I have been a neglectful blogger so to my one follower out there, my apologies but here is how my summer vacation is going (so far).

I attended Stephen Stills at City Winery a couple of weeks ago. It was advertised as a solo show but Stephen did have a band with him. which was a good thing. While I would have gone irregardless, Stephen Stills’  voice is pretty rough and ragged these days and on a bad night he struggles. On this night at City Winery Stephen was in good spirits (except for a few rants about cell phone video) and he was able to hit the high notes as well as he can presently. 

One great thing about a Stephen Stills performance  is that despite the current vocal shortcomings. Stephen Stills’ long history with the audience has everyone in the venue rooting for him; when he hits the difficult note, or comes close, the audience erupts in applause. 

The last time I saw Stills without Crosby and Nash he was with the apparent one-off The Rides with Kenny Wayne Shepherd in Westbury. The Rides was a blues fueled project where Stephen shared the stage somewhat equally with the other players.

Both shows had Stills playing nice renditions of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World”.

My “Peaches Records and Tapes” 1978 CSN Walk of Fame T-shirt was a big hit with random people in the City Winery crowd and my daughter said it was the best show we’ve seen at City Winery, which  is high praise indeed.

In June I spent a week at Bolton Landing , New York on Lake George where I finally got to read the Gregg Allman autobiography and Neil Young’s  Waging Heavy Peace. I found both books interesting and worth reading but if I had to choose one, the Neil Young book, which he wrote in his own, was a far more interesting read as Neil jumped back and forth between time periods and topics while keeping the narrative moving forward to provide great incite to his history, creative process, and motivations.

Treetop Flyer

Rock on

GQ