that he wrote, and it just wouldn't be the same. And I think it's really over. When David passed, I think me and Stephen and Neil realized that it was all over.
Are you talking to them pretty regularly still?
I talk to Stephen more than I talked to Neil, but yeah, we are in contact pretty regularly.
What have you made in recent years of this Joni Mitchell renaissance? It's been great having her back.
I was delighted when I heard the Newport Folk Festival performance, and I you know, several months ago, Joni was given the Gershwin Award in Washington, D.C.. And that was the last time I saw her. I think we have to give a shoutout to Brandi Carlisle, you know, for helping her do that. But I'm delighted. I mean, I know that Joni's range, you know, she used to be able to sing very, very high. Her range has diminished, but her phrasing is unbelievable, even today.
Who's going to play you in the Joni Mitchell movie?
I don't know. A lot of people think that Zach Djanikian, who plays with me, looks very much like me. He's been approached a couple of times, you know? And I told Cameron Crowe, of course, who's directing and making the movie and writing the book on Joni right now, I told Cameron about Zach, and we'll see. I don't know. I mean, he's obviously got to have to be English. I don't know who it's going to be. I think I know who's going to play Joni when she's older. And I believe between you and I it'll be Meryl Streep.
If the signal's carrying to Northwest Connecticut, she can confirm or deny, maybe. The Graham Nash of that era, you had a huge beard and long hair. There's a BBC Session of you and David that is just a remarkable piece of period culture to look at.
I love that show. David and I were incredibly high, as a matter of fact. But I love that show. I love how casual it is. I love how good it is. I love how David and I are singing together. I think a lot of people, if they want to see me and David at some of our finest moments, that would be it. That BBC program is great.
We've talked about this before, but things ended not great, obviously, and then you had been getting back in touch just before he died. But now that there's some distance, how do you think about the CSN legacy?
Life is full of choices. So I choose only to remember the good times that me and David had, the good music that we made together. The legacy of CSN, I think all the music that we made will be played into the future. I'd be very interested to know what people in 100 years think about this time in the late 60s, early 70s, you know, in Laurel Canyon, particularly. I'd be very interested to hear music critics of that era. I won't be alive, of course, but it would be nice to hear what they had to say. I think it was a very important time in music.
You know, part of it is just the whatever the current generation is keeping it alive the way you and Allan Clarke have the song ‘Buddy's Back,’ which is reminiscent of the Buddy Holly and kind of the Everly Brothers sound that was so influential to you. And that's a song from 2023 that immediately brings that era to mind.
Yes, it does. I mean, we were The Hollies. He was very important to us, because in many ways, he was one of us. He wore a suit and tie, he had glasses. He didn't have his hair slicked back like Elvis. He didn't shake his ass like Elvis. He was one of us, and he was one of the only bands, I think, where they played their own music. So Buddy, and particularly the Everly Brothers, were very important to us. I have three stories about the Everly Brothers if you're interested at all.
Please.
In 1962 they played the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, and Allan Clarke and I decided that not only would we go to the show, but if somehow we could meet the Everly Brothers… Now, then when we got to the show, I realized that there was no bus outside the show, so they weren't going to pack up and go to another city that night, which is what happens when you tour. I also realized that the best hotel in town, the Midland Hotel, was only 100 yards away from the Free Trade Hall where they played. So Allan Clarke and I, on a rainy night, stood outside the Midland Hotel hoping against hope that they were staying there and that they hadn't already gone to bed. We waited until about 1:20 in the morning. I'll never forget it. We had missed our last bus home, so we knew we had to walk 9 miles home in the rain. We didn't care. All of a sudden, round the corner came Don and Phil and they talked to me and Allan Clarke for what seemed like 20 minutes. I'm sure it was only 2 minutes, you know, but they called us by our names. They said, Hey, Allan, how are you doing? Graham, how are you doing? We told him that we sang like, we tried to be like them, and one day we would want to make records. And that's exactly what we did.
Now, then let's go to 1966. The Hollies had had several hits by that time. We're playing at the London Palladium in London, and I think Pete Seeger was the headliner, and we were supporting him. After the soundcheck, the phone rang backstage, and our road manager, Rod Shields picked it up. He said, Yeah, uh huh, yeah. He's right here. Hold on. And he hands me the phone, and it's still connected. Of course, it wasn't an iPhone. And I said, who is it? He goes, it's Phil Everly. I said, hey Rod, that's not nice. You can't do that to me. He said, It's Phil Everly. I pick up the phone. I go, Hello. He goes, Hey, Graham, it's Phil Everly. And of course, I recognized his voice, and I said, Oh, OK, great. This is really wonderful to talk to you, but why are you calling? He said, Well, Don, and I are in town. We're going to do an album called ‘Two Yanks in England.’ Do the Hollies have any songs that they haven't recorded yet? And we had, we had a dozen songs, you know? He said, Well, come down to the hotel and playing for us. So we went, me and Tony and Allan and Bobby, I think, went down to the Ritz Hotel in London, went up to their suite, and the first thing I said to Don was, Hey, do me a favor. Show me how you play the beginning of ‘Bye, Bye Love.’ And he played it for me, and it was, it was a great meeting. We played them the songs, they wanted to do six of them. We said, OK, can we come to the session? He said, Yeah. I said, when is it? He said, Tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. I said, Holy Toledo. So we went down to the to the studio, and part of the backup band was Reggie Dwight on piano, who obviously became Elton John. John Paul Jones on bass and Jimmy Page on guitar.
The future Zeppelin.
Now let's go to 1992 in Toledo, Ohio. CSN are playing at a place. My phone rings in the hotel room. It's Phil. Again, Phil, Why are you calling? He says, Well, you know where you're playing tomorrow? I said, Yeah. He said, Well, we're playing tonight. Do you want to come to the show? Great. Me and my friend Mac Holbert got on the bus with the Everly brothers. We went to the show, and at 5 o'clock, we're eating rubber chicken like everybody does on tour. And Don looks at me and he goes, OK, what are you going to sing with us? I'm dying inside. I can't believe that this might happen. It's been my dream all my life to sing. I learned how to sing the top harmony because I had to sing, you know. So I said, I'm trying to be cool, I go, I like ‘So Sad.’ I think that's a beautiful song. I think we can do that. So Phil looks him, and he goes, OK, I'll take Don's part, and Don will go underneath, you take my part. And I said, why? He said, Well, I have the high part. I said, Phil, look who you're talking to. I learned how to sing high because I sang on top of both of you. Stay exactly where you are. I will sing on top of both of you. And he said, Wow, that's amazing. So Don gets a guitar and he goes in, E, Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. I said, Yeah, that's a great key. I have a cassette of me singing ‘So Sad’ three-part with the Everly Brothers that knocks me on my ass to this day. You gotta believe that I wanted to pay them back for what their music had done for me over the years, and I wanted to be good. And this cassette really shows how good we were.
Well, you know, I have to say the same way that the Everlys were so generous with you, you have been really generous with us over the years. I really appreciate all the interviews that you've given and answered all my arcane questions, sometimes, and I'm really excited that you're going to be back in town.
Thank you very much, Ian, and thanks to all the listeners on WAMC.
