As we noted last week, highlights of Floodlandia’s Decembers are holiday visits with Charlie Bowen’s cousin Kathy Castner, who usually can be persuaded each time to sit in with the band for a special night.
Jam sessions with Kathy are always chances to revisit favorite old tunes, like “Loving Arms” and “The Rose,” but they also can be opportunities to explore some new material too.
For years now Kathy and Charlie have been doing a duet on Graham Nash’s classic song “Our House,” but it was last week during Kathy’s Christmas 2023 trek from her Cincinnati area home to Huntington that the band also got in on the fun. Moreover, we’re fortunate that our manager/videographer Pamela Bowen had the camera rolling to catch that moment for the video above.
About the Song
Nash wrote “Out House” in time to record it with his band mates on the 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Déjà Vu album.
Hitting No. 30 as a single on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, the song — which has been characterized as an ode to the 1970s’ counter-cultural domestic bliss — was written while Nash was living with singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell.
Graham had come from England to America in 1969 and was staying with Crosby, who threw a party to welcome him to Los Angeles. Mitchell, whom Graham had met earlier when he was still playing with The Hollies, came to the do.
“After that party, I went home with Joni,” Graham said, “and spent a couple of years with her in her home in Laurel Canyon.”
Capturing the Moment
About the song’s creation Graham said, “One day Joan and I got up and went to breakfast at a delicatessen on Ventura Boulevard, and a few doors away there was a little antique store. In the window she saw this vase, went inside, fell in love with it, bought it and brought it back to the house.
“It was a kind of a cold gray morning as it sometimes can be in Los Angeles, and I said, ‘Why don’t I light the fire and you put some flowers in the vase that you just bought.’”
Bingo!
“My and Joan’s lives at the time were far from ordinary,” Nash said, “and I thought, ‘What an ordinary moment.’ Here I am lighting the fire for my old lady and she’s putting flowers in this vase that she just bought. And I sat down at her piano and an hour later, ‘Our House’ was written.”
Going Forward
The song has been covered by other artists — Helen Reddy and Sheena Easton come to mind — but curiously, Nash has said he "was bored with 'Our House' the day after we recorded it,” though he still plays it occasionally "because it does mean so much to so many people.”
Notably, in March 2019 Nash performs the song on the album Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration, the recording of a tribute concert by various artists to observe Mitchell's 75th birthday.
"Our House"