Thanks again, so much, can’t thank her enough, thank you thank you thank you, Janis TIllerson for your wonderful photos from Farm Aid 2023 in Noblesville, IN. I felt so lucky to get to do another Farm Aid adventure with you!
Always so much fun to get to be in a photo pit at Farm Aid with Janis from Texas! I especially love being at a concert when Willie spots Janis in the crowd and sends some special love.
photo: Janis Tillerson
The farm aid Board of Directors, Director and Indiana farmers speak at the Farm AId press conference, before the fundraising concert in Noblesville, Indiana, on September 23, 2023.
Neil Young, photo by Janis Tillerson
photo of John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson, by Janis Tillerson
Neil Young and Dave Matthews, photo by Janis Tillerson
Bob Dylan returned to the Farm Aid stage in Noblesville and surprised the fans. Dylan was instrumental in starting the concerts to benefit family farmers at the first Farm Aid concert in 1985. Jenny Thompson took this photo.
Farm Aid is far more than just our annual festival. We work tirelessly year-round to strengthen family farm agriculture and advocate for fair farm policies that promote resiliency, sustainability, equity and diversity across our food system.
Bob Dylan astonished thousands of fans at Willie Nelson‘s sold-out Farm Aid festival with a surprise late-night performance Saturday (Sept. 23) at the Ruoff Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana.
Joined by members of The Heartbreakers, the black-clad Dylan walked onstage without any introduction and played a short but intense set of “Maggie’s Farm,” “Positively 4th Street” and “Ballad of a Thin Man.” Playing the guitar, against the stark backdrop of a silhouetted windmill, he took a spot in the festival lineup between sets by Farm Aid co-founders Neil Young and Nelson, who closed the show near midnight.
The appearance took place 38 years after Dylan conceived the idea for what became Farm Aid.
On July 13, 1985, in Philadelphia, Dylan had taken the stadium stage of Live Aid, the mega-benefit organized to raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief. Between songs, he mused to the event’s global audience: couldn’t a similar benefit help America’s family farmers?
“The question hit me like a ton of bricks,” Nelson recalled to Billboard in 2015. The musician was on the road that day, watching Live Aid on his tour-bus TV, and began looking into the economic crisis that was then forcing family farmers off their land and into bankruptcy. Then he called his friends, including the musician who made the suggestion.