FEATURED REVIEW: Mellencamp Steals Show As Festival Founders Deliver At Farm Aid
Nippertown By Ted Remsnyder
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The daylong Farm Aid festival is an enjoyable endurance test for those that brave all 10 hours of music at the annual charity show, and festival co-founders Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp were worth the wait Saturday at Saratoga Performing Arts Center [SPAC] as they all delivered varying and satisfying headline sets.
Nelson’s presence closing out the festival at 91 years of age is more than enough and while his voice was at times frayed, Nelson’s guitar picking was expert in a feel-good set that opened as usual with “Whisky River” and made its way through hits including “On the Road Again” and “Always On My Mind.”
The biggest mystery of the night surrounded Young’s sub-headline performance, which marked his first live appearance since canceling the remainder of his summer tour with Crazy Horse due to illness following a May concert in Detroit. Young is slated to play a pair of shows on Monday and Tuesday at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester with a new band called The Chrome Hearts featuring Willie’s son Micah Nelson. Would Young debut The Chrome Hearts at SPAC or play solo acoustic? The answer was the former, as Young took the stage with his new band.
Young leaned on the folkier, mellow side of his vast catalog for his first six songs, with the set really picking up steam with the final one-two punch of an extended “Homegrown” and a transcendent “Powderfinger,” with Young wrenching glorious squeals of noise out of his icon Old Black electric Gibson guitar, with the song marking the high point of the entire concert.
The night’s most rocking set belonged to Mellencamp, who led his band through hits from throughout his catalog in a 50-minute set including “Small Town” and a big rock finale of “Pink Houses” to close his performance. Performing in front of towering digital photos of corn husks and red farmhouses that evoked his native Indiana on the large video screens surrounding the stage, Mellencamp may be the quintessential Farm Aid performer, with his “Rain on the Scarecrow” serving as the unofficial anthem of the festival since its inception in 1985. On this night, Mellencamp stole the show from his fellow festival co-founders, delivering the most impactful set of the night.
After a solid set of country-rock from Margo Price, her fellow Farm Aid board member Dave Matthews took the stage for an acoustic set with longtime sideman Tim Reynolds, with the duo making their way through hits including “Ants Marching” and “Don’t Drink the Water.” Matthews’ music has never grabbed me but keeping a crowd engaged with just two acoustic guitars throughout the well-received 45-minute set was impressive. The performance ended strong with guest appearances from Nathaniel Rateliff and Lukas and Micha Nelson for a cover of the Band’s “The Weight.”
Lukas Nelson, whose normal backing band Promise of the Real went on hiatus in June, performed with The Travelin’ McCourys on Saturday, delivering a set of twangy bluegrass tunes, culminating in a two-song cameo from bluegrass legend Del McCoury.
An early highlight of the festival was the three-song acoustic set by Arkansas singer-songwriter Jesse Welles, whose biting songs featured a dose of social commentary. Introduced by Matthews as a rising young talent, Welles stuck to the Farm Aid theme with his song “Cancer,” in which he noted that the junk you eat can give you the dreaded disease.