Neil Young has released his latest quarantine-era live session. Following some fireside sessions and then a barnyard session, Neil has filmed this newest one on his porch. He was clearly inspired by the state of social/political unrest that much of the country has been in for the past month; he played a lot of his own political songs and also included a great cover of Bob Dylan's civil rights classic "The Times They Are A Changin'."
UPDATE (8/26): You can now also hear audio of just the Dylan cover here.
He opens the session with a gorgeous rendition of the classic "Alabama" before playing his 1976 Richard Nixon-inspired rarity "Campaigner" and the CSNY classic "Ohio." Then he does the Dylan cover.
After the Dylan cover, Neil revisits "Lookin' For A Leader," his prescient 2006 song that predicted Barack Obama's presidency, only this time he adds in new lyrics that criticize Trump and voice support for the Black Lives Matter movement. He follows that one with his anti-racist classic "Southern Man," which he recently made a new video for that called for "new rules for policing."
Neil then plays a hushed version of "Little Wing" off Homegrown, his lost 1975 album that finally came out in June (read our review), and he ends with something so quiet that it sounds more like he's humming to himself than performing for an audience. It's cool to see a legend like Neil Young just having a moment like that.
Watch the full porch session at Neil Young Archives.
Once a new session is up on Neil Young Archives, the previous one gets taken down, but Neil released a YouTube video from his recent barnyard session of "Homegrown" and you can watch that below.
Speaking of Neil Young and Bob Dylan, Homegrown came out the same day as Bob Dylan's excellent new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. One of the players on Homegrown was The Band's Robbie Robertson, who just explained why he turned down Dylan's offer to play on Rough and Rowdy Ways (which would've been Robertson's first time playing on a Dylan album since 1974's Planet Waves). "I was just slammed with work."
