{"product_id":"david-crosby_for-free_2024_uni","title":"For Free","description":"On his new album “For Free,” David Crosby shares the latest offering from a life dedicated to the pure and potent alchemy of music. Arriving just one month before his 80th birthday, For Free finds the folk-rock legend continuing to draw from the enormous surge of creativity he’s experienced since the making of his acclaimed 2016 album “Lighthouse,” this time collaborating with the likes of Michael McDonald, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen. With a transcendent quality that sits somewhere between poetry, prayer, and wild rock-and-roll, ‘For Free’ once again reveals Crosby’s rare gift for transmitting essential truths with undeniable warmth and a profound sense of wonder. Recorded with his son James Raymond (a multi-instrumentalist who also served as the album’s producer), ‘For Free’ features a number of musicians who joined Crosby on 2017’s ‘Sky Trails,’ including saxophonist Steve Tavaglione and drummer Steve DiStanislao. While much of the album encompasses the intricate textures and signature complex grooves of the Sky Trails Band sound, its title comes from Crosby’s beautifully sparse cover of a Joni Mitchell classic he’s returned to several times over the years. “Joni is the greatest living singer\/songwriter, and ‘For Free’ is one of her simplest,” notes Crosby, who’s joined by Jarosz on the track. “It’s one of my favorite songs because I love what it says about the spirit of music and what compels you to play.” True to the original version, “For Free” unfolds in a delicate piano arrangement, with Jarosz and Crosby’s vocals channeling awe and heartache for a haunting effect. Following up ‘Here If You Listen,’ a 2018 album created with Michael League of Snarky Puppy, Michelle Willis, and Becca Stevens, who also collaborated with Crosby on ‘Lighthouse-For Free,’ opens with “River Rise”: a majestic and massively uplifting number co-written with Raymond and McDonald, who also lends his iconic vocals to the song’s soaring harmonies. “’River Rise’ came out of a desire to write something very evocative of California, but almost with a country song perspective—something that speaks to the empowerment of every man or every woman,” Raymond explains. In a particularly significant turn for Crosby, ‘For Free’ also includes a track written by Fagen expressly for the album. “Steely Dan is my favorite band and I’ve admired Donald for a long time, so it was a kick for us,” he says. A richly detailed portrait of outlaws, angels, and drugstore cowboys, “Rodriguez For A Night” merges Fagen’s sophisticated storytelling with Crosby’s warm and authoritative vocal presence, ultimately creating a glorious collision of worlds. Crosby calls on another friend for the album’s striking cover art, using a portrait Joan Baez painted of him. As the most recent accomplishment in an unprecedented career—one that has included co-founding such culture-defining bands as The Byrds and Crosby, Stills \u0026 Nash (both of whom have been inducted into the Rock \u0026 Roll Hall of Fame); collaborating with James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Elton John, and Carole King and entering the illustrious Songwriters Hall of Fame—‘For Free’ draws much of its power from the rarefied chemistry between Crosby and Raymond. “Can you imagine what it’s like to connect with your son and find out that he’s unbelievably talented—a great composer, a great poet, and a really good songwriter and musician all around?” Crosby asks. “We’re such good friends and we work so well together, and we’ll each do whatever it takes to create the highest quality songs we possibly can.” For ‘For Free’’s closing track, Crosby selected a track written solely by Raymond, the gently devastating “I Won’t Stay for Long.” Inspired by Marcel Camus’s 1959 film Black Orpheus—a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and his attempt to bring his wife Eurydice back from the dead—the song centers on an exquisite vocal performance from Crosby, who extracts a whole world of emotion from each finely chiseled lyric (e.g., “I face the grain line\/Of a thousand-year storm\/I don’t know if I’m dying\/Or about to be born”). “‘I Won’t Stay for Long’ is my favorite song on the record—I’ve listened to it 100 times by now and it still reaches out and grabs me, it’s so painfully beautiful,” Crosby says. “I ended up getting a pretty amazing vocal on it, because it meant so much to me that I sang the hell out of it. One thing James and I both believe is that songs are an art form and a treasure, so when a song’s as good as that one, we’re going to give it everything we’ve got.”","brand":"David Crosby","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55393757856088,"sku":null,"price":23981100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0898\/4943\/0360\/files\/4050538689952.jpg?v=1770747784","url":"https:\/\/vinyles.com\/en-us\/products\/david-crosby_for-free_2024_uni","provider":"Vinyles.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}