The ’70s Revisited, by an Insider/Survivor

Steve Postell, Member of The Immediate Family, Goes Solo on Record and Helps Pay Tribute to CSNY in Santa Barbara

Steve Postell | Photo: Courtesy

To listen to Steve Postell’s new album Walking Through these Blues is akin to walking through a familiar musical genre garden, through a thickening of decades. Postel’s songwriting and general approach is a hearty Thursday throwback to L.A. in the ’70s, with unabashed echoes of the Eagles; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY); Jackson Browne; and their ear-friendly West Coast boomer gang.

But Postell steps into this world with cred intact, having been a sideman to David Crosby (the “C” of CSNY) and other ’70s vet links. Fast-forward to the last few years, and he has also been a member of the band known as The Immediate Family, made up of songwriters and session musicians who were on the L.A. scene sound in its heyday, bringing that music on an album, a documentary, and on stages, including the Lobero Theatre.

Postell returns to the Lobero as part of the program called OUR HOUSE: The Music of CSNY by Friends on Wednesday, April 2. The focus of the Lobero evening may be on the CSNY playlist, but Postell’s album benefits from the presence of a stellar cast of players with links to past folk-rock-pop glories, including Crosby (before his death in 2023), drummer Russ Kunkel, bassist Leland Sklar, guitarist Danny Kortchmar, and, from the Santa Barbara pop world seedbed, Glen Phillips.

Of his collaboration with Phillips, Postell explained, “We got together for a songwriting session and came up with ‘How Far We’ve Come,’ a song looking at the reality that despite how much progress we as a culture have made, how much more we could do going forward. The song has a very Americana feel to me, so I got Tom Petty’s Heartbreaker bandmate Steve Ferrone to play drums on the track, along with my Immediate Family bandmate Leland Sklar on bass, for an iconic rhythm section.”

Speaking more generally about his new album, Postell, who also runs Katonah Studios in Marina Del Rey, noted that “when I make a new record, I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel. I try to stay true to the traditions that inspired me: creating honest, real music; telling real stories, played by real musicians.”

Among the “real musicians” who will gather on the Lobero stage for the upcoming CSNY tribute are players with direct and lateral “six degrees” of separation from the group in the spotlight. Guitarist Jeff Pevar played with Crosby, Nash, and CSN (along with Phil Lesh, a Dead link), while Bob Glaub is famed as bassist for Young, as well as Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne. Vocalist-keyboardist Michelle Willis supplied arrangements for Crosby, and drummer Steve DiStanislao played behind Crosby (and, David Gilmour, among other notables).

In the wings and behind the camera behind many of the iconic CSNY images, photographer Henry Diltz served more or less as an in-house photographer for the band in its early days, and beyond. Diltz will be on hand to serve up historic — and some not previously viewed — photographic evidence of the band, along with proving a “tall tale” or three.

See OUR HOUSE: The Music of CSNY by Friends on Wednesday, April 2, at 7:30 p.m. at the Lobero Theatre (33 E. Canon Perdido St). For tickets and information, see lobero.org/events/our-house-2025.