Crosby and Nash
The Warfield
San Francisco, Calif.
March 28

Baby boomers, Hells Angels, Gen-Xers and hipsters filled the legendary Warfield (the Jerry Garcia Band was considered the theater’s house band till Garcia passed in 1995) to experience a shared excursion led by two of the most beloved songwriters to come out of the 1960s.

Graham Nash and David Crosby spoke to the audience as if they were old friends.
“This one’s for San Francisco,” Nash said shortly after they took the stage. He was talking about “Eight Miles High,” the tune Crosby originally penned along with Gene Clark and Jim McGuinn in 1966 and released by The Byrds.

A killer four-piece band – including Crosby’s son James Raymond on keys and the monster riffage of Dean Parks (formerly of Steely Dan) on guitar and lap pedal steel – backed the silver-haired duo (Stephen Stills couldn’t participate because he’s prepping for a Buffalo Springfield reunion tour).

“It’s that first track that’s gotta get [the audience] by the balls,” Nash said after the crunchy and timeless “Eight Miles High.” “Then you got ‘em for the rest of the night.”

The 1969 nugget “Marrakesh Express,” from CSN’s self-titled debut, followed, taking all the aging hippies back to the early days when they first fell in love with the trio’s transcending harmonies.

Meanwhile, new songs like “Camera,” showed evidence that Crosby still has the ability to write some beautiful gems.

The second set included “Our House,” “Almost Cut My Hair” and another new Crosby-penned song, “Slice of Time,” before they closed with a colossal, 10-minute “Wooden Ships” that pulsed with unstoppable energy.

One of the two encores, “Teach Your Children,” moved everyone to their feet for a summer camp-esque sing-a-long. The pair definitely had the nearly 3,000 in attendance under its spell for all two sets, two encores and more than two hours worth of music that spans five decades. Even young musicians in attendance, old enough to be the duo’s grandkids, found the performance jaw dropping.

“They have heavenly voices,” said Caleb Pate, frontman of the up-and-coming San Francisco psych-rockers, Seventeen Evergreen.