Crosby Stills and Nash to record first album for 14 years

 

Crosby Stills and Nash (CSN) are set to return to the studio to record their first album for 14 years. The new album – to be produced by Rick Rubin – is expected to feature a collection of cover versions of other artists’ classic songs.

 

CSN’s last studio album was After The Storm in 1994.

 

The new CSN project could be similar to Johnny Cash’s 2006 album American Recordings which was also produced by Rubin. The trio may start recording the album in early 2009 for a release later in the year.

 

Rick Rubin started out producing rock acts like Red Hot Chili Peppers, AC/DC and Metallica, but in recent years he has shown he has the ‘Midas touch’ when it comes to reinventing the sound of veteran artists. He produced Johnny Cash’s final five albums, and helped to reinvigorate Neil Diamond’s career by masterminding his last two albums. Diamond’s latest offering, Home Before Dark, was his first-ever Number One album in the US and UK.

 

“Rick Rubin’s a brilliant man,” Graham Nash told the US music magazine Billboard. “What he wants is an album with no CSN songs. He wants to do an album of all the songs we love, all the songs we wish we’d written.”

 

Nash, David Crosby and Stephen Stills are understood to have whittled the list of possible tracks down to about 20 “well-known” songs. They are rehearsing the songs after sound checks during their summer tour.

 

It looks like CSN fans will have a lot to look forward to over the next year so. Stephen Stills and Graham Nash are both lining up deluxe CD box-sets of their solo work; Stills is said to be planning to release a ‘lost’ album which he recorded with Jimi Hendrix in 1969; there will be a live album from CSNY’s 1974 stadium tour; a Crosby and Nash acoustic-only album; the CSNY: Déjà Vu documentary which chronicles Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s 2006 Freedom of Speech Tour; and a live album to accompany the CSNY: Déjà Vu film.

 

Graham Nash says he found working on these archival projects “enlightening”. He told Billboard: “You fall back in love with the reason why you wanted to play with Neil Young in the first place, the reason why you wanted to play with Stephen Stills in the first place, and with Crosby in the first place.”

Tags: Crosby Stills & Nash, David Crosby, Graham Nash, music magazine, Rick Rubin, Sh-Boom, Stephen Stills