As the youngest son of Willie Nelson, guitarist Micah Nelson has been in Neil Young’s circle since childhood. He later played with Young between 2014 and 2019 as a member of of The Promise Of The Real, recording two studio albums The Monsanto Years and The Visitor and a live album Earth. More recently, as a member of Young’s latest backing band The Chrome Hearts, Nelson has appeared on Young’s latest studio album Talkin To The Trees and the Love Earth World Tour — which wrapped on September 15 at the Hollywood Bowl.
Here, Nelson talks us through some highlights from the tour: from the surprise appearance of “Ambulance Blues”, the arrival in the setlist of rarities like “Sail Away” and “Singer Without A Song”, the origins of new song “Big Crime” to… what’s next for Young as he prepares to turn 80?
“We might know what we’re going to play first”
UNCUT: The setlist seems to have become more fluid as the tour has progressed. Is that just Neil on a whim or does the band also get involved in terms of what you perform?
NELSON: It’s both really. Back in the day [Nelson touring with Young as part of The Promise Of The Real between 2014 and 2019], we’d play for three hours and just have a list of 200 songs on stage. We might know what we’re going to play first. We might know that, typically, when Neil puts on a specific guitar, it could be one of a number of songs. There’s little cues like that. “Okay, he’s got the White Falcon on. So it could be this or that…” Then that’s the show. We’d just play until we were done playing. I think we did the longest Neil Young show in history in Amsterdam [July 9, 2016]. It was three hours and 45 minutes or something. That was something like ten years ago…
So how did that change on this tour?
Starting in Europe, he started doing this thing where he would come up with a setlist and all the crew would know it. We were trying to get the crew to understand this. “You guys are gonna come up and tell us what’s next? You bring me a guitar and say “Southern Man”, or whatever it is?’ So that was a new thing. Neil’s writing the setlist, then the crew come up and tell us what’s going to happen. But that soon started to crumble a little bit. Neil would be like, “Okay, now we have the map. But in this section of the show, we could do one of these few songs…” and it might be in a different order. We might decide to do something else. But part of it is thinking, too, at least for Neil, about what tuning his guitar is in, what harmonica he needs and how to put the set together to where there’s the least amount of switching around between songs.
The introduction into the set of “Ambulance Blues” was a welcome surprise. How did that come about?
We’d started the first show with “Sugar Mountain” [Dalhalla, Rättvik, Sweden; June 18], but once we’d got to Brussels, before the show, we’d hang out and warm up our voices. We’d smoke a little pot, sip a little beer and get loose. I had my guitar and was in this DADGAD tuning. I was playing Bert Jansch’s version of “Down By Blackwaterside”. Someone said, “Oh yeah, Jimmy Page.” I was like, “No, it’s Bert Jansch. Jimmy Page just covered it.” I mean, who knows who wrote that song? But Neil went, “Oh, yeah, I knew Bert. He opened for me once, years ago…” We started talking about how great Bert Jansch was, with Pentangle and Anne Briggs and all that stuff. Neil said, “That song ‘Ambulance Blues’, I totally ripped off the melody from ‘Needle Of Death’, just that first part of it.’ So I started playing that and we began singing it. Neil’s like, “Maybe we should open with that song tonight.” We ended up nixing it that night, but afterwards we listened to it and learned it, then at the next show – which I think was in Groningen, in Holland [July 1] – we opened with ‘Ambulance Blues.’ It felt great, so we just kept doing that. We’ve been opening the show with “Ambulance Blues” ever since. On this whole tour, that’s been one of the more consistent things, just that opening, starting with “Back in the old folkie days…” It’s setting this tone where Neil’s back at the Riverboat in Toronto. It’s like this little rock‘n’roll history saga that we’re about to take everybody on. So that’s one way how that stuff happens. It’s all pretty just much blowing around.
“Sometimes Neil will email us…”
Another surprise was “Sail Away”, which appeared in the setlist for the Shoreline Amphitheatre on September 12.
Sometimes Neil will email us: “Hey, listen to this and this…” Then sometimes those end up in the set, sometimes not. But I think we were in Bend [Hayden Homes Amphitheatre, Oregon; September 10] and he mentioned after the show, just randomly, “Y’know, we should do ‘Sail Away’.” I remembered the chorus, but I couldn’t remember the verse. So I said I’d have to listen to it again. Then I saw him when we got to the Shoreline and said, ‘I listened to that song. I think everybody’s listened to it.’ He’s like, ‘Let’s try it in soundcheck.’ So we tried it and it sounded really nice. Then we played it that night, in the show. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. We learned pretty early on that just because we’re running something in soundcheck doesn’t mean we’re going to play it that night. Often he’ll start it in the show a few days later, after we’ve already forgotten about it. It’s almost like, with certain songs – but not every song – that if you’re too comfortable, you’re just playing the parts. It starts to feel tame, which is not good.
Do you think that’s Neil’s way of him keeping everyone, including himself, on their toes?
Absolutely. When you’re out on tour for three months and you’re playing every other night, it’s like Groundhog Day unless you shake it up. It might be a different audience every night and it’s their first time hearing this. But for you to keep your inspiration and sanity, you’ve got to keep it fresh for yourself. Also, there’s so many people that are out there every night riding the rail, the same people, who come to every show. I think part of the reason they do that is because they don’t know what they’re going to get every time. So it’s great for the music lovers and it’s great for the people making the music.
