The band David Crosby called the best in America: “They just knock my ass in the dirt”
David Crosby tended to have a much higher standard for what he expected out of rock and roll whenever he listened.
He didn’t sign up to be just another fairweather pop-rock artist when he first joined The Byrds, and even until the day he died, he was looking for people who were doing something a little more interesting than the average bluesy song or whatever straightforward hits were turning up on the radio. But despite having a lot more caveats than the average musician, there were more than a few bands that were up to his challenge when they first started making music.
If you wanted to really get into Crosby’s head, though, it all came back to the kind of music that he started listening to as a child. He didn’t want to have strictly rock and roll as a part of his diet, and while he did have a lot of love for the early bands like The Beatles, there was a lot more jazz vocabulary that was sprinkled into his diet as well. He could appreciate someone like Django Reinhardt the same way that everyone else was appreciating Chuck Berry, but there was also a lot more for him to discover when he started turning towards folk music.
Bob Dylan was writing the words that shook people up whenever he made one of his songs, but when looking at the kind of musical heights he saw in Joni Mitchell, it was like he didn’t need to search for talent anymore. She was far more curious about where music would take her whenever she worked outside the norm, and a lot of Crosby’s favourite acts after that were all about putting more sophisticated harmonies into their music.
After all, that’s what he had been doing when working on a lot of Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s vocal lines, so it made sense for him to expect the same thing out of his other favourite acts. Steely Dan were already bending the norms when it came to how complex a hit song could be, but when looking at the new school of players shortly before his death, he felt that I’m With Her were some of the best musicians that were still working in the business these days.
Which checks out, given what Crosby was looking for. He never forgot about his folksy roots, and when listening to any records by the folk rock quartet, it was all about taking the same vocabulary Crosby was known for and putting a little bit more progressive pieces into it, even going so far as to go back to traditional folk and gospel music when sculpting some of their classic tunes.
Crosby still had love for more of the classics, but I’m With Her were the perfect encapsulation of what great American music was supposed to sound like, saying, “I’m crazy about I’m With Her. They just knock my ass in the dirt. They might be the best band in the country right now.” But that’s only the beginning of what Crosby was looking for when hearing music from the next generation.
He still had a great love for songwriters like Jason Isbell that could write vivid character songs, but there were also bands like Snarky Puppy that were satisfying his need for more complex stuff. But when looking at I’m With Her, it’s hard to really find too many dents in their sound, especially when they reach for those soaring harmonies and throw in a little bit of progressive pieces into their songs.
This isn’t the kind of music that was going to rile people up the same way that Crosby’s bandmates used to when they sang songs like ‘Ohio’, but that was never their intention, either. This was music that was meant to have a lot more on its mind than traditional rock and roll, and as long as there were musicians like that out in the world, Crosby was convinced that the genre would be in a good place long after he was gone.
