Farm Aid 2022 will return without Neil Young once again this year, hitting Raleigh, North Carolina’s Coastal Credit Union Mark Park at Walnut Creek on September 24th. For the second year running, Young has cited his fears of Covid as the reason for staying away.

Rolling Stone reported that this year’s lineup for the annual fundraising concert features co-founders Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, Dave Mathews with Tim Reynolds, Margo Price, Chris Stapleton, Sheryl Crow, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, and Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real.

Tickets for the show go on sale on Saturday, July 30th. For more information, log on to: https://www.farmaid.org/festival/tickets/

Neil Young addressed his absence from the show while chatting with fans on his official Neil Young Archives page, writing, “I will not be at Farm Aid this year. I am not ready for that yet. I don’t think it is safe in the pandemic. I miss it very much. . . Not ready to tour. Covid is real danger. Long covid? No thanks. Expose my son to big crowds. No.”

John Mellencamp has been involved in the issues facing the American farmer for well over 35 years — both with his time and his music. It was his 1985 album Scarecrow that first got the attention of Farm Aid co-founder Willie Nelson: “We had some mutual friends that were hanging around with him, and they told him I had just made a record called Scarecrow that dealt with the family farm crisis. And he, at that time, had been thinking about putting together Farm Aid, and he just called me up out of the clear blue one day and said, ‘Hey I’m in Bloomington and I’ve been thinking about doing this. . . ‘ and ‘Would you help organizing?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And that’s my involvement.”