Now 77, Graham Nash brings songs and stories to Garde Saturday

September 17, 2019 12:00 am • Last Updated: September 18, 2019 7:47 pm

By Rick Koster
Day Arts/Features writer

Graham Nash (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

"They all come out of nowhere and everywhere, and I have no bloody idea where they come from — probably me shooting my bloody mouth off!"

Graham Nash laughs; he's trying to explain the method to his songcraft, which has resulted in some of the most indelible tunes in rock history: "Immigration Man," "Teach Your Children," Military Madness," "Simple Song," "Our House," "Cathedral," "Carrie Anne," "Chicago," "Marrakesh Express," "Wasted On the Way," "Just a Song Before I Go," and more.

The 77-year-old, two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee — with Crosby Stills & Young and the Hollies — is on the phone from his home in New York, where he's promoting a new tour that brings him to the Garde Arts Center Saturday.

In truth, Nash says, The Muse is helpful, but songwriting is also hard work. After learning how to spin out two-and-a-half-minute, radio-targeted pop songs for the Hollies, he says he was forced to "up his game" considerably when he left that band and England and began hanging out in Southern California with folks like David Crosby, Joni Mitchell, Stephen Stills and Neil Young.

The subsequent decades, with CSN, CSNY, duo projects with Crosby, and solo albums, through the turn of the century, are rich in history and lore. Things slowed for Nash as he got older, though he continued to tour sporadically and established a side career as a photographer.

It's also true Nash didn't release any new material for several years after 2002's "Song for Survivors." The interpersonal relationships in the CSNY universe also gradually frazzled to the point where Nash declared in more than one publication that the band would never play again. None of that acrimony provided any creative impetus to pick up a guitar.

Ultimately, it took the unfortunate dissolution of Nash's 38-year marriage to Susan Sennett to open the songwriting floodgates, and the result, the gorgeous and elegiac "This Path Tonight," is as solid and competitive as anything in his career. The title song, "Beneath the Waves," "Golden Days" and "Back Home" — really, the whole 10-song recording — is special.

And, to Nash's relief and surprise, this time the process WASN'T a lot of work.

"It's a very personal and intimate record, and for a change, the songs happened with relative simplicity," Nash says. "I was going through a lot of painful personal experiences at the time, and the lyrics just poured out of me."

Another twist was that Nash collaborated with a longtime member of his solo band, guitarist/vocalist Shane Fontayne — who has also worked with CSN, Joe Cocker and Marc Cohn — on the songwriting.

"I usually like to write alone, but in this case, I'd be just handing Shane, who's just an incredible person and musician, song after song's worth of lyrics. He'd take one of them and go off, and I'd start writing more lyrics, and suddenly Shane would come back with this great music. 'What about this?,' he'd say, and it was just amazing stuff. We wrote 20 songs in a few weeks."

The recording process went quickly, too. They booked the studio for a week and set up all the gear on a Sunday. That night, to get proper sounds and recording levels, they ran through a few tunes — and ended up keeping three of the soundcheck versions for the album.

"Again, Shane was behind the board, and he's unbelievable. He's this monster player, but that's not what it's about for him. He's not worried about how many solos he gets," Nash explains. "He wants the songs to live and breathe, and I think the album has so much heart."

Asked if age and wisdom and life's ups and downs can maybe teach that there's a certain lovely and wistful quality to the experience of sorrow — because that how it seems when one listens to the new album — Nash says, "That's an idea that absolutely resonates. I'll remember that. And the experience is very therapeutic. I've no idea where I'd be if I couldn't express thoughts."

At this point as an artist, of course, Nash doesn't have to rely on chart success or radio airplay. His career has validated itself many times over, and he says the crowd reaction to the new songs is plenty rewarding.

"I don't know what to think about album sales or downloads," he laughs. "There's Spotify and streaming services, and I am older in that I still like to think in terms of an album as a piece of art unto itself. Kids say, 'Well, I only like two tracks, so why buy a whole album?' I get that on one level. As an artist, it can be disappointing because you put everything into this whole work that's meant to be enjoyed as a whole. But that's how things change."

Nash happily admits that he does see younger people at his shows. He theorizes that a lot of them grew up hearing their folks play CSN or CSNY, and he adds that a 10-minute YouTube video about the life and early death (by leukemia) of skateboard star Dylan Rieder, which included Nash's poignant song "Better Days," helped introduced his work to a new generation.

"That's a very sad story about Dylan," he says. "I'm honored that one of my songs was on the video and maybe provides a bit of hope or fond memories."

Interestingly, while Nash is always happy to "play the same 10 songs that fans always want to hear; it's very flattering," he also feels a bit of sadness over the general state of the world.

"A lot of those songs were protest songs meant to reflect my anger and the times," he says. "It's frankly a bit of a pain in the ass to be singing 'Military Madness,' which I wrote about World War II. We thought there'd never be anything like that again, and look at it: Wars going on everywhere. Oh, my God! I'm glad people like those songs, but I'd want to sing them as nostalgia, not because it's all still happening. Haven't we learned anything?"

For the Garde show, Nash will be accompanied by Fontayne and keyboardist Todd Caldwell. Nash loves the intimate and stripped-down approach.

"It's the perfect instrumentation to present the songs in the fashion they were originally written," he says. "People seem to appreciate that. And, to go along, I'll tell some stories and anecdotes that provide background and some laughs, I hope."