Farm Aid: Legends Lineup with Stunning Cameo
Bob Dylan's unannounced set added history to a day of inspiration and entertainment
Waiting for Willie and… OMG, It’s Bob Dylan!
I have produced almost 700 issues of a newsletter called Local Food Forum and just launched a complementary website. You might think it would be hard for me to get more passionate about building a better food system and supporting family farmers.
But attending Farm Aid on Saturday at the Ruoff Music Center near Indianapolis was like a powerful booster shot.
During opening news conference, Farm Aid entertainers/founders John Mellencamp (an Indiana native) and Neil Young and fellow Farm Aid Board member Dave Matthews made powerful statements about the need to transform how America eats and farms. The Homegrown Village, packed with non-profits working in myriad ways to make food healthier for people and the planet, drew a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of attendees.
A panel focused on the upcoming but delayed federal Farm Bill proved a platform for more thoughtful, challenging and inspirational comments by Indiana’s Greg Gunthorp, a pioneer of regenerative livestock production (and a longtime friend) and Illinois state Rep. Sonia Harper, who represents a South Side Chicago district and is a legislative point person for the state’s local food and farm community.
There was so much content that I passed up most of the excellent opening acts on the Ruoff concert stage. Then, I found a location at the back of the pavilion with a clear albeit long distance view of the stage — no easy trick, as both the seated pavilion and the lawn were at capacity from early afternoon on.
The evening program was unfolding in the usual Farm Aid order, with sets by Margo Price — the most recent addition to the organization’s Board — then Dave Matthews, performing with Tim Reynolds, his extraordinary guitarist sideman; John Mellencamp, rocking hard and leading audience sing-alongs of several of his anthemic songs; and Neil Young, returning to the Farm Aid stage after a three-year hiatus that began with the COVID outbreak.
Willie Nelson, as usual, was scheduled as the closer even though the concert already had run past 10 p.m. — a late night gig for an icon who turned 90 this year. So when a band that wasn’t Willie and a lead singer who wasn’t Willie took to a dimly lit stage, it was curious if not concerning. But that lead singer’s nasal voice was familiar… and then it dawned on me (and I’m sure others in the unprepared audience)… oh my God, it’s Bob Dylan!
Dylan sang three songs with support from The Heartbreakers, the band that formerly performed with the late Tom Petty. So a concert full of legends became legendary in its own right. Dylan’s appearance preceded Willie Nelson’s merry set, lasting almost an hour, in which he was fully engaged and as funny as he’s ever been. Like the first Farm Aid I attended here in Chicago in 2015, Farm Aid 38 will be a lasting memory for me and I’m sure many others.
Watch the Local Food Forum newsletter and website over the next few days for your dose of inspiring and thought-provoking discussion of the food and farm issues we regularly cover. But, as the saying goes, life’s short, eat dessert first. I hope you enjoy these other photos from the concert.
A guest appearance of Ann Wilson, the former lead singer of the group Heart, might have stolen the show in another setting. Wilson, at the left of the drummer, stood in with the Indianapolis-based Jim Irsay Band and closed their set with a rendition of the Heart hit Barracuda. [Trigger alert for Baltimore football fans: Jim Irsay is owner/CEO of the Indianapolis Colts and son of the late Robert Irsay, who moved Baltimore’s beloved team to Indy in 1984.]
Country singer Margo Price joined the Farm Aid Board in 2021. She has strong ties to the Chicago region; she grew up in the small western Illinois city of Aledo and attended Northern Illinois University, where she studied dance and theater.
Dave Matthews (right) and Tim Reynolds.
John Mellencamp was just 33 years old — but already famous for his working class, small town musical persona — when he accepted Willie Nelson’s invitation to join him and Neil Young in staging the first Farm Aid, which took place in Champaign, Illinois. He said at the news conference and during the concert that none of them ever imagined they would still be doing Farm Aid 38 years later, nor did they think that they would still have to continue elevating the need to support the vital work of our nation’s family farmers.
Coverage of Dylan’s surprise appearance noted that he provided the initial inspiration for that initial Farm Aid. During his July 1985 performance at Live Aid, an international fundraiser for Ethiopian hunger relief, Dylan asked if there weren’t an opportunity to do a similar concert to help American farmers who were being driven to desperation by that decade’s farm crisis.
Nelson heard the comments and it moved him to immediate action. Saturday was Dylan’s return after he played at the first two Farm Aid concerts (1985 and 1986).
Young’s short and austere solo set was in sharp contrast to his appearance at Farm Aid 2015 in Chicago, a hard-rocking set supported by the band led by Lukas Nelson (a son of Willie Nelson) that included Young’s fierce attack on the agrichemical company Monsanto that was embodied in his album The Monsanto Years. He closed his 2023 set with audience vocals supporting his famous hit Heart of Gold, one of my favorite songs.
Willie Nelson greeted the crowd as he entered the stage, accompanied by son Lukas.
Willie’s long set dipped deeply into his greatest hits catalog.
Most of the concert’s other performers came back on stage for the finale.
[Note: This week’s farmers market schedule will be published in Monday’s Local Food Forum newsletter.]