How Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp created Farm Aid

Farm Aid 40 will go on after all on Saturday at the Gophers football stadium.

That was a close call as the 40th anniversary nonprofit fundraising concert to assist family farmers averted potential disaster last weekend when the University of Minnesota settled a contract with its striking Teamsters. Farm Aid founder Willie Nelson and company would not cross a picket line at Huntington Bank Stadium to set up for the 11-hour marathon event.

In interviews before the strike, the always Zen country music legend Nelson and sometimes ornery heartland rocker John Mellencamp explained how Farm Aid got started.

Nelson was playing golf in Bloomington, Ind., with one of Mellencamp’s buddies. The Texas superstar mentioned a benefit concert he was contemplating for family farmers, and the friend pointed out that Mellencamp’s brand-new song “Rain on the Scarecrow” was about the struggles of farmers.

“Willie got done playing golf and he called me up that day and he wanted help,” said Mellencamp, who’d never spoken to him before. “Two days later I got a call from Neil [Young] and Neil said Willie’d talked to him, and that’s how it all started.”

The next month, on Sept. 22, 1985, Nelson, Mellencamp and Young were joined by a who’s who in popular music — from Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan to B.B. King and Joni Mitchell to Bon Jovi and Bonnie Raitt — for the first Farm Aid in front of 80,000 at the University of Illinois football stadium that raised $9 million for American farmers.

Farm Aid will celebrate its 40th anniversary Saturday in Minneapolis with another all-star concert. The nonprofit has raised more than $85 million to help with emergency relief, educational programs and farm policies.

It’s been an unusual but rewarding row to hoe for these musicians, whether or not they have farming in their DNA.

Imagine a board meeting via Zoom with such noncorporate types as Mellencamp, Nelson and Young as well as Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Dave Matthews and indie country star Margo Price.

Mellencamp laughed while describing it last week. “There’s a lot of listening. There are a lot of businesspeople involved, too.”

Mellencamp, who has been on hundreds of board meeting calls, said “the conversations range from what’s going to happen with the catering to serious matters like raising money to going in front of the government to how Black farmers get treated.”

Nelson, president of the board of directors, relies on the Farm Aid office staff of 23 people to take care of things.

He also makes calls. And when Willie Nelson calls, people listen.

“I show up for anything Willie,” said veteran Texas singer/songwriter Steve Earle, who will perform at his eighth Farm Aid on Saturday.

Earle watched the inaugural Farm Aid on cable’s the Nashville Network, performed at the second one and then wrote “The Rain Came Down,” about a family farm being auctioned, to play at the third annual event.

“I wrote it because I was embarrassed that I didn’t have anything [topical] like that when I played Farm Aid 2,” Earle said this month via Zoom. “The line about my grandfather dying in the room he was born in is true and my father was born in that room, too, and all of his brothers and sisters.”

Earle, 70, a longtime activist and Nashville outsider who got invited to join the Grand Ole Opry this year, admires Nelson.

Alt-country singer Price, 42, who sang at Farm Aid in 2016 when she released her album “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter,” joined the nonprofit’s board in 2021.

“Willie Nelson is like an oracle,” she said. “He’s got so much compassion, not only for other people but compassion for himself.

“He keeps himself calm and grounded among decades of success,” Price said. “He always pours himself into his art, and the way that he gives back to people is just really inspiring.”

Mellencamp, 73, echoed his appreciation of Nelson, who he has described as hardheaded and softhearted.

“Willie knows what he wants and he gets things his way. I think people admire that,” Mellencamp said.

“I know how hard [a farmer’s] job is,” he said, his voice as soft and comforting as an old flannel shirt. “I just wanted to do what I could do. The problem doesn’t go away.”

Mellencamp has farming roots in his family, too. In fact, his sister still lives on a hog farm in Dudleytown, Ind.

Decades ago, he drove past all kinds of farms in his home state, which inspired him to write “Rain on the Scarecrow” with his childhood friend George Green in 1985.

Mellencamp noticed the vibrant little towns he’d known in high school were going out of business.

“By the ‘80s, they had all been pretty much boarded up and I couldn’t figure out why this was happening,” Mellencamp said. “So we did a little research and found out corporate farming was getting laws passed on their behalf and the small family farmer was getting edged out. That’s how it all started for me.”

What’s it like backstage at these star fests? Mellencamp, who has been to every Farm Aid, can’t tell you.

“I have a trailer that gets pulled to wherever I’m playing. I always park pretty far away from all the commotion,” he said. “So I don’t hang around backstage much. I come and do the press conference and I kind of disappear until it’s time for me to go on.”

Earle has plenty to say about backstage at Farm Aid, whether it was talking about vintage tour buses with Young or encountering the Guns N’ Roses crew.

“I’ve had June Carter Cash and [Willie’s then-wife] Connie Nelson on either side of me and try to put the healing on me in the early ‘90s,” said Earle, a recovering drug addict. “I met the Supersuckers backstage at Farm Aid and that resulted in doing an EP together.

“I’ve had every kind of memory you could imagine backstage at Farm Aid, and most of them are good. The vibe changed when Guns N’ Roses headed for the stage [in 1990] in Indianapolis because their roadies were used to being in charge [and cleared the stage area]. For most of the day, [usually] everybody goes everywhere.”

Dylan performed at the first two Farm Aids and again, unadvertised, in 2023. Since he is appearing on the final night of Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival on Friday in Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wis., might Nelson prevail upon his pal to join him for Farm Aid the next day in Dylan’s home state?

“There hasn’t been any talk about that,” Nelson said. “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.”

This isn’t the first time Farm Aid has considered coming to Minnesota, which has 65,000 farmers. In 1999, then-Gov. Jesse Ventura reached out to Nelson to bring Farm Aid to the Metrodome in Minneapolis for its 15th anniversary; instead, the concert went outdoors to Bristow, Va., in 2000.

Maybe Ventura and Nelson will meet again in Minnesota. They could compare their respective cannabis businesses. Ventura peddles his own products and the ever-entrepreneurial Nelson, long synonymous with weed, markets marijuana as well as Willie’s Remedy+, a THC drink.

“Well, let’s have a smoke off,” Nelson said with a chuckle.

Nelson has an album of Merle Haggard songs, “Workin’ Man: Willie Sings Merle,” due in November. It’s his second album of 2025 and his 78th solo project, by his publicist’s count. And he’s working on a Christmas record with some new and old songs, Nelson said.

Despite rumors that Farm Aid might be Nelson’s final concert, he said don’t believe it.

“I haven’t given any thoughts to that,” he said. “As long as I can do what I’m doing, I’ll do it. I take really one day at a time.”

Nelson clearly has more things to do.

“Let’s talk again,” he said signing off from his tour bus.

Where: Huntington Bank Stadium, University of Minnesota, 420 23rd Av. SE., Mpls.