Inside Neil Young’s Epic Summer Tour With Promise of the Real
Neil Young and Promise of the Real were just four shows into their Rebel Content Tour this summer when guitarist Micah Nelson had what he calls an “out-of-body experience.” “We were playing ‘Big Box’ at the Nebraska show and suddenly I was floating above my body,” he says. “I thought to myself, ‘I’m playing a show now, and I need to keep moving my hands and get back down because otherwise I’m going to fuck up.’ It was very bizarre and euphoric.”
It was just one of many surreal moments for the 25-year-old son of Willie Nelson, who played guitar with his brother Lukas’ band Promise of the Real on Young’s newest album, The Monsanto Years. They supported it with 12 American amphitheater dates in July, regularly staging three-hour marathon shows that mixed classic Young hits with new tracks and deep cuts that hadn’t been touched in years.
“One of the best moments was when we did ‘Cortez the Killer’ for 20 minutes as the encore at Jones Beach,” Nelson says. “At the end, Neil played that three note riff for what seemed like 10 minutes straight while we all danced around the stage, waving our guitars like we were having a lightsaber battle. He hit the whammy bar so hard, all the strings just ripped out of the guitar. It wasn’t just one of my favorite moments of the tour, but of my entire life.”
Weeks before the tour kicked off at Milwaukee’s Marcus Ampithetear, Young sent the band a tape of 80 songs to learn. It was an eclectic mix of new and old that included “Ride My Llama,” “Flying on the Ground Is Wrong,” “Burned,” “Winterlong,” “Don’t Be Denied,” “Field of Opportunity,” “Hippie Dream” and “Vampire Blues.” “About 95 percent of them we’d heard at least once before,” says Nelson. “But we still had to lock in the changes and play them a few times to get them down.”
Formal rehearsals began a few nights before opening night at the Alpine Valley Resort in Wisconsin. “One night, as the sun was setting, Neil played ‘After the Gold Rush’ on the piano,” says Nelson. “I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to open the show like that?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ Then we all just kind of came up with the set list together, though I think Neil had been conceiving it in his mind for quite some time. The basic idea was that we’d progress from acoustic to mellow to heavy and electric, but filling in the blanks was a collaborative effort.”
Every show began with Young alone at the piano playing “After the Gold Rush,” followed by solo acoustic renditions of some of his biggest hits, like “Heart of Gold,” “Old Man” and “Long May You Run,” on guitar. After four songs, the band would come out for a semi-acoustic set that leaned toward Harvest and Harvest Moon material like “Out on the Weekend,” “Unknown Legend” and “Harvest Moon.” Young would then strap on his White Falcon guitar for harder-edged material like “Words” and “Walk On,” along with Monstano Years tracks. The final portion of the show found Young playing his trusty Gibson Les Paul Old Black on jammed-out renditions of “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Love and Only Love” and other tunes generally associated with Crazy Horse.