CSN&Y are still a winning team
By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, April 12, 2002
Here's something you don't normally witness at a concert: a seventh-inning stretch, complete with a singalong of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." But rather than go through the tedious encore yo-yo, in which the act heads offstage (clap, clap, hoot), then back on, then off (now clapping in cadence), on and off -- Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young made the break part of their show Wednesday night at the Erwin Center. Then the veterans lurched back into the extra-inning concert with Neil Young commanding "Let's Roll."
The hipster party line is that Young, the godfather of grunge, remains a cutting-edge artist, while David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash merely traffic in nostalgia for music that wasn't all that exciting to begin with. Those who kneel for Neil no doubt thought this show would resemble a trip to an amusement park, where periods of bored waiting precede the flashes of excitement. But the band was really a four-way treat, with the Crosby/Nash golden harmonizer "Guinnevere" and Stills' "Helplessly Hoping" joining Young's spellbinding "Harvest Moon" and the anthemic "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World" in the highlight reel.
Playing the role of band member, rather than frontman, made Young even more heroic. He did his part for the team, with his propulsive guitar lifting Nash's "Military Madness" as if by chopper and helping restore the dissonant mood of Crosby's "Almost Cut My Hair." When Stills did the old blues number "Old Man Trouble" (dedicated to Austin pianist Bobby Doyle), Young played it low and gritty. When the intro to "Long Time Coming" and the midsection of "Woodstock" demanded that Young's Les Paul blast away, it sprayed magnificently.
Also impressive was the six-stringed conversation between Stills and Young on "Wooden Ships," as they sailed the old hippie epic into invigorating waters. These guys -- who go way back, to their association with Buffalo Springfield back in the '60s -- haven't always gotten along, but on this night they were like old Army buddies, cracking each other up between songs and walking off the stage, three hours and 45 minutes after opening with "Carry On," their arms sloppily around each others' shoulders.
When the quartet, augmented by organist Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn and drummer Steve Potts, left the stage after "For What's It Worth" and the crowd went understandably berserk, the encore was genuine, even if the resulting singalong on "Teach Your Children" and a somewhat weary "Eight Miles High" didn't levitate the show further.
Where almost four hours with CSN&Y once seemed like a sentence, on Wednesday it was time well spent. That's the great thing about low expectations. They make it harder to be disappointed and easier to get blown away.
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