Photo Credit: Anna Webber
Every music writer jumps at the chance to interview David Crosby. The 77-year-old Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash veteran is one of rock’s most lovable curmudgeons, the rare legacy figure who’s decided there’s nothing to gain by biting their tongue. That zero-fucks demeanor has made Crosby a favorite on Twitter, though in conversation he’s not nearly as grumpy as his online persona would have you believe. Even when he’s cussing or complaining, he laughs readily, exuding the warmth and joviality of a favorite uncle.
Crosby has been uncommonly prolific over the last five years, releasing so much material he’s had to spread it across two bands: an electric one he’s dubbed Sky Trails (after his 2017 record of the same name) and an acoustic one called Lighthouse (after his 2016 record). All four of his recent records have been surprisingly excellent late-career efforts, especially his latest with his Lighthouse band, 2018’s Here If You Listen, a graceful, radiant folk record that finds Crosby sharing the spotlight with his younger fellow songwriters Michael League, Becca Stevens and Michelle Willis. Ahead of his upcoming tour with his Sky Trails Band, which stops at the Pabst Theater on Saturday, May 11, Crosby spoke with the Shepherd about his new bands, touring at 77 and getting himself in trouble on Twitter.
Who’s going to be backing you on this tour?
This is the electric band, the Sky Trails Band. This is my son James on keyboards, and Jeff Pevar, probably one of the best guitar players I’ve ever heard. These are the guys I started that band CPR with a long time ago, so I’ve been playing with them both a long time. My son James I’ve been playing guitar with for 20 years. We have a really good relationship. And also Steve DiStanislao has been playing with us the whole time, and he’s our drummer and also David Gilmour’s drummer. And then there is—and this is a good story—there’s this girl Mai Leisz, the bass player, and she’s from Estonia of all places. She has a jazz band in Scandinavia, and I heard her play and asked her to come to the United States to be in my band. She’s fantastic. Then there’s Michelle Willis. She’s in both of my bands. She’s in the acoustic band, the Lighthouse Band, and the Sky Trails Band, because she’s just such a fantastic goddamn singer. She’s an unbelievable singer and writer from Canada. So that’s our electric band, and I think we’ll rock your world [laughs]. I really do!
What distinction do you make between the two bands? Is there a hard division between the two?
They’re two completely different things. The acoustic band is run by Michael League. He’s the bass player and the leader and the composer for that jazz band Snarky Puppy. He and Michelle Willis and Becca Stevens, who’s a singer/songwriter from the Carolinas, that’s the acoustic band. I like being in two bands because it really stimulates me and really keeps me popping. I have to paddle faster just to keep up with these kids. They’re really, really hot.
One of the things that’s most striking about Here If You Listen is it really feels like a group project. It doesn’t sound like a solo David Crosby album.
That was on purpose. When I worked with them the first time on Lighthouse, I thought, this is a Crosby album and Michael is producing and the girls are singing a bit of harmony, but when we got in the room together there was a definite chemistry. So I went to them and I said, “Listen, I feel there is a definite chemistry between us here, and I would like to make another record, only this time I don’t want it to be a David Crosby record. I want it to be a Lighthouse Band record, and I want it to be all four of us writing and all four of us singing, and I’d like to do it together.” And they said, “Are you sure?” and I said, “Yes!” And that’s what that came out being. It was very much intended to be a band record and that’s how it came out, and I am very proud of it.
Had you been wanting to start a new band for a while?
No, it wasn’t a conscious thing. It was Michael League. Michael League is just a massive musician. He’s an unbelievable musician and an incredibly gifted writer and producer, so he made me want to do it. It was he who introduced me to Becca and Michelle. Now, I may be crazy but I’m not stupid [laughs], so I could tell this was massively good, great fucking bunch of talent and a thing that I could work with easily and happily, so I went along with it. Both of these bands are stretching me quite a bit. Like I said, it takes quite a bit to keep up with these kids, and that’s a very good thing.
You’ve released four albums in about as many years, which is a huge amount of music. What’s prompting that? Is it the collaborators?
I think it’s two things. I think it’s the collaborators, because they do inspire me. The bands I’ve been in before, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, were competitive bands. And they were very good bands and we did very good work and I’m proud of it, but they weren’t collaborative bands, they were competitive bands, and that’s a very different thing. These guys are collaborative workers, and they’ve brought out all kinds of work from me.
How does a collaboration like that work, though? Because of your stature, there’d almost have to be an imbalance between you and your younger bandmates, right?
No. You’d think, but that’s just history. These people are all as good as I am. They’re absolutely as good as I am, so there’s no imbalance at all. Matter of fact, in both bands everybody is a better player than I am. Every single player is better than me, and I like it that way.
Are you enjoying touring as much as you are recording these days? Is there one you prefer more than the other now?
You know, I love to record, but it’s a very strange situation, man, because we don’t get paid for it anymore. Streaming just fucked it. What the streaming companies pay us, it’s sort of like you work a job for a month and then you make a nickel. It’s really bad, man. I used to make money off of records, and now I don’t make anything. Nothing. I make nothing off of these records. And that’s sad because the companies are making billions of dollars. The three record companies that own most of the streaming, heh, they’re making something like 19 million dollars a day between them off of streaming, and they’re not paying the artists for shit. That’s a tough thing, because that means that playing live, touring, is my whole living now, and that’s very hard if you’re 77 years old and you can’t sleep on a bus anymore. That gets pretty difficult. But the singing, the time that I’m on stage, is absolutely a total joy. Complete joy. Fantastic, still.
I suppose that’s the irony about you being so prolific recently: You’re making all these records now that you’re not being paid for them.
[Laughs] Yeah, it is ironic! But there is it!
You seem a lot more plugged in than many artists your age, and you seem to spend more time online than most of them. Do you think that changes how you see the world?
Not a great deal, no. I don’t. I’ve always been fascinated with people. To me they’re endlessly interesting, so that’s what leads me to enjoy talking to people on Twitter. I’m fascinated by them. They interest the hell out of me. No mystery there. I think people… well, I don’t know. I don’t get much out of Facebook, and I get a little bit out of Instagram, but not too much. But on Twitter you can actually talk to people. I do get in trouble there. I’ve gotten in a little bit of trouble every once in a while! A tiny bit.
I think everybody does every once in a while. It’s a platform that really does lend itself to shit starting.
[Laughs] Well it does lend itself to that! I’ve gotten into a couple fights. I got into a fight with Kanye West because I think he’s an idiot. But I try mostly not to do that Twitter war thing. I try mostly to communicate with people. It’s interesting.
I used to think that Twitter was a force for good, because it exposed us to so many different ideas and perspectives, including people we may not have thought much about. It seemed like it was making us better informed people by reminding us to consider others. But I think the 2016 election really changed that perception. We saw how Twitter could be weaponized.
Well, I don’t think that’s Twitter’s fault. I think you’re seeing a truly evil, spoiled 8-year-old child who’s broken into his dad’s office where he was never allowed to go, and he’s running around peeing on all the papers going, “I’ll show you!” And I think his presence on Twitter has degraded it some, because he does weaponize it. It is a way for him to shoot his mouth off in the craziest possible fashion. But I don’t think that degrades the platform; I just think it degrades the man.
A lot of us, if we spend enough time online, feel we need to take a break if the news cycle ever gets too dark and maybe escape from politics for a bit. Do you ever have to step back like that?
Yeah, I go read The Onion! [Laughs]
That helps?
Yeah, humor will keep you afloat when almost nothing else will. Humor and music.
David Crosby plays the Pabst Theater on Saturday, May 11, at 8 p.m.
