A smoky, whisky-flavoured tribute to one of greats of American music

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Three stars

In 1970 David Crosby, burned by the implosion of supergroup Crosby Stills Nash & Young that summer and still grieving the death of his 21-year-old girlfriend Christine Hinton in a car crash in 1969, retreated to his boat in Sausalito, California, took lots of drugs, drank a lot of alcohol and somehow made a record.

Working at night with a cadre of crack West Coast musicians including The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, Joni Mitchell and his erstwhile bandmates Graham Nash and Neil Young among others, Crosby recorded his debut solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name. “I was an immature person, stoned out of my mind, hit with something I absolutely couldn’t handle,” Crosby told Rolling Stone years later. “It’s amazing I managed to get into the studio at all.”

In the circumstances the slightly unfocused sense of drift that floats through the album makes sense. But it didn’t help its reception when it emerged in February 1971.

But over the last 50 years the album’s reputation has grown, so much so that when it came to mounting a tribute to the music of Crosby, who died in 2023, the composer and producer Kate St John decided a recreation of If I Could Only Remember My Name would provide the perfect vehicle.

Originally commissioned for the Llais Festival and performed at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff last October, it made its way north to Glasgow for Celtic Connections.

The Staves performed at the concert 

St John was joined on stage by an impressive line-up of musicians and singers, including guitarist Robbie McIntosh, drummer Evan Jenkins, percussionist Ernesto Marichales, Kris Drever, Liam O’Maonlai, (formerly of Hothouse Flowers) and The Staves. (BC Camplight was posted missing with Covid.)

What followed was an evening of impeccable musicianship, glorious harmonies and enough evidence of Crosby’s songwriting capabilities to challenge those of us who have retained our residual, kneejerk post-punk, “never trust a hippy” prejudices.

And yet … and yet this felt a little like a missed opportunity. The issue was more presentational than musical. From the moment everyone trooped onstage and launched into the album’s opening track Music Is Love, led by The Staves, it was clear that this was going to be a sonically high-end evening. If anything, there was a pristine precision on display that was rather more in focus than the smeary beauty of the original. That may have had something to do with the fact, St John told us later, that Crosby had paid all his musicians with a bag of weed.

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But as the first half of the show recreating If I Could Only Remember My Name proceeded without any introductions or context, the evening gathered a possibly unplanned solemnity. O’Maonlai brought a loose-jointed majesty to Traction in the Rain, the album’s prettiest song, and Ed Harcourt performed Cowboy Movie – Crosby’s self-mythologising retelling of the CSNY story – with a fierce intensity. But it all felt a little, well, churchy.

This became all the more apparent in the second half – devoted to highlights of the Crosby songbook – when everyone loosened up, started talking and began to give the impression of thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Margo Buchanan brought a bluesy swagger to Long Time Gone, Harcourt returned to offer up an even fiercer take on CSNY’s Almost Cut My Hair and The Staves reminded us of Crosby’s pop sensibility with their harmonies on The Byrds’ classic Why.

Kris Drever 

And when Michelle Willis, now resident in Scotland but who worked with “Cros” in his final years, came on and started talking about the man she knew you suddenly got a glimpse of another possible way to tell Crosby’s story, one that foregrounded his humanity (though it has to be said no one on the evening was up for talking about what a monumental pain in the ass the man could be, as he would often admit himself).

The highlight of the evening was a duet between Willis and Kris Drever on Things We Do For Love that was a smoky, whisky-flavoured delight.

By the end the affection everyone on stage had for Crosby’s work was very apparent. It was just that it was much more fun when they came out and admitted it.