David Crosby
Still Harmonious After All These Years
Michael Parrish talks to the folk rock legends about their new projects and their long-tme friendship, only in Dirty Linen.
Another Stony Evening Grateful Dead Records 4057
After CSNY first disbanded in 1970, David Crosby and Graham Nash undertook a landmark duo concert tour that spotlighted their remarkably supple and inventive vocal harmonies, Crosby's atmospherically moody compositions of that era, and Nash's perkier pieces. For years, the chief record of this tour was a widely circulated bootleg record, titled A Very Stony Evening, which was recorded at one of the duo's California concerts. This release, culled from their October 10, 1971 show at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, captures the tremendous dynamic range of the duo's performance in splendid audiophile sound. The 15 tunes on the CD included CSNY hits like "Wooden Ships" (with Nash taking Stills' vocal part) and a murky, mysterious version of "Déjà Vu," but the emphasis is on the solo material that Crosby and Nash laid down earlier that year. The duo's intuitive harmonic experimentation is in evidence on the angelic rendition of "Orleans" (very different from the studio cut) and on the spare "Laughing," which shows that working without a net has its risks, as Nash hits a boner before sliding into a perfect blend with Crosby's lead vocal. Nash shines on one of the first versions of "Southbound Train" and a bleak rendition of "Stranger's Room." Crosby's emotions are exposed like a gaping wound on the gripping solo version of "Where Will I Be?" while the quiet, reflective version of "Lee Shore" is vastly more evocative than the studio version. The pair's witty repartee is captured throughout what Crosby refers to as "the loosest show on earth," with Crosby and Nash alternating as straight man. Crosby, suffering from the "Lebanese Flu," is in particularly rare form. Another Stony Evening captures an intimacy, a wonderful contrast between music and silence, and a sense of successful musical invention that is not expressed to the same degree in their studio recordings. - Michael Parrish
