Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan perform at Farm Aid 40

The star-studded Farm Aid 40 concert was held at Huntington Bank Stadium at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

1:00 a.m.: Although Willie Nelson played his standard set list to close out Farm Aid 40, it didn’t feel typical. His voice was more forceful than in recent area performances. The 92-year-old seemed buoyed by the presence of his sons Lukas and Micah sitting in with his band. And, because it was Farm Aid, so near and dear to its founder, many songs resonated differently.

Most noteworthy was “Last Leaf on the Tree,” the title track of his 2024 album. When he crooned, “I’ll be here for eternity,” big cheers erupted from the faithful who were still at Huntington Bank Stadium more than 12 hours after Farm Aid started.

To close out the night, most of the night’s singers and musicians (save for Bob Dylan) joined the universally loved American treasure for “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “I’ll Fly Away.” But the sometimes-irreverent one encored with the tongue-in-cheek “It’s Hard to Be Humble” and then summed up the vibe of his long fight for family farmers with the uplifting “I Saw the Light,” the Hank Williams tune about “no sorrows in sight.”

— Jon Bream

12:06 a.m.: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz came out in front of the Farm Aid 40 banner around 11:50 p.m. to give headliner Willie Nelson an introduction befitting the event’s iconic ringleader. First, though, the governor urged attendees to “give the union sisters and brothers in the stage production crew a big hand” (alluding to the University of Minnesota’s dispute with Teamsters that nearly derailed the charity concert).

“And thank you, Minnesota, for showing up for your neighbors [and] for those agriculture producers across this country who feed, fuel and clothe not just us in our nation but the world,” Walz added.

— Chris Riemenschneider

11:35 p.m.: Whatever you thought of the antagonistic and downright manic political vibe of Neil Young’s set as the penultimate act of Farm Aid 40 — which continued through “Be the Rain” and “Southern Man” — you would have a hard time bad-mouthing his new band the Chrome Hearts to his most devoted fans. The four-man unit echoed the ragged power of his heyday group Crazy Horse along with some of the twangier layers of his best-loved solo albums, the latter elements brought out by Muscle Shoals vet Spooner Oldham on organ and Willie’s son, Micah Nelson, on guitar. After all the thick rocking, they ended equally strong with a mellow-cool version of “Old Man.”

Speaking of old men: With the schedule behind by more than a half-hour, the day’s 92-year-old grand pooh-bah is slated to perform well past midnight. Willie should be up for the challenge, though.

— Chris Riemenschneider

11:12 p.m.: Neil Young kept up the overtly political tone even after his hard-hitting opening song. He and the band raged through “Rockin’ in the Free World,” a protest song the Canadian immigrant (who was a Reagan supporter) wrote during the first Bush administration. Then he sat down at the piano for a dramatic take on 1987’s “Long Walk Home,” which repeatedly asks, “America, where have we gone?” Instead of the original lyrics about letting down Vietnam and Beirut, though, he subbed in references to Canada and Ukraine. Looks like Neil has a lot to get off his chest tonight.

10:59 p.m.: Neil Young came out swinging. He and his hard-grinding new band, the Chrome Hearts, kicked off their set just before 11 p.m. with “Big Crime,” a song that has already gone viral just two weeks after its release and takes obvious aim at the current presidential administration. Lyrics include:

“No more great again

No more great again

Got big crime in D.C. at the White House

Don’t need no fascist rules

Don’t want soldiers walking on our streets

Got big crime in D.C. at the White House”

— Chris Riemenschneider

10:45 p.m.: Bob Dylan gave his first performance on the University of Minnesota campus since 2008 at Northrop. And once again it was enigmatic. Isn’t that what we expect from Dylan these days? Especially with his curious relationship with his home state. He did more classics than expected and they were recognizable — but reworked.

