Bob Dylan will come home again, this time to perform at Farm Aid 40 on Saturday in Minneapolis.
The Minnesota native — who not only owns a farm in his home state but gave the speech that sparked Willie Nelson to found Farm Aid — confirmed Wednesday that he will join the 40th anniversary lineup at Huntington Bank Stadium on the University of Minnesota campus.
Dylan wraps up the Outlaw Music Festival with Nelson on Friday at Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wis.
At Live Aid, the global fundraiser concert for African famine in July 1985, Dylan made a comment during his performance of “Maggie’s Farm” about helping family farmers with their mortgages. In September ‘85, Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young and others staged Farm Aid at the University of Illinois football stadium in front of 80,000 people, raising $9 million.
Dylan performed at the first two Farm Aids and again, unadvertised, in 2023. He last performed in the Twin Cities in 2017 in St. Paul, but he performed in Mankato in April and in Somerset, Wis., last summer with Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival.
When asked two weeks ago if Dylan might be coming to Farm Aid 40, Nelson told the Minnesota Star Tribune: “There hasn’t been any talk about that. He knows he’s welcome if he can make it. He has a busy schedule just like we do. I don’t want to pressure anybody to do anything.”
The nonprofit Farm Aid has raised more than $85 million to help with emergency relief, educational programs and farm policies.
Saturday’s Farm Aid 40 lineup includes Kenny Chesney, Billy Strings, Wynonna Judd, Steve Earle, Waxahatchee, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats and Dave Matthews as well as Nelson, Mellencamp and Young.
