Farm Aid turned 40 with a long, long show at Huntington Bank Stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Among the featured artists were the Minnesota’s own Trampled by Turtles. An angry, angry Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson closed the show. Lukas Nelson and Sierra Ferrell may have been the aesthetic highlight. Video of the whole shebang is posted with excellent audio here.
I don’t know why Farm Aid exists. I don’t know if it does any good. I don’t know why Neil Young is so angry.
I don’t know why Farm Aid invited prominent DFL politicians who have hastened the state into its sorry condition to introduce the artists. Good God almighty, they brought out Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Rep. Angie Craig (who is running for the DFL nomination to replace retiring senatorial nullity Tina Smith).
Craig introduced Wynonna Judd. Wynonna’s appearance reminded me that John and I had gone to see Wynonna at the Dakota on March 13, 2020. The venue was a little more intimate than Huntington Bank Stadium. At her 2020 show we sat among a thrilled crowd in a packed audience on the same day Walz declared one-man rule and shut down all such festivities for what turned out to be 15 months. We were allegedly taking our life in our hands sitting so close to our fellow fans.
I had the strong feeling that Wynonna’s March 2020 show would be the last fun of that kind for a long while. Earlier that day Walz had declared a peacetime emergency by executive order 20-01. That’s the way he liked it. Walz wanted to keep the “emergency” going as long as he could. He did not willingly give it up.
Where was Neil Young when we needed him? We could have used an angry Neil Young to deliver us from evil back then, or at least to decry it. That much I can tell you. With the feeling that the good times were over, not for good but for a long time, I wrote up Wynonna’s 2020 show in “Wynonna defies the panic.”
