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Against the Grain brings the magic of Farm Aid’s annual festival to listeners year-round. Hear from farmers and artists, advocates and food experts, activists and policymakers – all of whom are working towards building a more just and equitable farm and food system.
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We know some of you may be traveling in the next week or two, so we created this bonus episode as our holiday gift to you. In this special episode of Against the Grain, we dig into our recently digitized archives to highlight Farm Aid’s awe-inspiring founder and president, Willie Nelson. You may remember that we discussed how the first Farm Aid concert came together in the first episode of the podcast, but in this episode, we highlight the range of work Willie has done for the family farm movement outside of the annual festival. Year-in and year-out, for forty years, Willie has shown up to work shoulder-to-shoulder with farmers and ranchers whenever they’ve needed him. For this episode, we unearthed some archival audio of Willie joining a haylift in 1996, helping to distribute hay shipped by farmers in South Carolina to ranchers in Texas who, faced with a prolonged drought, couldn’t grow enough of their own hay for their cattle. Listen in as Willie greets the trucks, donated and driven by Teamsters Union drivers, and then goes out to Travis county ranches to distribute the hay. Willie may be in his 90s now, but he continues to stand alongside farmers fighting for a more just food and farm system.
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Willie Nelson performing at Farm Aid 2021. Photo © Brian Bruner / Bruner Photo
Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson is Farm Aid’s founder and president. By the time he started Farm Aid with Neil Young and John Mellencamp in 1985, he had, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame, “emerged as one of the most versatile, enduring, and influential talents in country music. As a vocal stylist, songwriter, bandleader and even occasional movie actor, his long commercial reign (twenty #1 country hits and 114 chart singles between 1962 and 1993) has been outstripped only by his boundless energy as a performer and songwriter. Since the mid-1950s, his recorded output has been so vast as to confound all but the most dedicated discographers.” This year, in fact, Willie released his 153rd album (if you’re interested, Texas Monthly has ranked every one of them here).
Willie’s empathy for farmers springs from his personal experience, growing up picking cotton in Abbott, Texas. But by the time he was a young man, his interest in music took him away from farming and got him a job as a DJ as well as plenty of honky-tonk gigs. He established himself as a talented songwriter in Nashville in the 1960s, writing hits like “Crazy” for Patsy Cline and “Hello Walls” for Faron Young. By 1964, Willie got the invitation to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry. But he eventually grew frustrated with the Nashville scene’s unimaginative approach to country music and moved back to Texas.
By the mid-1970s, Willie, along with Waylon Jennings and others, led the Outlaw Movement’s challenge to Nashville heterodoxy. He began putting on an annual Fourth of July Picnic that attracted everyone, from mainstream country fans to hippies and stoners, all of whom loved what one writer called “the improbable rise of redneck rock.”
So many hit records followed that by 1985, when Willie founded Farm Aid in response to the farm crisis, he was widely regarded as a giant of American music. Perhaps no one else could have pulled together that first concert, with more than sixty acts performing before a crowd of 80,000 people in the University of Illinois football stadium; it raised $7 million to help keep America’s family farmers on the land. Willie himself could not have predicted that Farm Aid would carry on for forty years, but he continues to show up for farmers every year.
Watch Videos Related to this Episode
Roger Miller and Willie Nelson perform “Old Friends” live at the Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois on September 22, 1985.
Willie Nelson performs “Whiskey River” live at the Farm Aid concert in Austin, Texas on July 4, 1986.
A look at Farm Aid’s history working to keep family farmers on the land since 1985.
Farm Aid President and Co-Founder Willie Nelson talks about Farm Aid’s mission and the services it provides to farmers all over the country. “The choices you make about your food will determine the fate of family farmers and the future of food in America.”
Against the Grain Holiday Bonus Episode: Willie Nelson and Family
KURN: Welcome back to Against the Grain, the Farmaid podcast. I’m Jessica Ilyse Kurn,
FOLEY: And I’m Michael Stewart Foley. For this special holiday episode of Against the Grain, we decided to dig into our archives to showcase some of the work of our awe-inspiring founder, Willie Nelson.
KURN: As you may know, Willie founded Farm Aid nearly 40 years ago when he recruited Neil Young and John Mellencamp to organize the first Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois in September 1985.
[MUSIC: Roger Miller and Willie Nelson perform “Old Friends” live at the Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois on September 22, 1985.]
KURN: And if you want to hear the wild stories of Farm Aid’s origin, you can go and listen to episode one of Against the Grain.
FOLEY: Willie, as Farm Aid’s president, has continued to organize our annual festival to raise money for farm organizations and awareness of the family farm movement every single year. Recently, we had Farm Aid’s entire audio and video archive digitized, so that’s 40 years’ worth of footage that’s been sitting dormant that we now have access to. We gathered up tapes from a bunch of sketchy storage units down the street and in the basement of our executive director.
KURN: Oh, and who knows, there’s probably more on Willie’s bus!
FOLEY: Yeah, we should check that out! It’s astonishing to see all the ways that Farm Aid’s founding artists showed up with farmers over the years. It wasn’t just that Willie, Neil, and John put on an annual concert that raised millions of dollars. They also joined farmers on the front lines of protest and disaster relief.
KURN: There are so many amazing moments – like Mellencamp showing up at a USDA office protest in Chillicothe, Missouri, and Neil on Capitol Hill in 1999. And what about Willie’s 1989 tour when he brought farmers to all the press conferences that he had?
