By Dave Read, July 29, 2025 performance – Emmylou Harris and Graham Nash delivered a wonderfully entertaining evening of music in the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood, a venue they each first played fifty years ago. It was a treat to see and hear such seasoned performers in full command of the musical artistry that carried them to fame in the ’60s and ’70s.
Nash performed seated because of a recent fall in NYC – “but, I didn’t fall on my voice,” he said before leading his band through a set of fourteen songs, with an emphasis on his time with Crosby Stills and Nash + Young. Unlike so many aged performers whose insecurity spoils their stagecraft, Nash interspersed songs with amusing anecdotes. His band included the multi-instrumentalists Adam Minkoff and Zach Djanikian, and keyboardist Todd Caldwell.
If the performance of Mr. Nash and band was primarily a welcome and vigorous visit to earlier decades, Ms. Emmylou Harris’s set showed us that time has a way of standing still, as it appears to have for her. Wrapped in a cloud of white locks, she remains a presence as she did when introduced to the ages in the closing segment of The Last Waltz, singing Evangeline with The Band. Accompanied by her Red Dirt Band, which now includes John Prine’s bassist, Ms. Harris treated the audience to a survey of her diverse repertoire.
And she is an engaging hostess, telling of an early interest in theatre that involved Tanglewood and also referencing the Down East humor of Marshall Dodge, which got no reaction, sadly, because, among other reasons, the Berkshires ain’t quite Down East.
Graham Nash and Emmylou Harris at Tanglewood setlists, July 29, 2025.
Graham Nash
Wasted on the Way
Marrakesh Express
Military Madness
I Used to Be a King
Simple Man
Immigration Man
Love the One You’re With
Better Days
Bus Stop
Just a Song Before I Go
Our House
Encores: Teach Your Children, Woodstock,Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
Emmylou Harris
Birds – with Graham Nash
Easy from Now On
Orphan Girl
Making Believe
Red Dirt Girl
Gulf Coast Highway
One of These Days
Kern River
Right Now
Wheels
Ooh Las Vegas
Prayer in Open D
Michelangelo
Goin’ Back to Harlan
Together Again
Save the Last Dance for Me
Rose of Cimarron
Encore: Boulder to Birmingham