Culture
Graham Nash brings ‘More Evenings of Songs & Stories’ tour to Akron
By: Emily Votaw
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AKRON, Ohio (WOUB) – Graham Nash brought his More Evenings of Songs & Stories tour to the Goodyear Theater (1201 Market Street) Tuesday night, moving through more than six decades of music with a nimble trio—Todd Caldwell on keys, Adam Minkoff shifting between bass, guitar, and drums, and Zach Djanikian on guitar, mandolin, and percussion.
Rather than following a strict chronology, the setlist was shaped the night around emotional continuity. They re-exposed songs like photographs —coaxing old images from their fragile emulsions, adjusting for light, shadow, and feeling.
Songs like Military Madness and In Your Name delivered the sort of matter-of-fact political commentary Nash is known for—laying bare the broad, brutal realities of human cruelty and expressing a militant desire to work towards the common good.
Simultaneously, selections like Our House and Simple Man offered glimpses into the quiet rhythms of Nash’s inner world—moments of both domestic bliss as well as heartbreak, both tied to a desire for the sort of ordinary happiness we all want.
Throughout the night, time operated like a fifth band member—and the audience, a sixth. When you’re working with a discography so broad, it goes without saying that listeners will bring their own versions of them right into the venue, shaped by radio play, personal memory, and the slow drift of decades.
Some moments felt wholly personal, shaped by subjective experience. Others landed with undeniable force—like the torrential opening chords of Ohio. Everyone in the room had heard that riff before, yet it roared with renewed clarity and weight. The sound alone pulled the moment back into focus—its history, its sorrow, its immediacy—all of it impossible to ignore. A reminder of how easily the past fades, and how powerful it can be when it returns with full force.
Songs & Stories is about nostalgia, yes—but it reaches for something more lasting. It’s made up of the most valuable kind of history: the first-hand, human account, shaped not just by public reckoning and political unrest, but equally by private tenderness, domestic routine, and small, enduring moments of personal clarity.
Nash’s performance reminded us to looked backward, to a past scarred by injustice, protest, and loss—but it also reminded us that beauty lives alongside all of that, often growing most vigorously in what may appear to be the most ordinary places.