Willie Nelson’s 40th Anniversary Farm Aid Challenges Corporate Power in America: ‘They Need to Stand Up and Pay a Conscience Tax!’ Says Neil Young

Farm Aid activists know to show up early for each year’s festival — several days early. This year, on Thursday (Sept. 18), a night of music was curated for invited guests by Rissi Palmer, recipient of the Lift Every Voice Award from the Academy of Country Music.  On Friday (Sept. 19), the annual farmer forum was billed as “Seeding Democracy From Our Fields to Our Future” and included a a keynote address from Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. And Friday evening saw the presentation of the annual Spirit of Farm Aid awards to organization supporters.

Stepping outside the Farm Aid Eve celebration Friday night to talk, David Senter, founder and president of the American Agriculture Movement and a Farm Aid historian, was asked: after 40 years, does Farm Aid matter? “It matters because those family farmers that are still out there struggling need to know that they’re not alone,” he replied.  He noted that Farm Aid brings together scores of activist organizations from across the nation. “It’s like rolling out a neutral stage where when you find issues you agree on, where everybody can speak in a unified voice.” In a divided nation, “that’s important right now, isn’t it?” In April, Senter and Nelson co-wrote “A Letter to Young Farmers,” published on the Farm Aid website. “We are determined to prevent the corporate takeover of all food production, making sure there is opportunity for independent farmers and ranchers on the land,” they wrote. “The farmer’s role is essential and well worth fighting for. We want you to know you are not alone. We stand with you and are here to support you because you are the future of family farm agriculture.”

For Farm Aid’s opening sets, organizers have long had unerring skill at presenting artists whom fans might have only heard in smaller venues. Saturday was no exception, with country singer/songwriter Madeline Edwards showcasing her compelling new album Fruit; Eric Burton of Black Pumas offering a soulful, solo set; and Waxahatchee, the ensemble created by frontwoman Katie Crutchfield, playing songs from its most recent release, Tigers Blood.  But the Farm Aid debut of shaggy-haired firebrand Jesse Welles was a moment no one will forget. One of the sharpest satirists and topical songwriters to emerge in years, Welles drew a standing ovation for his set including “War Isn’t Murder.”

Wynonna Judd wanted to know how many in the audience had not previously seen her in concert. Many cheered to show they had not. “It’s about fricking time!” she shouted back. In the mid ’80s, when Farm Aid began, Wynonna and her mother, Naomi (as the Judds) were one of the hottest acts in country music. In more recent years, Wynonna had experienced personal setbacks and tragedies that made her onstage comment — “music is a healer” — resonate all the more. Still instantly recognizable with her fiery red hair, her set drew from her solo career. But she sang hits from the Judds, including “Rhythm of the Rain” and “Why Not Me,” and the decades disappeared.

Two of the finest bluegrass-influenced acts on the scene today played late afternoon and early evening sets, respectively. Trampled by Turtles, whose latest album is a collaboration with Alan Sparhawk of the indie act Low, were the home state favorites, hailing from Duluth, Minn. Billy Strings, meanwhile, who won a Grammy Award earlier this year for album Live Vol. 1, has been part of Willie Nelson’s sprawling, inclusive, musical family since the two recorded “California Sober” in 2023.

With his long, gray beard and black garb, Steve Earle looked every bit the renegade he had been earlier in his life as he greeted the afternoon crowd. “This is my first Farm Aid in a while,” said Earle. He first appeared at the festival when it took place just outside of Austin, Texas, in 1986, the same year he released his acclaimed debut album, Guitar Town. That song opened his set Saturday. Actually, it was the first of two solo sets he played while the stage was prepared for bands on the bill. For his second set, he brought out his mandolin for “The Galway Girl” and his classic “Copperhead Road.”

Homegrown Village is Farm Aid’s offstage area for attendees to view exhibits that connect with farming, food and rural culture — and, increasingly, issues of climate and economics. And artists take part. During the day, Nathaniel Rateliff took part in discussions of ways to make farms economically sustainable, Margo Price talked about climate and conservation in Minnesota, and Jesse Welles took on the topic of corporate power in agriculture.

In a late afternoon set, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats took the stage — and took no prisoners. Wearing a hat emblazoned with the logo of the American Agriculture Movement, and a well-worn red T-shirt declaring “Stop Factory Farms,” Rateliff led his band through a horn-fired, organ-pumping, gospel-shouting set of R&B which has ignited Farm Aid crowds for years, with favorites like “S.O.B” and “I Need Never Get Old.”  Including Saturday’s set, Rateliff and the band have played at Farm Aid four times in the past eight years.

The early evening set from Lukas Nelson brought two delightful collaborations.  No longer playing with his electric band Promise of the Real, accompanied solely by standup bass and violin, Nelson welcomed Dave Matthews to sing Daniel Lanois’ mystical song “The Maker.” Then Nelson introduced “a great rising talent” as Sierra Ferrell — who has just been named artist of the year for the second time by the Americana Music Association — dueted with him on “Friend in the End.”

