Graham Nash and his youthful backup played the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall Saturday, Sept. 26 and replayed the soundtrack of Baby Boomers’ lives, to the delight of the mostly aging audience.
Nash, rarely one to hold back on his political views, also shared some direct and pointed remarks about the current state of the US, as well as many fascinating anecdotes to provide a back story for his beloved tunes.
It was the blending of old and new, however, the mixing of the artistically rich and turbulent CSN(Y) era with the energy and ability of the young musicians on tour with Nash, that stood out Saturday night.
Not just in my opinion, either. Nash, now with a well-lined face and a shock of thick white hair, seemed to look on with almost fatherly pride as his young team took turns with solo parts on a variety of instruments. He really appeared to be enjoying their talent, and, on some level, passing on a torch, perhaps.
In introducing Zach Djanikian, who started out on electric guitar, but later wielded the acoustic guitar, drums, mandolin and even saxophone with equal ease, and Adam Minkoff, who started on drums, but switched fluidly to bass, guitars and keyboards and at one point played bass and drums at the same time, Nash marveled at their flexibility.
“F— these young guys,” he said kiddingly.
After the second number, “Wasted on the Way,” and the third tune, “Marrakesh Express,” Nash said, “OK, we’re going to slow it down a little…catch our breath,” at which the crowd laughed in commiseration. “Don’t laugh,” he said. “You try this at 84!”
Nash sat for the entire performance, announcing early on that he had broken his right kneecap falling in New York City recently. “But I didn’t break my voice,” he said, and he indeed proved his lead vocal strength through almost a two-hour set with no intermission.
He also played guitar and harmonica for several tunes and contributed one number on piano.
The young blood, Djanikian and Minkoff, joined Nash’s veteran keyboardist Todd Caldwell on backup vocals, offering an uncannily accurate homage to the legendary harmonies of David Crosby and Steven Stills.
Crosby passed in 2023 and Stills has been limited in performing by health problems, but Nash made several references to them, along with mentions for Joni Mitchell, Rita Coolidge, the Hollies, and others from his past.
He recalled for the audience going with Allan Clarke of the Hollies to the home of a teenager whose mom had insisted was an emerging songwriter in the early 60s.
“So, Kid, what have you got for us,” Nash related. The 15-year-old reportedly sang a few bars of what became the basis for the Hollies’ song, “Look Through Any Window.”
“We said, ‘Can we have that song?’ Then we asked him if he had anything else.
“ ‘Well,’ the kid said, ‘I’ve got this other song, but I can’t give it to you because I promised it to my friends… Herman’s Hermits. But I think you’ll really like this [next] one’.”
The song was “Bus Stop,” which Nash & Co. played sixth in Saturday’s lineup. The Hollies’ version reached No. 5 on the Billboard charts in 1966.
Several songs later, Nash also shared an anecdote about a rough patch for CSN, during which the band members separated for a period to gain perspective. Nash said he went to Hawaii and spent some time with a questionable character known as “Spider,” who taunted him and bet Nash $500 he couldn’t write a song before he took off for the mainland.
“I love free money,” Nash deadpanned Saturday night, and launched into the resulting hit, “Just a Song Before I Go.”
At the end of the number, he told the audience that 40 years after the bet, he found a small envelope a young woman had given him at a concert which he had stuffed, to be forgotten, in the back pocket of his jeans. “When I opened it, it was a check for $500 from the family of kid who made me write this song.”
Nash paid tribute to his one-time, live-in girlfriend, Joni Mitchell, by spinning a yarn about the inspiration for the iconic tune, “Our House.”
Nash related he had taken Mitchell to a deli for breakfast on an “incredibly cold day” in California, then window-shopped at an antique store.
“Joni saw a vase in the window she liked and bought it,” he said. “Then while we were driving down to our house in Laurel Canyon, I said, ‘Why don’t I light a fire and you put some flowers in the vase you got’ … and that’s all it took to write the song.”
The Music Hall audience loved the back story for “Our House” and the performance of the song, giving it one of several standing ovations during the evening. A second ovation came for “Teach Your Children,” which followed, with Djanikian on acoustic guitar, Minkoff on electric guitar and the audience providing the well-known chorus.
Minkoff went into a feverish electric guitar solo for Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock, (Back to the Garden),” next on the set list, providing a raucous flashback to the 1969 music festival at Yasgur’s Farm.
Nash was open about the illicit drug usage of the times, especially in his introduction for the powerful anthem, “Cathedral.” He noted that he had rented a 1928 Rolls Royce to tour the English countryside when the band was scheduled for two shows at Royal Albert Hall in the early 70s.
“I scored some LSD and took it – just me, not the driver,” Nash said, adding that when he opened his eyes, he was at Stonehenge.
Back in those days you can lay on the grass in the middle of Stonehenge, I know because I did, for about a million years…
Hallucinations from that experience and stepping on the Winchester Cathedral grave of a soldier who died in 1799 on Nash’s birthday made their way into “Cathedral,” along with intense emotion about Christianity and the deaths incurred during religious wars. The song received a partial standing ovation Saturday.
“Cathedral” was not alone in flirting with Nash’s strong social and political views.
Early in the show, Nash commented, “I see that we’ve elected a normal foreign wars president…terrible what’s happening in the Ukraine… the Israeli president, has been committing genocide. Then we have this war in Iran…I really believe it’s just to distract us from the Epstein files.”
“Military Madness” followed, as the audience chanted the chorus and responded with the first of the standing ovations.
Mid-show, prior to a passionate rendition of “Field Worker,” Nash said, “One of the things I don’t like about this administration is they’re deporting all the people who [harvest] our food, particularly in California.”
ne song later, he shared an anecdote about being stopped at the Immigration desk after the last night of CSNY’s first tour in Vancouver, British Columbia. The officials let the other band members pass, he said, “but they didn’t let me in. We got an interesting song out of it anyway.”
The interesting –and timely—song was “Immigration Man.”
Nash deviated from social commentary with one of the sweetest songs of the evening, a tender, lilting tune, “Love of Mine,” from his latest album.
With only Minkoff accompanying on guitar and brief background harmonies, Nash sang and contributed a harmonica interlude. The song closed with the soft, slow lyric, “I can’t believe that I’ll be losing you, but if I am, I’ll thank the universe for choosing you…for me.”
Nash closed the show with a third encore, Steven Stills’ ode to Judy Collins, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” and the crowd gave its all singing along and providing “doo doo doos” to the band’s enjoyment.
In closing, Nash gave one last bit of political opinion and hopeful advice:
I know the world is chaotic now, particularly during this Trump administration, but I know one thing. If we love self, family and friends, we’ll make it through the next two and a half years of madness…On behalf of [all the band members], peace
To the crowd’s applause, Nash, the admitted old man, exhaled repeatedly and flashed a peace sign, while the young band members grinned and pointed to the crowd and Nash.
Leaving the beautiful Troy Music Hall, I tapped a young woman ahead of me and asked with whom she had come. She answered, “my husband.” He was also young.
Fitting, I thought. In a crowd of older faces, perhaps the torch, the resonance of Graham Nash’s music, can be passed to another generation seeking to get back to the garden.
Setlist: Pre-Road Downs, Wasted on the Way, Marrakesh Express, I Used to Be a King, Military Madness, Bus Stop (The Hollies), Field Worker, Immigration Man, Better Days, Love the One You’re With, Love of Mine, Simple Man, Cathedral, Just a Song Before I Go, Our House, Teach Your Children, Woodstock (Joni Mitchell), Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.
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