Crosby, Stills & Nash [ tickets ] are preparing to road test a series of cover songs that they plan to record for a forthcoming album with producer Rick Rubin.

According to Graham Nash, the collaboration came about after Columbia Records A&R executive Jay Landers heard a Crosby, Stills & Nash song on the radio and inquired about who was recording them. The answer: No one. So Landers went to Columbia Records Chairman Steve Barnett, who in turn contacted Rubin.

"Steve Barnett said, 'If Crosby, Stills & Nash theoretically were available to record, what do you think?' [Rubin replied] 'I know exactly how to do it. I have the people in place. I know where I want to record it in Laurel Canyon. I want to do this.' That's how it started," Nash told LiveDaily this week.

"The amazing thing is this: one of the reasons why Crosby, Stills & Nash has not made 50 records is me and my yearning for it all to be as democratic as possible. We have to wait for David [Crosby] to write. David writes at a much slower rate than me and Stephen [Stills] do. So we'd have to wait until David had four to five songs that we love, so we could take three of them and put three of Stephen's, three of mine and a couple of others and make a record."

But this time, things are different, said Nash.

"This time, they don't want Crosby, Stills & Nash songs," Nash said. "They want the Crosby Stills & Nash vocal sound on songs that we love, that we'd wish we'd written, that we'd wish we recorded.

"It's been a very interesting time choosing. I went to my friend Joel Bernstein's house in Oakland. Joel is our archivist. He knows more about Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash than anybody in the world. I said, 'Here's what we need to do. I need 50 songs that (a) have a great melody (b) say something and (c) can be Crosby Stills and Nashed to death. That's what we need to search for.'"

Bernstein and Nash found 50 songs and took them to Stills and Crosby. They threw out 15 and took 35 to Rubin, who tossed another 15.

"We ended up with 15 to 20 songs that we all loved," Nash said. "We're going to try to do six or seven of them per night and road test them--get them ready to be recorded by playing them live night after night."

Crosby, Stills & Nash will be on tour all summer, and will issue "Demos," a collection of previously unreleased demos, June 12.