“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” was slow and drawn out. “To Ramona” was recast as a nursery rhyme Tex-Mex waltz. “Highway 61 Revisited” was a classic blues shuffle, and the opening “All Along the Watchtower” was more like a game of where’s Bob — in a black hoodie in lights too dim to read by — than what’s he singing? Five songs in 21 minutes seemed more like an I-saw-him-once-in-a-Minneapolis moment than a true time capsule.

10:28 p.m.: And the hits kept coming from Dylan, who typically drops in only a few old favorites into his set. He kicked into “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” after “All Along the Watchtower,” seemingly playing nice to Farm Aid-goers and home-state fans.

— Chris Riemenschneider

10:11 p.m.: With a light sprinkle from overhead starting to hit the quietly enraptured crowd just as he walked out in the dark at 10:02 p.m., Bob Dylan hit the stage to the tune of one of his best-known classics, “All Along the Watchtower.” He was introduced by John Mellencamp, who called the Minnesota icon “one of the nicest, funniest guys I know.” Yeah, go figure.

— Chris Riemenschneider

9:53 p.m.: Maybe since he hasn’t been on tour this year, John Mellencamp’s usually raspy and often gravelly voice sounded more clear than usual at Farm Aid. He brought the fire, his band brought the bite (shoutout to violinist Lisa Germano) and he ad-libbed a lyric for the occasion in “Pink Houses” singing “and the farmers pay the bills, the bills.”

9:22 p.m.: Bob Dylan and Farm Aid have quite a history. It was Dylan’s comment at Live Aid in July 1985 that sparked Willie Nelson to create the inaugural Farm Aid. Dylan performed at the first Farm Aid and two others. All three times, he has been backed by the Heartbreakers, Tom Petty’s band.

Remember at Live Aid in 1985 when Dylan was accompanied by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones? Six weeks later at the first Farm Aid, he still didn’t have a band, so Dylan asked Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers to play with him. They performed with him again at the second Farm Aid.

Fast forward to 2023, when Dylan made a surprise appearance at Farm Aid once again accompanied by the Heartbreakers for his three-song performance in Indiana.

No Heartbreakers tonight in Minneapolis. For Dylan’s homecoming Farm Aid 40 appearance at about 9:50 p.m., he is expected to be joined by his current touring band.

— Jon Bream

“Don’t believe it when they tell you we ain’t in it together,” the Virginia-reared Rock & Roll Hall of Famer said, gesturing to the united chorus of fans singing along to songs like “Crush” and “Everyday” during his twilight-glowing acoustic set with guitar ace Tim Reynolds and Lukas Nelson’s spotlight-stealing fiddler Jake Renick Simpson. Before his more recent song “Peace on Earth,” Matthews added, “If we remember we’re all neighbors, we’ll have a better chance.”

— Chris Riemenschneider

7:30 p.m.: Sen. Amy Klobuchar took the main stage to give Farm Aid’s youngest musician board member, Margo Price, a rousing introduction. After talking about how “small farmers have taken a gut punch” and repeating the themes of the day, the senator invoked another person currently facing calamity: a certain late-night TV host.

“She’s so good she was on Jimmy Kimmel’s last show,” Klobuchar said of Price, who unknowingly performed in what turned out to be the final minutes of Kimmel’s show before ABC kicked him off the air. “We need to get Margo back on Kimmel!” the senator added.

Right on cue, Price opened her set with the not-so-coincidental song she performed Wednesday on TV: “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down.”

6:57 p.m.: Kenny Chesney is onstage and the crowd has a buzz about it — energy and otherwise.

Field-level concessions vendors said they sense that alcohol sales are very strong. This crowd prefers craft beers and seltzers, compared to the usual domestics ordered at Golden Gophers football games. Even still, concessions already have gone through their entire back stock of Miller Lite.

