It seems like eons ago when the prevailing
philosophy among rock ’n’ rollers echoed The Who’s “My Generation”: Hope I die
before I get old. For musical artists coming of age in the ‘60s, the majority
viewed their career as a young person’s vocation; an arena where those over 30
had no destination other than the proverbial Old Folks’ Home. These young Turks—the ones who survived—grew to realize something that jazz musicians have
long since known: music is a life blood that provides perpetual youth to those
who embrace it. At 75, David Crosby is the living
embodiment of this truth. The co-founder of seminal ‘60s group, The Byrds, and
the “C” in Crosby, Stills, Nash (and sometimes Young) is in the midst of a
late-career blossoming, writing prolifically on his own and with others, singing
the songs in a voice that defies time. His newly-released album, Lighthouse,
distills a powerful blend of soul medicine that is instantly captivating,
utterly entrancing, inviting the listener on a journey through the mind, heart,
and soul of a man who is, ironically on so many levels, younger than yesterday.
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| David Crosby Image by Henry Diltz |
Lighthouse is being
hailed by fans and critics
alike as Crosby’s best work since 1971’s If
I Could Only Remember My Name. Currently on the road to support its
release, Crosby is traveling with collaborators Michael League of Snarky Puppy fame, singer-songwriter Becca Stevens, and singer-songwriter Michelle Willis. The tour concludes on
December 15th
at The Town Hall in New York City. Calling me from his tour bus on the
afternoon following opening night, David exuded warmth, friendliness, and
youthful excitement.
Roy Abrams: How was
opening night?
David Crosby: It was fantastic! It was so exciting you couldn’t believe it, because I was just nervous as a fucking long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Try this on: The first set that we did had three songs in it that anybody had ever heard before. So, I was scared, I’ll just come right out and say it: I was scared. But what happened is, with these three other people who are all much younger and, if anything, better than I am, they are inspiring, and the music is inspiring, because it’s all stuff we really love. It was one of those sweet Atlanta audience that loves songs, and they encouraged us, and we went for it, and it was—I’m going to be completely immodest here—pretty spectacular. We were giving high fives and whooping and hollering when we came off.
RA: I’m going
to be in the audience for the last show of the tour on December 15th
in New York.
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| Image by Django Crosby |
DC: Town Hall!
That’s going to be big! I won’t be making any mistakes! Oh, boy! [laughs] It
should be pretty fantastic. I have a lot of friends who are flying in from all
over the world to come to that show.
RA: I wanted
to congratulate you on Lighthouse.
Since the album has been released, it’s been my constant companion.
DC: Oh, man,
thank you!
RA: There’s
such a warmth and honesty to this record; the term that I’ve come up with for
it is soul medicine.
DC: Soul
medicine! Cool.
RA: I’ve seen some interviews where you described
the album as a voyage, which ironically is the title of your boxed set. How
did this journey materialize?
DC: This song
rush started about three years ago with writing with my son, James Raymond, for that album Croz. Now,
normally I write a little bit, then I have a dry spell, then I write a little
bit, and have a dry spell. Back in the old days when I was a doper, I would get
maybe two or three songs a year. Now, I’ll tell you what happened. I got into a
kind of happy place. I’m happy with my family, I’m happy with the work I’m
doing—I’m happy. What’s happened is, I met Michael League through hearing
Snarky Puppy and being completely entranced with their work. I heard a song called
“Shofukan” and it
just blew my mind out my ear. So I had to get a hold of this band. Finally, we
connected up and started talking, and he invited me to come down and be on
their Family
Dinner record. I went down to New Orleans for a week and fell in love
with them because they’re my kind of people: music (is) what they do! [laughs]
RA: The
involvement of Becca Stevens and Michelle Willis came through Michael as well?
DC: Yeah.
Becca and Michelle were both on that record. The first time I heard them sing,
I went, “Oh, God!” [laughs] So, I’d fallen into a vein of the kind of music
that I love played by people who really worked … they were there because this is their life … and that’s me,
that’s where I live! I was inspired by it. It’s been a continuous run of songs.
