Rock legend Graham Nash plays classics at the Peace Center: Upstate Beat

If the weather is nice on April 18, I highly recommend taking a walk around Main Street in Greenville. Not just because it’s a beautiful part of town, but because you might run into a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer.

Graham Nash, founding member of two classic rock groups, The Hollies and Crosby, Stills & Nash, writer of hits like “Teach Your Children Well,” “Our House,” and “Just A Song Before I Go,” Grammy-award winner, activist, author and photographer will be in town. He’s playing at the Peace Center that night, and he loves to check out towns where he play a concert. On foot.

“I walk around every city that we play in,” Nash told me in our recent interview. “Because I want to see what it’s like in those cities, and in Greenville on the 18th, I’ll do the same thing.”

If you decide to wait until the show that night, that’s fine, too. There will be plenty to enjoy, old and new. In addition to the classics you’d expect, Nash will also focus on his newest album, “Now,” delivering all the songs in that timeless, bell-like tenor voice.

“I know the six or seven songs that people really want to hear,” he said. They want me to play ‘Teach Your Children,’ and ‘Our House’ and ‘Military Madness’ and ‘Chicago’ and ‘Immigration Man.’ But in between, I can choose from the several hundred songs that I’ve written, and I’ll be playing a couple of tracks from ‘Now.’”

No matter the vintage of Nash’s songs, his audience remains surprisingly broad. In fact, it’s become multi-generational.

“My audience these days is somewhere between 14 and 75,” he said with a laugh. “Those are the demographics of the people that come and see me. It’s quite a range, and I think a lot of the younger people have been turned on to my music by their parents or from their family members.”

Whether he’s on stage, behind a camera or writing books like “Wild Tales: A Rock and Roll Life” and “Off the Record: Songwriters on Songwriting,” Nash still has the same passion for art that he did as a teenager with The Hollies back in the 1960s.

“My passion is fueled by my curiosity about the world,” Nash said. “My wife, Amy, showed me a quote from Nina Simone that was impressive to me: ‘No matter what kind of artist, you are, you must reflect the times in which you live.’ And that’s what I’m trying to do.”