We won’t have the Outlaw Music Festival, but Willie Nelson and Neil Young are coming to Philly anyway
At the Mann, Nelson will play with his Family Band and Young will be backed by the Chrome Hearts (which includes Nelson's son Micah) in a show two days before the Farm Aid benefit concert.
Willie Nelson is on the road again — and this time, he’s bringing Neil Young with him.
Every summer since 2017 — with the exception of the COVID-19 shutdown year of 2020 — Nelson has brought his Outlaw Music Festival to the Philadelphia area, playing either the waterfront amphitheater in Camden or the Mann Center in Fairmount Park.
That streak ended this year, with Nelson cutting down on his touring schedule and eliminating many cities from the itinerary of the festival — which was founded in Scranton in 2016 — including Philly.
The lighter workload is certainly understandable: He’s 93!
But it turns out that the Red Headed Stranger isn’t skipping Philly after all. On Sept. 24, Willie Nelson & Family and Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts will play a co-headlining date at the Highmark Mann. Highly-touted Austin, Tex. teenage songwriter Ty Myers is also on the show.
The late breaking booking seems like it came out of nowhere, but makes perfect tour routing sense. Young and Nelson, of course, play together each September at Farm Aid, the annual fundraising show that has taken place every year since 1985, when it was inspired by a Bob Dylan onstage remark at Live Aid in Philadelphia in 1985.
This year, Farm Aid — with Nelson and Young joined by John Mellencamp, Margo Price, Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Sierra Ferrell, Nathaniel Rateliff, and others — will take place on Sept. 26 in Virginia Beach, Va. So the newly added Philly show qualifies as a warm up of sorts, the first part of a Willie and Neil long weekend.
Young’s show with the Chrome Hearts — his backing band which includes Willie’s son Micah Nelson and organist Spooner Oldham of the celebrated soul music Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section known as “the Swampers” — will be his first in the Philly area since his date with Crazy Horse at Camden’s Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in 2024.
It will also be Young’s first show at the Mann since 1988, when he played with his big band blues ensemble the Bluenotes on his Sponsored by Nobody Tour. The Canadian rocker, 80, also played the venue in 1987 with Crazy Horse and in 1985 with his countryfied band the International Harvesters.
Tickets go on sale via artist pre-sales at 10 a.m. on Wednesday Aug. 19. The general on sale is Friday Aug. 21 at 10 a.m. via ticketmaster.com.
