LIVE: Graham Nash at World Cafe Live, Philadelphia (2/19/16)
“I seem to vacillate between being in love and being pissed off.”
These are the first words Graham Nash speaks to a sold-out crowd at Philadelphia’s World Cafe Live after strumming the closing chord of the Hollies’ 1966 hit “Bus Stop.”
The audience laughs at Nash’s insightful observation. He chuckles and takes a sip of red wine before diving into a rousing rendition of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Marrakesh Express.”
In that moment, the mood is set for a tender, emotional evening filled with hit songs, deep tracks, and stories of days long since passed. Nash’s wild tales of jamming with Bob Dylan, sailing for weeks on end with David Crosby, and eating lunches in quaint Californian cafés with Joni Mitchell add context to tunes you’ve heard before a thousand times. After Nash recounts a memory and starts into a song, it becomes apparent that his lyrics are a direct reflection of the events he experienced; the songs are stories within themselves.
Accompanying Nash is Shane Fontayne with his steady, measured style of playing the electric guitar. Fontayne — who has toured with Bruce Springsteen and CSN, among others — can make his instrument sing as fervently as Nash does, their voices braiding together in clean, clear harmony that adds luster to the stripped-down melodies.
Together Nash and Fontayne perform a healthy mix of CSN songs and new tracks from Nash’s upcoming release, This Path Tonight. Conceptually, the album centers around the inevitable fact that Nash is aging; he has seen friends pass, has seen times change, and has lived to tell about it all. When Nash performs these recently written songs, it’s obvious they come from somewhere deep inside: he squeezes his eyes shut, his face contorting as he belts out the notes with vigor.
Nash dedicates a nostalgic tune called “Golden Days” from This Path Tonight to his girlfriend, Amy. Before this, during the night’s rendition of his 1971 song “I Used To Be A King,” Graham sings, “I used to be a king, and everything around me turned to rust. It’s ’cause I built my life on sand — and I shouldn’t have done that, no, no, no — and I watched it crumble into dust.”
Tonight it is blatantly obvious that he is, as he said earlier, vacillating between being pissed off and being in love.
But that rawness, that honesty, is what makes Nash’s shows so memorable. You never quite know what side of Graham you’re going to get, but you’re guaranteed to get an incredible performance out of him. And always, by the end of his set, Nash appears to be completely cleansed of any pissed off-ness he may have harbored prior to walking onstage; by then, he is utterly in love with the music and the people in the room who have shared the night with him.
One of the highlights of the night comes in the form of Nash’s story about how he wrote the CSN song “Cathedral.” “We had a rare day off,” he says, a smile forming on his lips. “So naturally I rented a car, drove to Stonehenge, and dropped some acid.” He sits down behind the keyboard, forcefully pressing the keys so as to create an eerie soundscape. “Now I’m standing on the grave of a soldier that died in 1799,” he sings to the pulsing, climaxing beat. “And the day he died it was a birthday, and I noticed it was mine. And my head didn’t know just who I was, and I went spinning back in time.”
Didn’t we all? Nash’s accounts of his vivid memories take the audience back to the era of their childhoods — or, in my case, an era I didn’t directly experience.
But at his shows, audience members young and old alike become equals, brought together by his impassioned performances. This is especially apparent at the very end of the show, when he closes out his set with “Teach Your Children” and asks everyone to sing along with him.
The lights go up. Everyone sees each other once again after sitting in the dark. Voices raise, people harmonize, and the room essentially becomes a choral jam session with Graham at the helm.
This right here is the magic of Graham Nash: bringing people together through story, song, and a celebration of life.
Graham Nash’s This Path Tonight tour continues through June of 2016.
(All photos by Danielle Zabielski.)
