Listen to this track by former Byrd, CSNY alum, and all around singer-songwriting rock survivor David Crosby. It’s “River Rise”, a single from his 2021 album For Free, his eighth and final solo album in his lifetime. That record was the last release in a run of albums that saw Crosby finding his musical mojo again. This creative resurgence came with the help of several collaborators, including his son James Raymond who was instrumental in enabling Crosby to increase his output and maintain an exceptional level of quality while doing so. Along with vocalist Michael McDonald, Raymond co-wrote this song with his dad while also serving as a primary musician and producer.

After a series of incidents and relationship breakdowns over the latter years of the 2010s, the chances of Crosby collaborating with any of his former musical partners were slim to none. Even he knew that. But in partial thanks to Twitter (RIP) and by other means, he was able to make several connections with contemporary musicians including Michael League, Becca Stevens, and Michelle Willis who were simpatico to Crosby’s refashioned melancholic folk rock with jazz overtones style. These younger players and writers that came to be known as The Lighthouse Band were among the new blood that helped Crosby to realize his sound to greatest effect, setting him on a course to a late-career renaissance.

By the time For Free came out at the end of an incredible five-album run between 2014 and 2021, Crosby had honed his vision for what he wanted his music to sound like. “River Rise” was the lead single; a culmination of a whole era that found him operating as a recording artist on his own terms. This was despite any baggage left over from his days in CSNY and any recent conflicts with former bandmates. In addition to that, this song acknowledges a key factor that drove his tremendous level of artistic output during the last stretch of his life; mortality itself.

In many interviews of the period from 2014’s Croz which was his first solo effort in twenty years by then, and then on to the string of full-length releases that followed it, David Crosby aimed his world-famous (or even infamous) candour at himself. He was a man in his mid-to-late seventies. He was a recovering heroin and cocaine addict. He was diabetic. He’d been a liver transplant recipient. He’d had multiple heart attacks and operations. How much time could he possibly have left? Crosby was firm in his belief that it was impossible to know, but also that the numbers were against him.

Even to the question put to him in the excellent 2019 documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name, “do you ever wonder why you are still alive?”, he answered with a gravely bewildered: “I don’t know. No idea, man.” With so much love for music giving him a sense of purpose, so many ideas for songs, and with the burgeoning belief that the true answer to that interview question was simply his passion for making music as his life’s purpose, Crosby’s course was clear; that he should write and record as much music as he could before the clock ran down and his time was up.

Importantly, this clear mandate didn’t result in music that sounds throwaway, hurried, or half-finished, but rather the opposite. This is largely thanks to his talented collaborators including his son. This song, “River Rise” is a sterling example of what they were able to do together, with pristinely timeless production and fine details in the arrangements being the order of the day. Crosby’s undiminished lead voice matched with Michael McDonald’s signature backing vocal sounds as if they’d sung together for decades. Balanced arrangements ensure that those voices are central and clearly heard, conveying lyrics that seem like a summing up of all of David Crosby’s motivations by the end of an exemplary run of creativity to win over critics and fans alike.

“River Rise” is an expression of gratitude as blended with Crosby’s trademark sense of defiance. The object of his defiance is his own eventual end. But it’s also railing against the worry that goes along with that, and against the anxious rush he may have felt at times to do what he felt driven to do, knowing that the end was likely coming soon. None of that impacts the centered contentedness of this song that expresses a poignant and wistful appreciation of the single transcendent moments we all get to experience if we take the time to notice we’re in them.

“The golden light surrounding
A sea of humanity
And the wind has its own language
Spoken by the trees
Diamonds shine forever
Underneath the twilight sky
As the day grows dim
I start to believe always one more try”

~ “River Rise”, David Crosby

As fractious as his relationships with his former bandmates in CSNY and The Byrds had become, along with his tendency to speak first and be sensitive second, Crosby’s voice in this song and on others during this period communicates a high level of self-knowledge. It also reveals the heightened senses of a man who knows that he is in the twilight of his own life. This emphasizes his acknowledgement of the natural world’s fine details that he will soon cease to experience. This isn’t a source of despair but rather one of great appreciation for what his life has allowed him to see and do and create. That makes this song about mortality that much more life-affirming.

While he making this late career run of albums, David Crosby became something of a social media raconteur, regaling audiences of multiple generations with stories of his career, peppered with the snarky remarks and blunt opinions for which he was well-known. Speaking of “blunt opinions”, Crosby regularly judged the quality (or lack thereof) of his followers’ rolled joints shared via images on social media platforms. He even had a semi-regular advice series hosted by Rolling Stone called Ask Croz, on which he gave some pretty on-point insights on a variety of subjects.

But on January 18, 2023, the river finally rose to take him. By then, his purpose in making great music with almost literally his last breath was more than realized, with that music ensuring that his voice will be heard long after his departure.

For more on the For Free album, read this review on the NME on which the themes of the songs and Crosby’s own insights help to shine a light on his creative state of mind during that time.

Also, have a listen to this 31-minute interview with David Crosby on NPR conducted around the time For Free came out. The conversation finds him reflecting on his career, his motivations for writing, recording, and performing, the state of the music industry, and even a story about Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen who also contributed a song to the record. As a highlight, Crosby hints at his work on yet another set of two records which we can only hope will become posthumous releases.

Finally, check out the David Crosby with The Lighthouse Band Tiny Desk Concert filmed in 2019. It’s a sample of the kind of sound they crafted together to help make Crosby’s creative output what it is from the middle 2010s to his final days; harmony-drenched, atmospheric, dreamlike, wistful, but also fierce.

Enjoy!

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