Taking place in one of the largest venues that it has played in years, Farm Aid may well have filled Huntington Bank Stadium without the late addition to the bill of Kenny Chesney, who’s the third hottest touring act of 2024, according to Billboard Boxscore, and just finished a residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas. But his participation certainly didn’t hurt Saturday’s ticket sales. Another repeat Farm Aid supporter — he last played the festival in 2012 — Chesney’s set proved the festival’s community would readily embrace his No Shoes Nation.

The affection among Farm Aid performers is undeniable, and the result is often memorable collaborations. During her set, Margo Price welcomed Billy Strings and Jesse Welles to sing, first a capella, then with Price’s powerful full band, a version of Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic “Maggie’s Farm.”  (This was the song that opened Dylan’s surprise Farm Aid set in Noblesville, Indiana, in 2023). But Price’s sharp sense of history was even more evident when she covered Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” a lament for Mexican farm workers who died in a plane crash in 1948 after picking crops in California and went unidentified for decades. The relevance to an era of border-crossing rhetoric and federal raids on immigrants was unmistakable.

A longtime Farm Aid fan followed a tradition during the acoustic set that Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds played at the festival, venturing to a point in the venue as high up and far back as possible.  From that vantage point, the duo’s musicianship on songs like “Don’t Drink the Water,” “Crush” and “Ants Marching” flowed like entrancing waves across the crowd below.  For Saturday’s set, Matthews welcomed violinist Jake Renick Simpson from Lukas Nelson’s band, and he played new song “Peace on Earth,” which he first unveiled in May, with intriguing, but ambiguous lyrics. 

John Mellencamp boasts the greatest number of top 40 hits of any of Farm Aid’s board members.  So his set Saturday, like those of recent years, was a crowd pleaser, from “Small Town” to the sing-along of “Jack and Diane.”  But Mellencamp also sang the melancholy and moving “Longest Days,” an album track from his 2008 set Life, Death, Love and Freedom. And the highlight of his live set, as always at Farm Aid, is the harrowing “Rain on the Scarecrow,” which, more than any other song, captures the heartbreak of the farming crisis.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of the late addition to the Farm Aid bill of Bob Dylan, native of Hibbing, Minnesota. It was Dylan whose offhand remark at Live Aid in July 1985 led Willie Nelson to launch Farm Aid, what has become music’s longest running concert for a cause. It was here in Minneapolis that Dylan briefly attended the University of Minnesota, before heading east to Greenwich Village. (It was also here that he returned in December 1974 to re-record tracks for Blood On the Tracks.) On a darkened stage, behind a piano and wearing a hoodie, Dylan opened his set with “All Along the Watchtower.” Songs like that one and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” received dramatic but engaging rearrangements. And in an apparent acknowledgment of his roots, he sang the seldom performed “Highway 61 Revisited,” inspired by the road that traverses Minnesota enroute to the Mississippi Delta.

In the penultimate set at Farm Aid, Neil Young unleashed a sonic maelstrom. Playing with his new band the Chrome Hearts, the worthy successors to Crazy Horse, Young began with his newly penned protest song “Big Crime” that takes direct aim at Washington, D.C. “Rockin’ in the Free World” followed, then the soft lament of “Long Walk Home,” with its lyric “America, America/ Where have we gone?” It was notable that Young included a powerhouse, electric version of “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue),” which he performed acoustically at the first Farm Aid in 1985. A heartfelt “Old Man” closed his set. Young, who has frequently spoken of the Farm Aid cause from the stage, said: “This Is the time when people and the farmers have got to come together as never before.”

From the always-expected opening chords of “Whiskey River,” Willie Nelson, now 92, gave the audience the performance they’d been waiting for all day. Seated and flanked by his sons, Lukas and Micah, Nelson offered classics that have made him an American icon, like “On the Road Again” and “Georgia on My Mind.” He duetted with Hawaiian singer Lily Meola on “Will You Remember Me.” With Lukas, he traded lines on Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe” that transformed it into a song of love between father and song. And to his seldom-shifting set list, he once again added his version of Tom Waits’ “Last Leaf” with its elegiac lyric: “I’ll be here through eternity/ If you wanna know how long / If they cut down this tree/ I’ll show up in a song.” Almost every artist on the Farm Aid bill came onstage for the traditional encores of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “I’ll Fly Away,” “I Saw The Light,” “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” and “It’s Hard to Be Humble.” Then, rising from his chair at center stage and walking slowly away from the other musicians as his band played on, Nelson turned once more to the crowd. Lifting his outstretched fingers to his lips, he threw a closing kiss to the audience of Farm Aid 40.