Crosby, Nash ... and young

Before singing the Crosby, Stills and Nash song “Long Time Gone” on Sunday at the Troubadour, Graham Nash and David Crosby joked about trying to re-create slow-motion video effects on stage.

Nash quipped, “We have found a way to stop time.”

Crosby, with a plaintive expression, said, “I wish we had.”

Well, it was a weekend of anti-war protests, and Crosby was singing at the Troubadour, so it might be worth checking the calendar just in case. But there were telltale signs that it was 2003 inside the club where Crosby co-founded the Byrds in 1963.

For one thing, Crosby was performing with his son, James Raymond, who was born in 1962 but was given for adoption and didn’t return to Crosby’s life until the mid-’90s.

Since then, Crosby, Raymond -- a keyboard player and singer -- and guitarist Jeff Pevar have performed as CPR. For this concert benefiting West Hollywood City Council candidate Lauren Meister, Nash joined to make it CNPR. And when Crosby spoke in opposition to a possible war in Iraq, it wasn’t Vietnam-era protest material that he chose to musically illustrate his stance but rather “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” rendered by the quartet in gorgeous, earnest harmony.

Most of the time they stayed away from politics, filling time between songs with some asides about that past era of free love, altered minds and youthful abandon. It all went down very well with an audience whose cross-generational make-up mirrored not just CNPR but also second-billed John McEuen’s set, in which the sly Nitty Gritty Dirt Band strings wizard was joined by his son, Nathan, who harmonized beautifully with two young women named Fanny Penny and Tahkus.

CNPR did, though, finish the evening with Nash’s 1971 song “Chicago,” evoking the earlier, volatile time of anti-war protests. “We can change the world,” sang Nash, which today sounds as wistful as it does defiant.