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Series of Closeups of World-Class Performers Supporting Family Farmers
It is clear to me that the truest lyric Willie Nelson has ever written in a music career dating more than 65 years is in his song On the Road Again: "The life I love is making music with my friends."
At about 10 p.m. Saturday at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in New York, the 91-year-old icon entered the stage to perform in his 39th Farm Aid Festival, a fundraiser to support family farmers that he co-founded with Neil Young and John Mellencamp in 1985. Flanked by his sons Lukas and Micah Nelson, he didn't leave the stage until the grand finale concluded more than a hour (and 19 songs) later.
Age has certainly taken some edge from his singing and guitar playing, but he sang and strummed with aplomb. The packed house was treated to a virtual greatest hits live album that included Whiskey River (a song with which he's opened his shows for years), Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, On the Road Again (of course), You Were Always on My Mind, Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die, the hilarious (If I Die When I'm High) I'll Be Halfway to Heaven, and during the finale It's Hard to Be Humble (When You're Perfect in Every Way).
The origin of Farm Aid is an off-told tale. A farm crisis caused by low prices for products, high interest rates, and the rise of a conventional agriculture philosophy of "go big or go home") had taken hold in the mid-1980s, forcing many farmers off their lands and threatening many others. Suicide rates and other mental health crises soared across rural America.
Bob Dylan, performing in July 1985 at the Live Aid concert to raise funds to address hunger in Africa, suggested that a similar concert be held to help struggling U.S. farmers. This was the prompt for Willie Nelson to collaborate with Neil Young and John Mellencamp to stage the first Farm Aid Festival in Champaign, Illinois that September.
While the farm crisis of the 1980s abated, challenges to family farms and rural communities have continued in the face of the increasing corporatization and land concentration in American agriculture — even as consumer demand for fresh, nutritious food produced locally and sustainably has risen dramatically. Which is why Farm Aid, originally planned as a one-off event, endures as the leading non-profit advocate of family farmers and a healthier, more sustainable, more humane and fairer food system.
Willie Nelson actually came to this quite naturally. He grew up in rural Texas during the Great Depression and World War II, raised by grandparents on a farm where he tended hogs, vegetables and cotton. He was a member of Future Farmers of America and majored in agriculture at Baylor University before he dropped out to pursue his music career.
In a song that wasn't on Saturday's set list, Willie said that his heroes have always been cowboys. My heroes have always been people who fight through challenges to make the world a better place.
Willie Nelson is one of my heroes.
I had the privilege of taking pictures from the photographer pit and hope you enjoy these of a true music legend.
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