Our House is a very very very fine band

August 11, 2024 12:00 am • Last Updated: August 09, 2024 9:54 am

By Rick Koster
Day Arts/Features writer

Our House (Jeffrey Parrish

To be perfectly honest, Our House is actually THEIR house.

Which is to say that Our House — the excellent band appearing Thursday in New London’s Garde Arts Center — exclusively performs music that’s not their own. Rather, they replicate an impressive array of tunes from the expansive catalog of Crosby, Stills, Nash & (sometimes) Young — and, as even casual fans can guess, the wink-wink band name is because “Our House” is one of CSN’s biggest songs.

But in addition to their sonic acumen and devotion to host material — hits, curated rarities from deep in the catalog and even a few tunes CSNY didn’t play live — Our House goes way beyond mere homage. Each of the Our House musicians has a direct musical or familial connection to the CSNY community.

Keyboardist/vocalist James Raymond is Crosby’s son and played with his father in David Crosby & Friends and the group CPR, with the acronymic surname references of the latter act also including Our House lead guitarist Jeff Pevar. Multi-instrumentalist Chris Pierce was hand-picked by Young as opening act on his 2023 tour, and vocalist Astrid Young is Neil’s sister. Drummer Steve DiStanislao, guitarist Steve Postell and keyboardist/vocalist Michelle Wills are three other Crosby alums. Only bassist Elija Thomson is the “orphan,” but he’s known Raymond since they played in teenage groups together — and he’s more recently worked with Father John Misty.

There are also visual and special effects aspects to an Our House concert that feature exclusive content from CSNY photographer Henry Diltz and CSNY recording engineer Stephen Barncard.

“The response to what we’re doing has been amazing and gratifying,” Raymond said, calling from a Laundromat on the road last week. “We see a lot of joy in the audience. We’re the first to know we’re NOT Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but I feel like we play with a lot of integrity and love and honor.”

Raymond, soft-spoken and quick to laugh, answered questions about Our House. The responses have been edited for space and clarity.

Q: The idea of a CSNY homage act seems natural given the experiences and connections. But all of you have busy and fulfilling respective careers, too. What was the impetus to put Our House together?

A: There was an idea to have my father perform on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara. It’s a beautiful venue and we thought we’d get Croz out of retirement and do a show. He couldn’t really play guitar anymore, but he could sing, and we thought we’d get a bunch of musicians — some from his band and other friends — and just show up and have fun.

Croz loved the idea and even suggested we could take it on the road. Sadly, he passed away before that could happen. But the idea never really went away and a few months later we decided to do a concert honoring him at the Lobero. And that went over so well I thought, “We should take this on the road. People really want to hear this music.”

Q: There’s no question that musically this ensemble can pull off the songs. To an extent — at least with your father’s material — you’ve done it for years. But what do the personal connections bring to Our House — tangibly onstage or even in a spiritual sort of chemistry?

A: That was something I wasn’t sure we’d feel playing in front of people until we actually did it. I’ll be looking over at Jeff and Stevie D and Michelle onstage and I can see it on their faces and in the audience — and you find yourself sort of expecting any moment that Croz will come in with his part. So it’s a little bittersweet and sad but there’s also so much joy because we DO feel him onstage. I feel him smiling down because we are playing the music with love and honor.

Q: CSN and CSNY are among the finest examples of close harmony singing in the modern age. This question has two parts. It’s one thing to sing the harmonies correctly. It’s another to try to replicate voices in a blend. When you hear CSN, you KNOW you’re listening to Graham Nash and Stephen Stills and David Crosby because their individual vocal qualities are so distinctive. I’d imagine that’s hard to pull off.

A: Exactly. We can do the parts, but we wanted to bring our own sound to those harmonies because, you’re right, they ARE so distinctive and the material is so well known and timeless it can’t be translated at that level. For some artists that might not be the case because maybe the music isn’t that universal. So we honor the parts but try to bring our own voices and personalities.

Q: Second part: As a layperson, I’m thinking those vocal blends aren’t just standard three or four part harmonies. There’s some weird stuff going on that gives it that extra quality and artistic magic. Is that accurate?

A: We were very careful finding out what those specific parts are. A lot of people don’t realize the intricacy of what they were doing. As an engineer and producer, I have the software to separate the voices and instruments of the original recordings.

(Laughed) I realized pretty quickly they were flying by the seat of their pants. Those guys were some of the best harmony singers in the world but they didn’t go to music school. They didn’t have classical background in harmony – and that’s what made it so awesome and special. In this band, we ARE trained musicians. We’d listen to individual parts and say to each other, “That CAN’T be right!” But it is.

I think there were a lot of happy accidents. Maybe, technically, the harmonies didn’t work — but they DID because we listened to them for 50 years and they sounded perfect all along. It’s tricky. (Laughed) They’re perfect because they sound great because they WEREN’T perfect! As we say in music sometimes, a lot of those parts had hair on them.

Q: What song or songs have been hardest for Our House to pull off – or should I say “most rewarding” in that you are nonetheless able to do them?

A: “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” is very daunting. Musically, it’s pretty intricate and it’s not a song we did in the Crosby band, so it was new to all of us. We went in with a fine-tooth comb to figure it out. Even so, we’ve been tweaking it on the road because it IS so hard. I think we have it locked in now, and that feels pretty great to have gotten it down.

Q: What about a nightly setlist? One of the great things about recreating the music of CSNY is that fans are so devoted they’re familiar with the entire catalog. I’d think that opens up possibilities for y’all as fans and musicians.

A: We have a list as long as my arm of all the songs we’d love to do besides the hits, which we enjoy, too, of course. As far as nuggets go, we’re doing “The Lee Shore” and “Find the Cost of Freedom” (from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “4 Way Street”). We talked about “Cowboy Movie” (from Crosby’s solo album “If Only I Could Remember My Name”) but we had shows booked and had to lock in quickly.

We do “Anything at All” (“CSN”) and “Wooden Ships” (from the first Crosby, Stills & Nash album), and Chris has his own arrangement of “Southern Man” (Young’s “After the Gold Rush”) that’s much slower and incredible. And “Carry On,” which CSN didn’t play much because it’s pretty much a serious vocal challenge. So that’s been fun.