According to Billboard, Crosby, Stills & Nash is planning on recording a collection of covers with producer Rick Rubin:

“Rick Rubin’s a brilliant man,” Graham Nash tells Billboard.com, “and what he wants is an album with no CSN songs. He wants to do an album of all the songs we love, all the songs we wish we’ve written. It’s brilliant from this point of view because we usually wait five years to record an album. This way there’s no pressure.”

Nash says he, David Crosby and Stephen Stills have had “many discussions” with Rubin about the project, whittling the proposed list of songs from 60 down to a current 20, which the trio is rehearsing after sound checks during its summer tour. Nash declines to name specific songs but acknowledges most would be considered well-known.

Let’s hope Rubin can remind Stills what a good guitar tone sounds like, a little thing he apparently forgot sometime in approximately 1976. Their voices still sound great, but let’s hope this doesn’t turn into some kind of Rod Stewart/Barry Manilow “Great American Songbook” horseshit…

MP3: Stephen Stills – “Wooden Ships” (demo) from Just Roll Tape: April 26th, 1968. Stream several more songs at Stills’ site.