An evening with Graham Nash

[DFW]

We just got back from a concert by Graham Nash and his group (3 other musicians). These guys were versatile, great singers, and loved the music they were playing. He did Hollies, to CSN to his own post CSN material.

He is 83,and no longer has quite the vocal range he did, but not far away, and his backup musicians more than made up for it. He recently had a bad fall in NYC, messed up his knee very badly. He was wearing a sophisticated knee brace and needed a cane to walk. He said he'd be needing PT for months yet.

The music was PHENOMINAL!!! It was like he had the Hollies and CSN behind the stage doing backup. He did tributes to Rita Coolidge and Joni Mitchell, plus David Crosby and Steven Stills songs. He gave explanations of the backgrounds (some unbelievably mundane) of some of his most popular songs. He must have done FOUR encores, the last of which was a perfect Suite Judy Blue Eyes, with two of his band filling in perfectly for Crosby and Stills.

My brother, a musician on his own, and my sister, a professional mezzo soprano, got last minute tickets and were able to tag along. I had reserved front row seats back in March, when the gig was announced. It had sold out in hours (in Truro, Massachusetts!!), but the venue acted at the last minute when they saw the weather would be perfect this evening, and added some outside-the-tent seats, which were only a 20 second walk from our seats.

The average age of the audience must have been 65 or older, which made sense, since the music was of an age. But who knows how much longer someone like Graham Nash can actually tour. The audience cheered, yelled, danced, it might as well have been 50 years earlier. What was particularly nice is that it was obvious that Nash was having as good a time as we were. He was visibly grateful. I guess if doing four encores at age 83 and suffering from a painful injury isn't an indication, nothing is.

If there was anyone not in a fabulous mood after that show, it would have been due to total sensory deprivation.