Carrying on, CSN&Y faces forward, looks back

From Correspondent Dennis Michael

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young have reunited for their first tour in years

(CNN) -- For a group renowned for vocal harmony, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young has experienced its share of discord. The quartet that formed in the late 1960s -- just in time to include in its debut tour a music festival at a farm outside Woodstock, New York -- has endured splits, reunions, drug addictions and jail time by various members.

But that's all history now. The four have reunited for their first tour in years.

The quartet made up of David Crosby (vocals, guitar), Stephen Stills (bass, guitar, vocals), Graham Nash (guitar, keyboard, vocals), and Neil Young (guitar, vocals) held a concert Monday night in Oakland, California. They played old hits and new songs in only the 26th time the four have performed live together.

After a long layoff from playing together, says Nash, the four are getting into tune again.

"Obviously we're still working kinks out," he says. "We're still trying to telepathically or psychically link on stage so that when Neil does something we know where he is going, or when David does something we know where he's going. All those things have to be re-learned, you know. But it's going very well."

The tour began taking shape when Young, who was working with Stills on a Buffalo Springfield box set, learned that his old band mates, performing as Crosby, Stills & Nash, were going into the studio -- without the backing of a label deal.

"Neil ... realized that we were in the studio purely for music's sake, not because some record company was saying, 'You owe us an album,'" says Nash.

"The phone rings in the studio," Stills says. "It says, 'Neil Young for Stephen ... Hi, I'm in San Luis Obispo in Black Beauty (Young's '47 Buick), and I'll be there in about four hours."

Young says the band is playing better music than ever

Thus the band was back, and the road beckoned.

While the old material is still a favorite of fans, some of the best audience reaction on this tour has been coming from songs from the new album. Its name: "Looking Forward."

Crosby says the name is apt. "We know we're grown-up guys, and we have families and stuff, but we've taken that as a positive source of art, rather than as a detriment," he says. "You know, how we feel about the stuff that we've learned over the lives that we've had, and how we feel about our families. That's where we're writing from, and it's a good thing."

Band members have new experiences from which to draw. Nash seems recovered from a boating accident last year that broke both his legs, and Crosby and Melissa Etheridge recently revealed that he was the donor father for the child Etheridge has with her domestic partner, Julie Cypher.

Despite those changes, say the performers, their joy in making music remains constant.

"We see each other out there," says Young, "and we're getting down, and we're playing better than we ever have, and we know we have a lot of untapped reserves and a lot of untapped potential that we've never reached before, and we know what we've got."

To which Crosby adds a chorus: "The truth is, man, I think actually our best stuff may be still ahead of us here."

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