Recap Crosby, Stills & Nash at Riverside Theater

Walking into Riverside Theater for Saturday’s Crosby, Stills & Nash concert, there was a mist hovering above the audience like an apparition. Was I walking through the fog of time to 1969, when CSN first strummed their acoustic guitars for starry-eyed idealists who forsook their parents to protest the war, smoke the weed, and do it in the back of red Chevy vans?

Nope, it was just incense, though hearing The Moody Blues’ “Nights In White Satin” blasting over the P.A. really did create the illusion of being transported to another time—or at least into an aging hippie’s basement. A CSN concert practically begs for jokes about graying ponytails and wrinkled, sagging moneymakers shaking it one more time to “Marrakesh Express.” And, yeah, there was plenty of both Saturday night. But just as the stoners of today still enjoy burnin’ some incense after burnin’ one, CSN’s music remains weirdly contemporary, because of its ubiquity on radio and influence on the critically and commercially thriving indie-folk movement that includes Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, and Eau Claire’s Bon Iver.

The trio—playing without Neil Young, who likely would have helped cinch a gig at the Bradley Center had he been there—came to Milwaukee on its 40th-anniversary tour, which was just as good of an excuse as any considering the group hasn’t put out a new studio album in 10 years. “New” material Saturday was mostly represented by “never before performed” covers of ’60s chestnuts like The Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” and Bob Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country,” which sounded good but didn’t exactly make a convincing case for CSN still being a vital creative force. Then again, Graham Nash’s painfully mawkish new protest song “In Your Name”—where “a simple man” prays to the Lord about all the bad people killin’ all the good people—suggested that creativity can be overrated.

Even more amazing than the sturdiness of CSN’s best music is how little of that music there actually is. The group’s reputation is based almost entirely on its first two albums, 1969’s Crosby, Stills & Nash and (with Young) 1970’s Déjà Vu. Scattered hits from subsequent albums like “Just A Song Before I Go” and “Southern Cross” were represented in the set, but this 40th-anniversary show really was mainly a tribute to music that was made four decades ago.

And those songs are still pretty great, even if the performances occasionally wavered. Opening with the stunning “Helplessly Hoping,” CSN’s impeccable harmony vocals were anything but, due in large part to the sad deterioration of Stephen Stills’ voice. Stills appeared to struggle with catching his breath on the mic throughout the night, though he might have just been dropping forgotten lyrics. He subsequently left much of the singing to Nash and David Crosby—as well as the group’s backing band—expressing himself better via a blazing guitar solo on the Buffalo Springfield favorite “Rock And Roll Woman.”

While the svelte Nash is in the best physical shape of the three, the MVP of the night was Crosby, whose voice sounded shockingly well preserved on an ecstatically well-received “Guinnevere” and the corny guilty pleasure “Almost Cut My Hair.” Maybe those mists really were a harbinger of a revival—or perhaps just a really good buzz.