FOLEY: Yeah, and Willie showing up for the first big factory farm protest in Lincoln Township, Missouri in 1995. So now we’re going to take you back to 1996 when Willie participated in a hay lift organized by a South Carolina farmer named Tom Trantham and a bunch of Teamsters Union truck drivers. They brought thousands of bales of hay to Texas to help farmers and ranchers who, because of a devastating drought, couldn’t grow enough hay to feed their cattle through the winter.
RANCHER: We had nothing. The cattle were eating the bark off of the post.
KURN: For these Travis County ranchers, the situation was dire until Willie and all of this hay showed up. Here’s Willie talking to a local reporter about the project in a way that I just love. He’s showing how rural people show up for each other when times get tough.
NELSON: Well, this is a very exciting morning for, uh, you know, a lot of people down here because this is, uh, a perfect example of people helping people and, uh, uh, years ago when they had the big drought up in South Carolina, a lot of Texas farmers and ranchers sent a bunch of hay up there to these folks, and a guy named Tom who, uh, was a recipient of some of the hay, him and his cows were very happy to get it – and when they found out that Texas was having this a similar problem, this is South Carolina sending hay back down here. And the teamsters donated the truck. The driver donated his help. And this is just the beginning of many of these hay lifts.
FOLEY: Later that day, Willie was out delivering hay from ranch to ranch when he encountered rancher Fannie Simnacher.
NELSON: Well, I think they’ve got 150 or a couple 100 set aside for you now, and we’ll get you some more later.
SIMNACHER : Oh, I’m gonna say a lot of prayers!
NELSON: Oh, thank you.
REPORTER: While Willie was helping unload, Fannie told us without this hay she was certain to lose her cattle.
SIMNACHER: I couldn’t pay the taxes off my place if I don’t keep cattle.
NELSON: We might not get all the, the, the cattle fed all winter long with the hay, but we’ll get some of the people, uh, a little more, uh, secure in their winters, and know that, uh, they are going to get some help, and there is somebody thinking about them.
REPORTER: When was the last time you hauled any hay?
NELSON: Been a while!
[MUSIC: “Whiskey River” live at the Farm Aid concert in Austin, Texas on July 4, 1986.]
KURN: Willie making those hay lifts happen is yet another example of Willie talking the talk and then walking the walk, showing up for farmers and rural communities.
NELSON: When 5 family farmers go out of business, then 1 business in that community goes out, so it’s like a domino effect. The original purpose of farm aid was to bring some awareness to the fact that the farmer was in trouble.
Over the years, hundreds of generous and talented artists have donated their performances to Farm Aid. The Farm Aid mission has not changed. Farm Aid has worked to keep families on the land. Our work benefits everyone who eats. We fund a network of crisis hotlines that farmers can call when they are in urgent need. And when farmers lose their land, they lose their home as well. Our farmer-to-farmer programs combine generations of wisdom with new ideas to take better care of the land.
Every day, Farm Aid works to be sure you get what you want – quality food – by doing everything we can to keep family farmers growing your food. It’s good to know there are so many people in so many places linked by Farm Aid working together, making a difference. Today, our family farms are threatened, and when we lose family farms, we lose the best source for fresh, local, and healthy food. The choices you make about your food will determine the fate of family farmers and the future of food in America.
FOLEY: That was Willie speaking in 2003. What’s remarkable, Jess, is just how consistent Willie has been over the years. He may be in his 90s now, but he still shows up for farmers. There have been more hay lifts and more protests, including the time Willie showed up in Nebraska with Neil Young to protest the Keystone XL pipeline in 2014, and so many more.
KURN: Like in 2023 when Farm Aid helped organize the Farmers for Climate Action rally in Washington DC, when Willie and his son, Micah, sent a video message of support where they performed Heartland with Mickey Raphael. Heartland is the song that Willie wrote with Bob Dylan for family farmers back in 1993. Give it a listen.
NELSON: Hello farmers, farmworkers and friends. I’m Willie Nelson.
MICAH NELSON: And I’m Micah Nelson.
NELSON: Farm Aid stands for family farmers and ranchers. You are also so important to us, especially for the role you play as stewards of the land.
MICAH NELSON: We don’t have to tell you because all of you already know, but Congress needs to hear from us the importance of prioritizing farmer-led climate solutions in this year’s farm bill.
NELSON: And they need to center racial justice in the farm bill and put communities ahead of corporations. We wish we could be there with you today as you prepare to meet with your representatives. The work you’re all doing is so important, and we send along our thanks and this song of support.
[MUSIC: “Heartland”]
KURN: In this holiday episode, we really wanted to celebrate what an amazing champion he’s been for farmers and also to leave you with the warm fuzzy feeling that we get from the closeness that is the Nelson family.
FOLEY: So here’s Willie with his sons Micah and Lukas playing Stay a Little Longer from this past festival, Farm Aid 2024. Take a listen and then head to our website for the full video clips of what we shared today and more music from the Nelson family.
[MUSIC: “Stay a Little Longer” at Farm Aid 2024 in Saratoga Springs, New York}
FOLEY: What a great song! I love these moments when Willie and the family perform at every festival. On behalf of the Farm Aid family, we’d like to wish you and your family a very happy holiday.
KURN: And a special shout out to all the family farmers and ranchers out there. Thank you as always for listening. Don’t forget to share this episode with friends. When you like, subscribe, follow and rate the podcast, it helps us continue to bring you stories about Farm Aid and the people who grow our food. See you in 2025.
FOLEY: Against the Grain was written and produced by us, with sound editing by Endhouse Media and direction from Dawn Sorokin. Micah Nelson, as always, wrote and performed our theme music.