The unreleased “Singer Without A Song” is another example of that. Prior to August 23 – at Jones Beach Theatre, Wantagh, New York – you hadn’t played it for 12 years. Where did that come from?
Sometimes fans will send him messages on NYA. “Hey Neil, remember this song? You did this with Crazy Horse back in 2013 and it never came out.” And he’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ll check it out.” For that one he said, “Yeah, I listened to this recording of it” – it was just a rehearsal, they never actually recorded it as a studio thing – “It’s a cool song.” I had remembered that song because my brother [Lukas] wrote it with him, right around the time we were first starting to hang out with Neil. We only did it a few times. For a while, the setlist was pretty consistent, but with one song that we’d switch out for a new thing, pretty much every night. At Bend Oregon – I don’t know if everyone was kind of reeling from the Charlie Kirk assassination and maybe feeling a bit wigged out – but I remember walking up to the stage and Neil said, “I don’t even know what’s gonna happen tonight. It might be quite a journey.” It feels like that every night, but he really wasn’t kidding, because we did “Ambulance Blues” into “Cowgirl In The Sand”, which, for a minute now, has been consistently the first couple songs we do.
“Neil invited them to come up on stage”
What happened next?
Then he kicks off “Down By The River”, and then we jam that for ten minutes or something. Then we did “Powderfinger”. The whole set was a case of sometimes going back to the idea of, ‘What was it gonna be now?’ “Southern Man”. “Oh yeah, OK, that feels right.” We’d do that. Then it’d be like, “What do you want to do now?” So we did “Cortez The Killer”, “When You Dance” and “F*!#in’ Up”. It was just suddenly like one of those where we were in the garage, jamming. Not going by any kind of map, really. Everybody seemed to love that. It was raw and loose, but it was a really great response from the crowd. We were having fun because it was exciting for us too.
It was long tour, both the European and North American legs. How did you keep the energy levels going?
You get to certain points in the tour where the show is the thing that really sets a tone for the energy of everything. And you start to kind of get crispy and feel the road. Vancouver was like that when we first got there. It’s a beautiful city – I love the trees and everything everywhere – but where we were staying was the most depressing place. The buildings are so ugly and just cheap-looking. Everything’s grey and you’re tired and you start to feel, “Okay, we’re at that point in the tour where I’m feeling like… agghh!’’ But then we play and it’s an amazing show. There were these First Nations chiefs that just so happened to be there, protesting this pipeline. Neil invited them to come up on stage and talk about it before we went on and we got to meet them after. The husband of one of the chiefs sang this beautiful song to Neil. [Mycologist] Paul Stamets was there with his partner Pam [Kryskow] and there was just so much revitalising, rejuvenating energy about that night. I think it might have been a full moon, too. After that it was like, “Okay, I could be on tour for another month now!” So you need those things every now and then. Part of that is throwing a scatter bomb into the set list sometimes, just throwing yourself for a loop and seeing what happens. And challenging yourself, because then it’s more fun.
“This fleeting restless spirit”
You didn’t play much from Chrome Hearts’ debut, Talkin To The Trees. But you did debut a brand new song, “Big Crime”, which protests Trump’s deployment of the National Guard on the streets of Washington D.C. Can you tell us how it came together?
We were in Chicago on this tour [Huntington Bank Pavilion, August 27] and Neil wrote a song right before soundcheck: ‘Big Crime In D.C. At The White House’. He shows it to us right after he wrote it. We’re learning it, so we do it a few times. Take Five is pretty good. It feels like we think we’ve got it surrounded, at least. Soundcheck ends and 15 minutes later, someone says, “Hey, I love the new song.” Neil had already put it out! Take five, the recording from soundcheck. It’s already released. We played it that night. I think he said something when he posted it on one of his little blogs, stream of consciousness things, about how Neil invited them to come up on stage rock‘n’roll has to be captured. It’s like this fleeting, restless spirit that you can’t really try to contrive or control, because it doesn’t work. I’ve experienced this a number of times, especially with him, where the best stuff is when you just kind of shake the snow globe. That was a perfect example of that rock‘n’roll energy and spontaneity and unpredictability, coupled with this song that’s just calling it all out, unapologetically. The response we get whenever we play that song feels like a palpable shift. Whether or not it affects anything, politically or legislatively or whatever, is not really the point. It’s just this feeling of solidarity.
Any idea where Neil might go next, artistically?
Honestly, I don’t know. He wants to keep playing, because he’s having a great time with the Chrome Hearts. We’ve talked about South America, we’ve talked about Japan, we’ve talked about Europe again. I mean, in terms of Europe and the States, we could tour both again and play all new places that we didn’t get to on this last tour.
For somebody approaching 80, that takes a lot of commitment and energy…
Yeah, it really does. Especially Europe. The routing and the travel aspect of it is a lot harder. We love being there, but it’s hard to get around on a bus. There’s ideas thrown around, but it really just depends on whether it makes sense, logistically and financially. The good news is that Neil still wants to play. Amazingly, at 80, he’s inspired and feeling energised to keep going. It helps when the music is good and feels good to play, when you have a band that is totally supportive and can go wherever you want to go, musically. That’s why we put this band together.