On the first day of the new year, I had the pleasure of performing a few songs at “Neil Years Day 2024”, the annual Neil Young tribute benefit concert for a very worthy cause: the iHuman Youth Society in Edmonton. Founded in 1997, iHuman Youth Society stands as a beacon of hope in Edmonton by championing the cause of this city’s marginalized youth. Their mission goes beyond mere engagement; they are deeply committed to driving social change while fostering positive personal development and well being.
The brainchild of Edmonton-based promoter/manager/musician/wonderguy Brent Oliver, the Neil Years Day benefit concerts have featured some of Edmonton’s best and brightest songwriters, performing Neil Young songs, since the first concert occurred in 2020: Mike McDonald (of Junior Gone Wild), Jeff Stuart (of The Hearts), Olivia Street (of King of Foxes), Jake Ian, Tanyss Nixi (of Wheat Halo), Jody Shenkarek, Ben Sures, Billie Zizi, Lyle Bell, Chris Wynters (of Captain Tractor), Robb Angus (of The Dungarees), and Sherry-Lee Heshel, to name just a few.
It feels good to make a contribution to a worthy cause such as this, but it is also very satisfying on other levels. Neil Young has always been one of my biggest influences and was one of my formative musical heroes. When I was in junior high school my best friend Hank Engel and I were pretty much blown out of our theatre seats of the Princess Theatre when we saw his concert film “Rust Never Sleeps” in 1979. After seeing the film, we proceeded to learn how to sing and play every single song from the movie and the the accompanying soundtrack “Live Rust”. It made us want to be musicians. The songs were fantastic but his guitar playing was truly a revelation! It was purposely not overly technical with guitar figures distilled down to their essences but, at the same time, brilliantly nuanced and above all, distinctive, and played with a glorious raggedness and abandon. I proceeded to buy both the “Rust Never Sleeps” and “Live Rust” songbooks which contained more accurate than normal TABs. Back in the 70s, most songbooks were made for piano so the guitar chords were often the wrong voicings so I usually just learned everything by ear instead. In any case, these Neil Young songbooks were far better than most. I actually learned about double-drop-D from these books (“The Loner”, “Cinnamon Girl”, and “If You Dance I Can Really Love” are all in double-drop-D). More than that, even though Neil Young’s songs were brilliant, he didn’t seem to take himself too seriously and had this sort of recluse-maverick “stick it to the man” ethos. As a teenager, that was extremely appealing. Actually, it still is! He could pull your heart strings and punch you in the gut but then turn around and make you laugh. We were hooked.
So yeah, no one would have to twist my arm to play songs by this brilliant Canadian songwriter. But then the question became which songs to choose? There are so many fantastic options and I happily confess I have by no means heard every Neil Young song yet. I’m trying to save some songs for later in my life. The same goes for Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen (two other fave songwriters). I love that there are some songs I haven’t heard yet from all three of them and I certainly look forward to hearing them! In any case, there were all the Neil Young songs I used to play, when I was thirteen (everything from Live Rust), but then there were others I have covered over the years with different bands and also, the option of learning to play something I’ve never tackled.
At the first concert in 2020 I decided to play “Thrasher” (from Rust Never Sleeps) and “Don’t Cry No Tears” which was the infectious opening track from his 1975 release “Zuma”. “Thrasher” is a song I had learned when I was a teen, but I always loved it and had never committed it to memory so, I decided to dive in and learn it in a more complete and deeper muscle memorized fashion. I don’t judge other musicians for reading off of music stands during a live show, but I have always found that I can get more “inside the song” if I free myself from reading and play more from the intuitive feeling of muscle memory. Neil Young is a songwriter who has always understood the power of ambiguity in making a song more accessible and inclusive. For this reason I could love the song as a teenager, and understand it’s mysteries in my own way but later on, when I learned references to the break-up of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, I was also able to appreciate it in a whole different way.
“Don’t Cry No Tears” is a bit more obscure, but is another truly great early vintage Neil Young track. That was always our creed for playing cover songs back in the early days. Hank and I figured if you’re going to play a cover song (and not an original), you shouldn’t play a top 40 hit that everyone knows, but rather, play the songs that are as good or better than the hits that no one knows about. We made exceptions from time to time to be sure. “Don’t Cry No Tears” is also a song that I used to play with Mike McDonald (of Junior Gone Wild) when we used to busk on the street corner (usually by a liquor store) back in the early eighties. Again, when I learned the song I had no idea that it was apparently inspired by Neil Young’s split with Carrie Snodgrass, the mother of his son Zeke. It didn’t matter because it had its own meaning for me in relation to my own life.
Fast forward to November 2023, when Brent Oliver asked if I might be interested in playing again for the 2024 concert, I jumped at the opportunity. This time I started off with perhaps the first Neil Young song I ever learned which was also the first song in the Rust Never Sleeps movie: “Sugar Mountain”. It’s another song that makes you realize just how high Neil Young can sing! It’s a real beauty in its simplicity and almost photographic snapshot lyrical imagery of a series of milestone relatable coming of age moments. It doesn’t try and be deep or wise – it just creates a very unpretentious mental movie just about any rebellious young person could relate to.
I hadn’t played Thrasher since 2020 and decided I would love to play it again. I have always loved “Crime in the City” from one of Young’s numerous “comeback” albums “Freedom” released in 1989 and I considered playing that as it would form a nice counterpoint, from a lyrical standpoint to “Sugar Mountain”; innocent Neil vs. older wiser and more cynical Neil twenty years on. I worked on it for a while – it was feeling great. The only things was that it is a very long track. It might mean I could only do 3 tracks (Brent had suggested 3 or 4 tracks this year). Hmm. Another track I have always loved is “Big Time” from the 1990 album “Broken Arrow”. This one really spoke to me when it came out with its soaring chorus “I’m still living that dream we had / for me it’s not over”. I could relate to this so strongly as at that point in my life I was battling with whether or not I would be able to stay the course being a musician or not (obviously I did). I had sort of blinked and had even considered throwing in the towel. Let’s just say life as a musician was proving to be a lot more precarious than I had imagined.
I finally decided to play something more lighthearted in “Too Far Gone” (from the “Freedom” record). It turned out really well in fact. The 2024 concert featured a full backing band. I asked Olivia Street from “King of Foxes” if she wanted to sing some harmony vocals with me and she said “Sure!” It sounded sweet! Finally, we closed the night with a rousing version of the Neil Young classic “Like A Hurricane”. Brent Oliver and I traded off verses. It was fantastic!