— Cole Reynolds

5:45 p.m.: As Billy Strings takes the stage, he gives a group of aging Deadheads a chance to relive their fandom. The Deadheads-turned-Billy-Strings-superfans have been finding one another all afternoon at Huntington Bank Stadium, exchanging trinkets. Dana Myers, a Wisconsin goat farmer, has learned to spot a Billy Strings fan. He said he’s been to about 65 shows and is trying to hit all the stops on the bluegrass artist’s current tour. He estimates that some 500 to 1,000 fans follow Strings like he does.

— Cole Reynolds

— Chris Riemenschneider

4:56 p.m.: Wearing a faded “Stop factory farms” T-shirt and suspenders and looking a whole lot like he was playing the part of an old farmer, Nathaniel Rateliff harvested the biggest audience reaction yet among the day’s performances with his Stax Records-flavored soul-rock band the Night Sweats. The Denver-area groovers went full tilt with horns blazing for their entire 30-minute set, sparking large swaths of dancing on the field and in the stands with “I Need Never Get Old” and “S.O.B.” Proof there’s a lot more to Farm Aid than country music and classic rock.

— Chris Riemenschneider

4:35 p.m.: The underground ticket market has been in full swing outside Huntington Bank Stadium, with a handful of scalpers offering tickets to wannabe concertgoers. Shaun Brown, a self-described “street comedian,” said he came to Farm Aid 40 with $100 in his pocket and decided to cut out the middlemen. He went up and down the lines with a cardboard sign that simply said: “Need Tickets.” He found someone willing to sell him a field-level ticket for $80. “It sucked,” Brown said of his quest to find a cheap ticket. “But in the end, it’s worth it.”

— Cole Reynolds

— Chris Riemenschneider

4:03 p.m.: The lines now are some of the shortest they’ve been today, and are almost completely contained within the metal barricades set up. A steady rush broke within the last hour, said Max Peterson, who is managing one of the largest gates. “A lot of people came earlier than we expected,” he said. Most people are likely now in their seats, and Peterson said the staff is expecting only a small rush around 6 p.m., when Farm Aid 40’s biggest names start to take the stage.

— Cole Reynolds

3:58 p.m.: Steve Earle, a Farm Aid regular who takes the stage after Duluth’s Trampled by Turtles, has family-farm connections. “I’m one generation removed from a farm that didn’t do well. My grandfather was in and out of it several times. Raised peaches, northeast Texas,” Earle said. After watching the first Farm Aid in 1985, he got invited to the second show in Austin, Texas, where he was living at the time. He was embarrassed that he didn’t have a topical song to sing, so he wrote “The Rain Came Down” for Year 3, and it has become a Farm Aid staple.

— Jon Bream

3:52 p.m.:

3:12 p.m.: All the clothing sold at the merchandise booth are made with organic cotton grown in the United States. Prices range from $45 for T-shirts to $100 for denim jackets.

— Brian Stensaas

2:43 p.m.: For CNN correspondent Bill Weir, Farm Aid is a sort of homecoming. One of his first gigs was as a sports reporter at Rochester’s KAAL-TV in early ’90s, when the Twins won the World Series and Minnesota hosted the Super Bowl. “It was a dream for a sports fan,” he said. Being part of CNN’s Farm Aid gig is also a sweet assignment. This will be the fourth time he’s seen Willie Nelson in concert. “This a nice reprieve from the news cycle,“ he said. “But I’m also looking to see what news could come out of here.”

— Neal Justin

— Chris Riemenschneider

2:07 p.m.: Since 2007, Farm Aid concerts have featured local farms, especially organic and grass-fed operations, on the concession menu. “We want to connect the food with the farmer, as much local as we can,” said Jennifer Fahy, Farm Aid’s co-executive director. That’s not easy to pull off when feeding thousands and facing a food supply chain built around large distributors. “It’s different than picking up the phone and getting it all delivered on one truck,” Fahy said.

— Brooks Johnson

2:01 p.m.: Eric Burton of Black Pumas, the fourth performer at Farm Aid 40, has taken the stage at the University of Minnesota stadium. The crowd is slow in arriving for the 18-act marathon.

