Farm Aid is returning to Raleigh, North Carolina this fall with a line-up that boasts the likes of organizers Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds, Margo Price, Chris Stapleton, Sheryl Crow, Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats and Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real.
Videos by American Songwriter
The 37-annual festival will be held at the Coastal Credit Union Mark Park at Walnut Creek on September 24. Tickets will be on sale from Saturday, July 30.
One notable absence from the line-up is Nelson’s fellow Farm Aid board member Neil Young, who will bow out for the second year in a row due to COVID-19 concerns.
“I will not be at Farm Aid this year,” he wrote on his website the Neil Young Archives.“I am not ready for that yet. I don’t think it is safe in the pandemic. I miss it very much.”
He told another fan that he has no plans to return to the road in the foreseeable future. “Not ready to tour,” he wrote. “Covid is real danger. Long covid? No thanks. Expose my son to big crowds. No.”
Young hasn’t played to a live audience since Farm Aid in 2019, marking it as the longest hiatus for the artist since he started touring some 60 years ago. But Farm Aid will continue in his absence.
Nelson, Farm Aid president and founder, said in a statement, “I’ve always said that family farmers strengthen us all. Farmers in North Carolina, across the Southeast, and all over the country are growing solutions to our toughest challenges, including climate change. We’re bringing Farm Aid here to highlight their hard work and celebrate the ways we can all join farmers to help.”
Farm Aid was last held in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2014. During the show, Young spontaneously played “Rockin’ In The Free World” with Willie Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah. The impromptu collaboration jumpstarted a longstanding collaboration that went on to produce several albums and world tours.
This year’s show will be broadcast live on Farm Aid’s Youtube channel and the Circle Television network.
(Photo: RachaelPolac / The Oriel PR
