On Saturday, September 23, the folk-rock icon Bob Dylan made a surprise appearance at this year’s sold-out annual Farm Aid concert in Noblesville, Indiana. Dylan performed a short eighteen-minute live guitar set backed up by the late Tom Petty’s band, the Heartbreakers. In 1985, Dylan performed with Petty and the Heartbreakers at the inaugural Farm Aid event, returning again in 1986. This was the first time in the past thirty-seven years that he has come back to the annual gathering.
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Farm Aid was started in 1985 by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp as a benefit event to raise money for family farmers, helping many stay on their land. According to the nonprofit Farm Aid’s website, the group “has raised more than $70 million to promote a strong and resilient family farm system of agriculture.” All of the artists at the day-long music festival contribute their performances for free.
In fact, Farm Aid was originally inspired by Dylan’s comments during the 1985 Live Aid benefit for the people of Ethiopia. On July 13, 1985, Dylan told a worldwide audience, “I hope that some of the money . . . [can be used] to pay the mortgages on some of the farms [that] farmers here owe to the banks.” The remark motivated Nelson, Mellencamp, and Young to create the first Farm Aid benefit on September 22, 1985. Dylan was, of course, invited.
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Dylan’s return to Farm Aid after nearly four decades is a reminder of the importance of this gathering in supporting family farmers in a time when they face existential threats due to corporate agribusiness, factory farming, and the increasing hazards of the climate crisis. As even the U.S. Department of Agriculture has stated, farmers are “the backbone of America.”
The three-song set on Saturday consisted of “Maggie’s Farm” (the first time Dylan is known to have performed this song since August 2009), “Positively 4th Street,” and “Ballad of a Thin Man”—all three were first recorded by Dylan in 1965.
Other performers at this year’s gathering included Nelson, Mellencamp, and Young, as well as Dave Matthews, Nathaniel Rateliff, Allison Russell, and many more. Watch for our complete photo essay on Farm Aid 2023 later this week.