— Jon Bream

— Chris Riemenschneider

1:57 p.m.: The downside to having such a stacked lineup of musicians at Farm Aid 40 became apparent as the second and third acts of the day, Madeline Edwards and Jesse Welles, took the stage. Each made strong impressions on the crowd instantaneously but then seemed to leave us hanging, with less than a half-hour apiece to perform.

— Chris Riemenschneider

1:54 p.m.: The wild rice brats are delish and priced reasonably at $8.29, but paying $9.99 for a jumbo bag of chips hurts a bit. However, it helps that it’s all going to a good cause.

— Neal Justin

“I remember watching Farm Aid as a kid, and I’ve been a fan of the board members almost my whole life, so this is huge,” he said.

— Chris Riemenschneider

1:13 p.m.: Farm Aid is best known for its annual charity concert, but the nonprofit behind the festival operates year-round spending the money raised on programs to benefit small family farms. That includes the 1-800-FARM-AID hotline, which supports local groups like St. Paul’s Farmers’ Legal Action Group and provides emergency grants for farmers in crisis. Those resources are needed today as much as they were 40 years ago when Farm Aid was founded. “It’s difficult for anybody to be profitable in this environment,” said Ruth Ann Karty, a farm advocate at the state department of agriculture.

— Brooks Johnson

12:57 p.m.: One of Farm Aid’s musician board members, Margo Price, not only introduced the day’s first performers, the Wisdom Indian Dancers, but also sang her heart out with them.

— Chris Riemenschneider

12:48 p.m.: Dozens of progressive farm and conservation groups have set up booths at the Homegrown Village outside Huntington Bank Stadium until 5 p.m. today as part of Farm Aid’s advocacy for small-scale and local food systems. And because this is Minnesota, there’s also a crop art station out there.

— Brooks Johnson

12:37 p.m.: Farm Aid 40 traffic has slowed some roads to a crawl around Huntington Bank Stadium. It’s slow going along Hwy. 55 in both directions. Those heading northbound through the Lowry tunnel need to add 5-10 minutes to travel times. There are minor slowdowns along Interstate 94, but Hwy. 280 remains clear.

— Kyeland Jackson

— Chris Riemenschneider

12:02 p.m.: Mayor Jacob Frey declares Sept. 20, 2025, as Farm Aid Day in Minneapolis as the gates open for concertgoers.

— Jon Bream

11:58 a.m.: Angela Dawson, a farmer in Pine County and co-founder of the 40 Acre Co-op, took the stage to thank Willie Nelson for the spotlight on emerging farmers. “Trailblazers need support. We need people behind us,” she said.

— Brooks Johnson

— Neal Justin

11:52 a.m.: Farm Aid organizers and farmers criticize the concentrated animal feeding operations, aka factory farms, during the press conference. Minnesota is the nation’s second-largest pork producer, a leading dairy state and is home to about 1,200 large feedlots that house more than 1,000 animals each, according to state regulators. That’s triple the number of those operations in 1991, according to the Environmental Working Group.

— Brooks Johnson

11:47 a.m.: Neil Young begs Cargill and other corporations to donate to “the human beings who made this happen. ... They need to pay a conscience tax to the farmers of America.”

— Jon Bream

— Jon Bream

11:22 a.m.: With Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young and others onstage, Farm Aid’s co-executive director Jennifer Fahy said Minnesota was the first choice for Farm Aid 40 during the press conference.

— Jon Bream

11:13 a.m.: Those headed for Huntington Bank Stadium by car can expect to shell out some cash. It will cost $33 to park at the Washington Avenue Ramp and $44 to park in Lot No. 37, the Ski-U-Mah Lot or the Gateway Lot. Metro Transit spokesman Drew Kerr said train service will be expanded, buses will be available after midnight and additional staff will be on hand to help concertgoers navigate.

— Kyeland Jackson

— Arthi Subramaniam