[ATTENDED: July 16, 2015] Neil Young + Promise of the Real
Sarah has always wanted to see Neil Young. And she finally got to, back in October. And now here it is just nine months later and she gets to see him again.
I enjoyed his previous show quite a lot, but said I didn’t need to see him again unless he was with a band (which I assumed would be Crazy Horse). But here he was with a new band (just what does Crazy Horse do in their off years?). The band was Promise of the Real, which features Lukas Nelson (Willie Nelson’s son) and for this tour also featured Willie’s other son Micah (whom I gather is not usually in the band?). I knew nothing about POTR, but I did get the new Monsanto album, so I got a sense of what they sounded like.
Speaking of the Monsanto album…. Lyrically it’s strident and a little obvious, but musically it’s really quite good–a lot of variety with some good loose rock. And when they played it live, where it really loosened up, it sounded even better.
But back to the show. Sarah and I predicted that he would play the entire Monsanto album, talk a lot about GMOs, and then maybe play a few classics. We could not have been more wrong.
The show opened (well, actually, the concert opened with a Native American dance which we missed–I gather they were going to march on Washington and asked if they could address the crowd first) with two people planting seeds along the stage. They put out plants and scattered seeds all over the place (I can’t believe no one slipped on them! And then Neil came out. It was like the previous show. He played a few acoustic pieces on his various instruments: (more…)
I Just Read About That... 