Back when FM radio still ruled summer nights, I’d often end up on a beach with friends, sand stuck to our ankles and salt drying on our skin. Somebody always had a cooler filled with beer. Someone else had a guitar with half-worn strings. But most songs came from the boombox near the campfire. Long after the rowdy singalong anthems faded, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young would drift across the ocean darkness and settle over the firelight.
Conversations softened into silence.
“Our House.” “Teach Your Children.”
Life was good, even if the beer wasn’t.
Graham Nash, August 7th, Wilson Center
Now Graham Nash, one member of that band, is bringing those songs to Wilmington.
The two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is scheduled to perform Aug. 1, 2026, at the Wilson Center at Cape Fear Community College, a venue that feels almost built for the kind of intimacy Nash’s music now carries.
(Below) Crosby, Stills, and Nash perform the song “Just A Song Before I Go” live at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, 1989.
The Long Echo of Laurel Canyon
Graham Nash has been part of American music long enough to feel less like a touring artist and more like a surviving thread from another cultural era. First with the Hollies during the British Invasion, then with Crosby, Stills & Nash and later Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, his harmonies helped shape the Laurel Canyon movement that emerged from Southern California in the late 1960s.
That music carried a strange mix of looseness and precision. They were songs about love, protest, homes, highways, politics, loneliness. Open chords under open skies.
Old-timers talk about Laurel Canyon now like it was mythology. In reality, it was a loose circle of musicians crowded into hillside houses above Los Angeles, writing songs listeners would treat like their own memories. Nash’s voice was central to that sound, warm and unmistakably human even when the harmonies soared.
You can still hear it decades later.
On the drive home last week, “Wasted on the Way” came through the speakers just after sunset. The windows were cracked. Carolina humidity curled into the car. The song sounded older now, but somehow sharper too. Age does that to certain lyrics. They stop floating past you and start looking directly at you.
(Below) David Crosby and Graham Nash perform “Teach Your Children.” The song was written by Nash in 1968 while with the Hollies. It first appeared on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 album Déjà Vu.
Expected Graham Nash Set List Brings Crosby, Stills & Nash Classics
Recent shows suggest Wilmington audiences will likely hear a career-spanning set pulled from the Hollies, Crosby, Stills & Nash, CSNY, and Nash’s solo catalog.
Expect Nash’s set list to include:
- “Our House”
- “Teach Your Children”
- “Wasted on the Way”
- “Just a Song Before I Go”
- “Bus Stop”
- “Immigration Man”
He’ll be joined by longtime collaborators Todd Caldwell, Adam Minkoff, and Zack Djanikian.
There’s a quiet risk in seeing artists tied so closely to your own youth. Sometimes the songs feel preserved behind glass. Other times they breathe differently, slower maybe, but deeper.
Graham Nash Wilmington Concert Tickets and Event Details
Graham Nash performs Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. at the Wilson Center, 703 N. Third St. in Wilmington. Tickets are available through the Wilson Center box office and authorized ticket sellers.
A voice from another era. A seated theater by the river. Songs that survived long enough to grow old beside the people listening to them.
Some music fades into the background of a life. Other songs keep finding their way back in.
Nash’s songs always know the road back.
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