CSNY ‘Our House’ at The Parker is a family affair

As a family-and-friends celebration of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Our House” is not your typical tribute show.

That’s especially true for James Raymond, the band’s keyboard player and vocalist — and the son of David Crosby.

But for Raymond, the tour’s visit to The Parker in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday, July 20, resonates, much like his father’s high tenor, with the extra-sweet dynamic of the song that gives the tour its name. For it was here that Crosby found his life-altering muse, his beloved Mayan, a 59-foot schooner that he sailed across the Caribbean, the Panama Canal and the Pacific for nearly 50 years and that graced the cover of the 1977 album, “CSN.”

And it was on the Mayan, docked in the city, that the harmonic magic of the legendary supergroup set sail. There, on a night in 1968, Crosby and Stephen Stills wrote their first song together, the classic “Wooden Ships.”

“There’s so many multipronged connections to South Florida,” says Raymond, who didn’t learn of his famous birth father until he was in his 30s and collaborated with him for decades afterward. “It had a very special place in his heart. He felt very at home there. I could feel that when we would go to South Florida to do gigs. It just brought him back to that really happy time in his life when he was making some really great music.”

At one of those shows, Crosby’s last in Fort Lauderdale in 2019, he spoke about his seminal period in South Florida. As part of the nascent ’60s music scene in Coconut Grove, Crosby met and “discovered” Joni Mitchell before becoming one of the most resounding voices of his generation. Later, while recording in Miami, he met another consequential woman, Jan Dance, a Criterion Studios receptionist who would become his wife of 36 years.

“It was in Lauderdale, just off the Intracoastal, on one of those islands. That’s where ‘Wooden Ships’ was written, right in the main cabin of the boat,” Crosby told the Sun Sentinel before another SoFlo performance, in 2018.

Joining Raymond on the family side of the family-and-friends tribute will also be Neil Young’s half-sister, Astrid Young.

“It’s not your typical tribute act,” says Young, a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter in her own right who will open the show with a solo set before being joined by the tribute band. “Most of these folks were in David Crosby’s touring band. After he passed away [in 2023], they did a memorial show with a few special guests. It went really well and they decided to keep it going.”

Pared down to a semi-acoustic/drumless configuration for the tour’s Florida leg, the band also features Jeff Pevar, Steve Postell, Michelle Willis and Berry Duane Oakley.

“I think we’re really going to be able to present this music in a way that’s not been done before,” says Raymond. “We’re going to stay pretty faithful to the albums. That’s part of the fun of it for us — trying to use those records as a jumping-off point and then just see where we can take it from there.”

As for which of those records will be used, in light of CSNY’s various musical-chairs incarnations, Raymond says: “There are no rules. We’ve got stuff from the Crosby-Nash catalog. We’re talking about doing some solo Crosby stuff and some solo Stills songs. And Astrid is going to be doing some of Neil’s solo stuff.”

Young, however, is the only artist who’ll perform her own material.

“I was really thrilled that they asked me to do that. I played on a lot of Neil’s records and I toured with him for many years and, of course, I knew all the guys since I was a kid,” she says.

And after those many years, Young’s upcoming album features a reciprocal harmonica solo by Neil Young.

“It’s the first time Neil’s played on my stuff. I’ve played on plenty of his, so it was time to pay up,” says Young, who shares the same father as her half-brother.

Though both Young and Raymond have performed extensively with their famous family members, the interplay of genetics presents a fascinating counterpoint to their personal musical journeys.

For example, Raymond, who was adopted after his birth in 1962, started playing piano when he was 6. But it wasn’t until he was an adult that he even learned he’d come from music.