David Crosby is a busy man.
After going two decades without a new album, he released four in the past five years and is working on yet another. He records and tours alternately with two backing bands — one primarily acoustic and folk-oriented, the other a plugged-in rock lineup.
The reason for this burst of activity is quite plain.
“I don’t feel like I have a lot of time left,” said Crosby, 77, whose past battles with addiction and current health problems are well known. “I feel the pressure to use my time the absolute best I possibly can. That definitely means making music.”
He will play at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts in Virginia Beach on Wednesday. He is touring in support of last fall’s acoustic album, “Here if You Listen,” but he is on the road with the more rocking band that backed him on 2017’s “Sky Trails.”
The band includes his son, James Raymond, on keyboards. Raymond was born in 1962 and put up for adoption. Three decades later, he sought out his biological father and found Crosby, who was thrilled to finally meet his son.
“I knew he existed, but you can’t track a child down unless the kid is looking for you first,” Crosby said. “When he got to be about 30, married and about to have a kid himself, that’s when he reached out to me, and it was the most wonderful thing.
“Those meet-ups can really go badly if one of the two brings too much baggage, or if it’s about, ‘How come you left me and mom? Were we not good enough?’ He didn’t do that. He gave me a clean shot and let me earn my way into his life. He’s one of the kindest cats, and he’s a better musician than I am, so I’m thrilled.”
Crosby has a substantial resume — a two-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a founding member of both the seminal folk rock band The Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash. As a songwriter, guitarist and singer, Crosby has made music history.
A reflective documentary on his career, “David Crosby: Remember My Name,” was a hit at festivals this year and will be released in theaters over the summer. It is a warts-and-all depiction of a gruff but gentle musical godfather.
The anecdotes from his years with CSN include the time he enraged bandmates Stephen Stills and Graham Nash by cutting a recording session short because his crack pipe had broken.
His freebase habit landed him in a Texas prison for almost a year in the mid-1980s, but he emerged clean and sober. Since then he has had a liver transplant — which created some controversy because of the wide perception that the damage to his liver was self-inflicted — and was diagnosed with diabetes. He has problems with both shoulders (“One of them hurts quite a bit,” he said) but says that on the whole he feels very lucky.
Crosby, Stills and Nash enjoyed a lucrative run on the classic rock amphitheater circuit, but Crosby and Nash — whose long friendship was more like a brotherhood — had an acrimonious falling out over Nash’s tell-all 2013 memoir “Wild Tales: A Rock and Roll Life.” What Nash considered candor, Crosby deemed a betrayal. The two no longer speak, and by all accounts there will be no further CSN reunion.
Ask about his former bands and he replies simply but firmly that he doesn’t like to think about the past.
“I’m a peculiar guy that way,” he said. “What I’m doing today, tomorrow, next week, next year — that’s what I’m focused on. People expect because I was in big groups that I’m still trying to live there and feel like a big rock star. I don’t. Not me. That’s not what I do.”
What he does, regardless of which band he’s with, is put on a show focused on songs, not theatrics. Don’t expect costume changes or fancy light shows from the guy who calls himself Croz. He looks at the classic rock bands doing nostalgic “greatest hits” shows at amphitheaters, and he can’t relate.
“You see them out there, dressed to the nines with stacked heels and long hair, prancing around the stage — it’s not dignified,” he said. “For me it’s always been about the music and the words. I’m trying to take you on little voyages, little adventures. I like that. I’m not into show for the sake of show.”
These days he works with musicians half his age, which seems to invigorate him. Michelle Willis, who plays in both of his touring bands, told Rolling Stone: “David is a 20-year-old at heart, if not a 10-year-old. He’s got this childlike excitement. I think we all relate to that part of him.”
Crosby said those younger collaborators have inspired his creativity, prompting his recent spell of prolific songwriting. He won’t say when he will release his next album, but expect it soon. Several songs are already recorded.
After many years adrift, he said he has finally learned to focus intently on the things that matter to him — primarily, family and making music. Asked how he’s doing he replies, “I’m a happy guy, man,” and he sounds sincere.
A big part of that contentment, he said, is knowing how easily he could have missed out on all of it. He worries that he doesn’t have a lot of years left, but he is especially grateful for the time he has had.
“I think about that a lot,” he said. “I have dodged bullets. That’s the truth. I do regret wasting a bunch of time, but that’s part of what’s driving me. I’ve been incredibly lucky, man. Jeez, I’ve been so close to death so many times — and I’m so not dead!”
If you go
What: David Crosby and Friends
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, 201 Market St., Virginia Beach
Tickets: $49.50-$99.50, 757-385-2787, sandlercenter.org
