Anna Webber
Crosby: “When I see people raising their hands and voices in pursuit of democracy, I think democracy may still have a chance.”
David Crosby is feeling good on a Friday when Isthmus calls him at his home in Central California. “I am sitting at my front window looking out on a sunny afternoon in the Santa Ynez Valley that is freakin’ scrumptious,” the singer-songwriter says.
This month, the co-founder of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young embarked on a tour with his new group, The Lighthouse Band. The trio of young musicians will join the 77-year-old artist for a performance at Overture Center’s Capitol Theater on Nov. 20.
The Lighthouse Band includes Becca Stevens, Michelle Willis and Michael League, founder of the multi-Grammy Award-winning funk-fusion-jam band Snarky Puppy. Crosby’s own snark originally earned him an introduction to League.
“Snarky Puppy is a terrible name for a really great band,” Crosby says. “I started tweeting about them and Michael found out. He invited me to perform on a benefit record they were doing in New Orleans and we discovered we had chemistry.”
Here If You Listen, released by BMG on Oct. 26, is a collaborative work featuring Crosby and the members of Lighthouse. The playlist also includes an almost ethereal version of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” which always attracts spontaneous applause when played in concert, Crosby says.
Chemistry was something Crosby had lost with former bandmates Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young. After four contentious decades, Crosby walked away.
“In the beginning we really loved each other and did some good work, but after 40 years the group had devolved into, ‘Turn on the smoke machine and play the hits,’” he says. “Music is my life, so I had to leave.”
The current tour has sparked a rebirth of sorts for Crosby. But things are different now than they were in 1965, when The Byrds first topped the charts with Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
“We’re much worse now politically,” he says. “Trump is much worse than Nixon, which is really hard to believe.”
As a 1960s-era singer, Crosby was never shy about voicing his opinions in his music. But he doesn’t see protest songs as his mission. “As songwriters, our job is mostly to take you on little emotional journeys, maybe inspire you to get up and dance,” Crosby says. “But every once in awhile there’s a call for something else.
“People are protesting and the government doesn’t like it, so they send in the soldiers and people get killed,” he adds. “And that’s when you need to write ‘Ohio.’ Someone steps over the line and its time to bear witness.”
“Ohio” was written by Neil Young in response to the 1970 shootings at Kent State, but it’s a song Crosby loves and still sings. He also has had his own share of social commentary songs, including “Almost Cut My Hair,” “Long Time Gone” and, more recently, “Capitol,” which the songwriter describes as “an indictment of the U.S. Congress that’s richly deserved.”
Crosby’s favorite is “What Are Their Names,” written in 1970. He sings a verse to me, including the signature line, “Peace is not an awful lot to ask.” His tenor is strong, and his conviction still holds.
“We really have to break the Republican stranglehold on Congress so they can’t keep doing that awful shit,” he says. “Trump is like a naughty child who finally has broken into his father’s office. He’s tearing up the papers and peeing all over everything.
“We need to fix that for the sake of our democracy and because of global warming,” he adds. “We’re doing bad things that are affecting every human being on the face of the Earth. Think of the karma in that!”
Still, Crosby says, here’s hope. “The most encouraged I have felt recently was during the Women’s March, and also when the kids had their please-don’t-kill-us-in-our-schools march,” Crosby says. “When I see people raise their hands and voices in pursuit of democracy, I think democracy may still have a chance.”
When he comes to Madison, Crosby plans to dish up a little protest, along with some of his more familiar compositions. “Expect everything from The Byrds to something we wrote last week,” he says.
Chances are “Woodstock” also will find its way into the evening’s performance.
