Crosby Stills & Nash Working On New Album With Rick Rubin

Crosby Stills & Nash are working on a new album of cover songs with producer Rick Rubin, known as much for guiding country legend Johnny Cash's later years as for his work with numerous rock acts such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beastie Boys

"He's an amazing man," Nash said of the bearded music guru he's nicknamed the "Maha-Rubin." "He's a combination of somebody who has very, very little idea of how the technology works - in terms of faders and studio stuff - but he knows about songs. He knows exactly what he wants to hear when. (He says) 'No, no, no - we should go to the chorus! Let's go to the chorus there. OK, let's try that one a little slower. That's it - there you go!' He's really a musician, although he doesn't play music."

Some of the cover songs - which include the Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday," James Taylor's "Close Your Eyes," Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" and the Grateful Dead's "Uncle John's Band" - are being "road-tested" on this CSN tour during an acoustic set that opens each show.

"When we started this project with Rubin, I went to my friend Joel Bernstein, who's our archivist, and I said, 'OK, here's what we need to do - I want 50 songs with beautiful melodies and words that mean something that can be CSN-ed to death.' And we came up with 50," Nash said. "I went back to the boys and cut it down to 30. The three of us went over to Rick Rubin's house and we cut it down to, like, 20. Now we have about 20 songs that we all really love."