Michael and I wrote at least half of this record together. Becca and I wrote
that last song together, which I absolutely think is some of the best lyrics I
ever wrote in my life. After last night, I think we’re probably going to do it
again! This works—we’re all extremely happy (with it).
RA: I know the
recording process only took 16 days, which to anybody who’s ever been in a studio,
that’s a mindblower.
DC: It was a
shock to me. I told Michael I needed two months and he laughed at me. He does
that a lot. He said, “We can do it in 12 days, trust me.” I said, “No freakin’
way.” So he gave me a month, and we recorded it 12 days. He brought this
wonderful engineer, Fabrice Dupont,
who got an incredible vocal sound on me and a great sound on the guitars. We
went into Fabrice’s mixing room in New York and in four days we had the thing
mixed. I never had that experience before.
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| Image by Henry Diltz |
“I run on
instinct, Michael runs on brains, and the combination worked out pretty well.”
RA: When it
came time to sequence the album, was it at all difficult to put the running
order together, or did the songs themselves suggest their placement?
DC: You know,
I run on instinct, Michael runs on brains, and the combination worked out
pretty well. We just did what felt good. In the old days, we would take nine or
ten Popsicle sticks and write the names of the songs on them and then arrange
them on a desk until it felt right. This just kind of fell out correctly. I
think the brains probably had a lot to do with it.
RA: I know
that you’re friendly with Neil
deGrasse Tyson. When I heard “The Us Below” I had the
image of the two of you sitting around, and this song coming as an inspiration
from a particular conversation.
DC: You know
what? It should be; you’re right. I am a huge fan of Tyson. He’s the voice of
science to people for whom it’s kind of a distant idea. I love him for that …
but that (song) came from Michael’s crazed and fertile mind. We go back and
forth with who writes music, who writes words. I wrote most of the music on
that one and he wrote most of the words. That’s one of the joys of the thing,
is that we both write both.
RA: What’s the
mindset that you get into when you’re writing music to someone else’s words,
such as with Marc Cohn’s “Paint You a Picture”, or
the words you wrote to Becca Stevens’ music for “By the Light of Common Day”?
DC: Well … how
do I describe it? In Marc’s case, I’ve always been an admirer of his; he’s
written some of my favorite songs. He’s my wife’s favorite writer, and she’s a
big influence on me. I love his writing. I said, “Marc, do you have a song laying
around? I’m making a record.” He said, “I got a set of words,” and said, “Oh,
please! Oh, please!” and he sent them, and I wrote that music to them. I called
him back up and said, “Hey Marc, I think I’ve got it!” He said, “Oh God, I
meant to tell you, I wrote some music to it myself!” I said, “Well, now you
have the same set of words with two sets of music. I think that’s cool, if it’s
cool with you.” He said, “Of course it’s cool with me! I can’t wait to hear
yours!” And I still haven’t heard his (version). He’s a really good lyricist
and I haven’t written any “love lost” songs hardly at all because I’ve been
with the same lady for 40 years. I haven’t lost her. But Marc’s had some
experience in that area. I think they’re beautiful words.
The one with Becca … the last verse of that
song is, I think, my favorite words writing that I’ve done in many years. I
love the whole song, I love what it says. And Becca, of course, is one of the
strangest writers on the planet and so [chuckles] that’s what you get. She and
I have written another one since then that’s called “Skytrails” … just really
pretty. That’s going to be the title of my next record, which is back with my
son (James) producing, and then the one after that, I’m going to come back to
Michael again. I’ve got two roads to travel now and I’m going to do both of
them.
RA: Moving to
the two tracks that deal with more of the social-political commentary: “Look in Their Eyes” and
“Somebody Other Than You”
… given today’s world, do you see music playing the kind of role for young
people as it did back in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, in terms of raising
social-political awareness, serving as a rallying cry of sorts?
