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Series of Closeups of World-Class Performers Supporting Family Farmers
For Farm Aid Co-Founder Neil Young, Saturday's Farm Aid Festival in Saratoga Springs was his full-blooded return to rockin' in the free world.
After performing at the first 34 concerts after Farm Aid launched in 1985, Neil stepped aside for the online-only pandemic year event in 2020, then skipped the 2021 event in Hartford, Connecticut and 2022 in Raleigh, North Carolina. He returned for a short solo set in Noblesville, Indiana last year.
This year, though, he was back full-on with classic hits (such as "Heart of Gold" and "Harvest Moon") and some shredding that brought back his decades as a guitar hero.
And the man of many bands — the best known being Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY); and Crazy Horse — played with a brand new band called Chrome Hearts featuring (among others) guitarist Micah Nelson, the youngest son of Farm Aid Co-Founder Willie Nelson.
Neil Young had exhibited a political streak early in his career, crystallized in his 1970 CSNY song "Ohio," a scathing protest of the Vietnam-era killings of four young people by National Guardsmen at Kent State University. He also emerged as an environmental activist.
In July 1985, during the Live Aid concert to raise money for hunger relief in Africa, Bob Dylan called for a concert event to aid U.S family farmers who were being ruined or were at risk of failing during a burgeoning farming economic crisis. With that as the prompt, Neil collaborated with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp to pull together the first Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois that September.
None of them expected Farm Aid to become a longterm project, but the economics of agriculture, and the continued corporatization and concentration of farmland in fewer hands, continue to challenge the viability of family farms — even though consumer demand for healthier food produced as locally and sustainably as possible has grown dramatically since 1985.
But for one night each year, the concerns shift to the background to make way for a concert for the ages. I had the privilege of taking these photos from the pit just below the stage.
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