Watch Neil Young’s Intimate, Acoustic Ontario Concert
Neil Young celebrated the launch of his digital archives and the release of new album The Visitor with a special acoustic “hometown” concert at Omemee, Ontario’s Coronation Hall.
Over the course of the intimate gig in “a town in north Ontario” – which was live-streamed and is now available to view on Facebook – an unaccompanied Young delivered the live debut of The Visitor‘s “Stand Tall” as well as dusted off songs he hadn’t performed live in decades, including Harvest‘s “There’s a World” – played for the first time since 1971 – and “Don’t Be Denied,” which Young hadn’t performed live as a solo artist since 2003.
The concert also featured rare performances of Storytone cuts like “Tumbleweed” and “I’m Glad I Found You” along with favorites like “Helpless,” “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man” before concluding with “Sugar Mountain.”
The setlist leaned toward Young songs that touched on his Canadian roots: “Helpless,” “Don’t Be Denied,” “One of These Days” and “Journey Through the Past” all make passing mention to Canada. The live-stream also raised over $18,000 for the Bridge School.
Young’s decades-spanning set list came just hours after the rocker assembled his entire recorded history into his Neil Young Archives. “This archive is designed to be a living document, constantly evolving and including every new recording and film as it is made,” Young wrote in his welcome to the Archives.
The Archives also teased the impending arrival of nearly a dozen still-unreleased Young albums, including Chrome Dreams, Homegrown and Oceanside Countryside and live LPs like Odeon Budokan, The Boarding House and Solo Trans.
“There are about ten unreleased albums and a few unreleased films in this archive,” Young wrote. “These are projects I did not release at the time for one reason or another, and many of the songs subsequently appeared on other albums as the years flew past.”