DC: I see that
happening again. When you have egregious wrongness, when you have really bad
times, that’s when you get the really good songs about it. Neil (Young) wrote “Ohio” because America
started killing its own children. It doesn’t get worse than that … unless you
drop a nuke on your own town, or on any town. Killing your own kids … that’s
horrifying, that’s enough to generate a great song. “Look in Their Eyes” came
from a friend of ours, Marsha Wiliams, who goes on her own time to Greece, and
goes to the beach where the boats land, pulls people out of the water, wraps a
blanket around them, gives them some water, some coffee, tries to get them some
food, some medical attention, find a place for them to lay down, take them to a
shelter … that inspired me. She didn’t need to do that, she just feels
compassion for them, so she just goes there and she does it. I love that. Normally,
our job is to make you boogie, or take you on emotional voyages. Every once in
a while, we should pull out the town crier card, which is our troubadour
history, and say, “Hey it’s 11:30 and you just elected somebody pretty weird.”
We aren’t supposed to give you a steady diet of that. We’re supposed to only do
that when we see something that really calls for it. When you see a dead child
washed up on that beach, it’s pretty hard not to answer that call. They are
humans and they deserve compassion.
“When you
have egregious wrongness, when you have really bad times, that’s when you get
the really good songs about it. Neil wrote “Ohio” because America started
killing its own children. It doesn’t get worse than that.”
The other one, “Somebody Other Than You”; that’s
simple. I don’t like politicians who send our kids off to wars. They do it
because the corporations and companies call them up and tell them to do it. And
they owe the corporations and companies all the money that they got elected
with. So, that’s who’s running the country, and I don’t like it. To them, if
you lose your son, that’s just the cost of doing business. To me, you lost your
son.
RA: Moving
back to the music, in the past, you and I have discussed various guitar tunings
and how central that all is for you.
DC: [Laughs]
It is, man!
RA: Are there
any new tunings that you found during the making of this record?
DC: Just
before making this record, I found a new one; that’s the one the first two
songs are in. “Things We Do
For Love” and “The Us Below” are both in the newest of tunings that I use.
I love it because I’m not that great a guitar player, and to be able to get the
kind of inversions that the jazz guys can get because they’re more skilled, I
think that’s really a wonderful thing.
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| Image by Henry Diltz |
“This is
probably the best period I’ve ever had. It’s probably the densest, longest,
richest songwriting period of my life.”
RA: Focusing
on this period of musical vitality, how does this feel for you compared with
when you were 25?
DC: When I was
25 or 45?
RA: 25 …
DC: (At) 25,
it feels kind of like that. At 45, nooooo …. I was a little distracted
[chuckles]. It feels pretty exciting, but I’ll tell you the truth, and it
doesn’t make any sense in terms of what we know about aging: This is probably
the best period I’ve ever had. It’s probably the densest, longest, richest
songwriting period of my life.
RA: So, I guess the phrase “younger
than yesterday” might come into play here …
DC: [Laughs]
Younger than yesterday … yes! Thank you, Bob (Dylan)!
RA: Regarding
your follow-up album with James, do you have any kind of timeline with that?
DC: Next
spring. It’s probably 85-90% done.
RA: I know
that you worked with Michael McDonald
on one track.
DC: Yeah,
Michael and I wrote a song together. He and Stevie Wonder are my two favorite male
singers. I don’t think anybody can touch them. Writing with him was a joy,
absolutely a joy.
RA: You also
worked with Jacob Collier, right?
DC: Jacob and
I haven’t written together yet, but boy, we’re gonna! He hops around like a
flea on a griddle, so it’s hard to connect. He sang on one of our songs, a song
that James wrote called “She’s Got to Be Somewhere” … he just killed it.
RA: I saw him
at Joe’s Pub in New York City back at the end of September and was completely
blown away.
DC: Be
prepared, because he’s not at all finished. He’s just getting started. I think
Jacob Collier could well be the next big thing. He’s got it. He’s an immensely talented human
being.
RA: When you
looked out at the audience last night, did you see a lot of members of the younger
generation there?
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| Image by Django Crosby |
DC: Some. We
pull everything from 16 to 65, and I’m happy with that. I would love it if
there were more, and I think there will be more, as they become aware of it.
They tend to listen to pop stuff that’s more like “just add water and stir” ….
but that’s a joke that’s funny once. You start out with simple pop … and your tastes
evolve and you wind up with James Taylor,
Joni Mitchell, and hopefully, me!
© Roy Abrams 2016
