The story behind Stephen Stills' forthcoming CD, Stephen Stills: Just Roll Tape sounds like something out of an episode of Antiques Road Show.
"This is a great story," declared the superstar singer-composer-guitarist during a recent phone call in advance of tonight's gig at the Collingswood Scottish Rite Theater.
"It's from a session of demos that I did April 26, 1968," said Stills. "Basically I needed to get all the songs that I'd written for the first Crosby Stills & Nash album, and for my first solo album, down in some form or another.
"So I just walked in after a session I had done with Judy Collins, I think, and I bought (the time in) the studio after she was gone and said, "Just roll tape.' "
When the session was done, Stills exited with a cassette-tape copy in hand, but left the master tape behind in the studio. Subsequently, he continued, "The studio went out of business and they threw all of their tapes in a Dumpster.
"Before the studio turned into a restaurant or whatever it became, this band was renting the room to rehearse in. This was in the '70s or early '80s. And this guy sees a Dumpster full of tapes. And he goes, "Can I look through those?' So he finds (the master reel) and he kept it."
As fate would have it, the person who found the tape decided to store it in his basement where, said Stills, "it was automatically cold and dry."
Attempts to contact Stills were unsuccessful, so the tape's owner decided to reach out to Stills' bandmate, Graham Nash.
"He finally got it to Graham, and Graham took it to the studio without telling me, and just said, "OK we're not even gonna bicker. We're gonna put it on the machine, and put the digital recorder on, and we're gonna just press play.'
"And the thing went off without a hitch. The tape was perfectly preserved. The album cover, as a matter of fact, is a tape box."
Just Roll Tape is the latest project from the 62-year-old Stills, who has been pretty busy the past couple of years, professionally and personally.
In 2005, he released Man Alive!, his first solo album in 14 years. Last year, he reunited with Nash, David Crosby and Neil Young for a high-profile tour that kicked off at Camden's Tweeter Center.
Perhaps most importantly, though, is his latest foray into fatherhood. Stills -- who has four other children, three of them grown -- and his current wife, Kristen, have a 2-year-old son, Oliver, who has caused the music-industry lifer to reorder his priorities.
"I really got to be home, I'm not missing this baby," he said. "I'm old enough to say "No, I'm not working for eight weeks.' I work for four, come home for two; I'll go out for another four. Do three different sets of those and we're fine."
Stills' current tour, which kicked off Thursday in Reading, Pa., will find him doing a career retrospective, but not necessarily sticking to his best-known material.
"I do the ones that come easily, that are pertinent today," he said. "I'm not gonna sit there and do "Wooden Ships' acoustic like I do on (Just Roll Tape).
"I have a little quartet so I can play, but I do 35-45 minutes by myself, based on this new record. Kind of whatever I think of. I got a bunch of lyrics (on a TelePrompter) so I can remember them, so I can pull up all this really worthy stuff that I wrote, and not get lost and look like an idiot."
Stills added those at tonight's show will see a side of his personality that is seldom-witnessed at concerts when he's sharing the stage with the rather verbose Crosby.
"Because Crosby isn't there, I actually get to talk," he offered with a hearty laugh. "It turns out I can actually be funny and tell a joke. There's nothing more fun than making people laugh.
"And when I get warmed up, it's probably the most gratifying thing about it."
