Touring extensively behind “Now,” his first album of new material in seven years, Graham Nash returns to Northampton for an Oct. 4 show at the Academy of Music.
Nash has been looking back as well as to the present on this year’s touring dates, some of which were dubbed the “Sixty Years of Songs and Stories Tour.” The Englishman, whose many decades of American living haven’t dented his Lancashire accent, can look back to the early 1960s with his first band, The Hollies, named for Buddy Holly, who gets a fond remembrance in the song “Buddy’s Back” from the new album, with Hollies singer Allan Clarke helping out on harmony vocals.
And in front of a mirror we would play
Pretending to be them every day
And then we started a band just to have some fun
And we created a sound as we sang as one
Buddy Holly was who we loved
Right from the heart …
“Now” mines the familiar terrain of Nash’s songwriting — the redemptive power of love, appeals to positive action, biting social criticism. At 82, he sounds comfortable and assured, his voice as pure and recognizable as ever. He calls it the most personal album he’s ever made. “I’m wearing my heart on both sleeves,” he told interviewer Walter Isaacson last year.
“Golden Idol,” a midtempo rocker in 6/8, targets people swayed by the Big Lie.
They’re trying to rewrite recent history
When the MAGA tourists took the hill
They will not stand up cos they’re bought and paid for
Golden idols control them still
Songs such as “Stars and Stripes” and “I Watched It All Come Down” feature the kind of celestial harmonies one expects from a Graham Nash record, while harmonica sounding much like Neil Young graces the wistful “It Feels Like Home.” Nash is accompanied on the album by guitarists Shane Fontayne and Thad DeBrock, keyboardist Todd Caldwell and bassist/drummer Adam Minkoff. Caldwell arranged the string quintet for “Theme from Pastoral/In A Dream,” and the same quintet provides atmospheric backing for “I Watched It All Go Down.”
Nash, who became part of a global musical phenomenon in 1969 with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and sometimes Neil Young, still remembers the day he first sang with Stills and Crosby as “a sound that changed our lives.” Group relationships were marked by frequent turmoil, but the music they produced has endured. “Marrakesh Express,” “Teach Your Children,” “Our House,” “Just a Song Before I Go” and “Wasted on the Way” are among Nash’s most memorable contributions. Their first album with Young, 1970’s “Deja Vu,” remains the highest-selling album of each member’s career.
Nash has released seven albums under his own name since “Songs for Beginners” in 1971, which included “Military Madness” and “Chicago.” He revisited that album and his second, “Wild Tales,” in live recordings released in 2022, and published his autobiography, also titled “Wild Tales,” in 2013. He was also instrumental in organizing the 1979 No Nukes/Musicians United for Safe Energy benefit concerts with Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt.
He has been inducted twice to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of The Hollies and Crosby, Stills & Nash, and was awarded the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for contributions to music and philanthropy.
Nash and Crosby, who worked and recorded together frequently as a duo over the decades, were in a period of estrangement when Crosby died early last year. Nash told Isaacson the two hadn’t spoken in two years when Crosby sent him an email apologizing for his part in the dispute. Nash set up a time that the two could chat by video, but the call never came.
CSNY last performed together in October 2013 in an acoustic set benefiting the Bridge School in California. Curiously, Stills and Young are scheduled to perform together in a benefit concert for the Bridge School on Oct. 5, the day after Nash’s Northampton show.
It will be the first time Nash has played in Northampton since 2019. Playing guitar, harmonica and piano, Nash will be joined on stage by keyboard player Todd Caldwell, Adam Minkoff on drums and bass and Zach Djanikian on guitar, mandolin, bass and drums, with all contributing backing vocals. Tickets are available for the 8 p.m. show through the Academy of Music website.
