Neil Young hasn’t played a show since Farm Aid in September — and in a new letter to a fan on the Neil Young Archives he said that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. “Don’t expect anything,” he wrote when asked about his 2020 tour plans. “I am not focused on playing. I am taking care of my music.”
The lone exception to this is an appearance alongside Stephen Stills at the Light Up the Blues autism benefit at the Greek Theater in L.A. on May 30th.
There was much talk last year of a Crazy Horse arena tour in support of their recent LP, Colorado; Young even said a show was booked at Madison Square Garden, but for now those plans appear to have been put aside. His last run of shows prior to Farm Aid and a Farm Aid warmup gig in Indianapolis took place in June and July 2019, when he played a mix of headlining concerts and festivals in Europe with Promise of the Real. It wrapped up at Nowlan Park in Kilkenny, Ireland, where he shared the stage with Bob Dylan for the first time since 1994.
Young has spent much of his time focusing on a huge slate of archival albums that he plans to release this year. In another new letter to fans, he said that his legendary unreleased 1975 LP, Homegrown, will come out in April. It will be followed in July by a movie-album chronicling his 2003-04 Greendale tour with Crazy Horse. After that, if the current plan holds, he will release the long-awaited Archives Volume 2 box set, which will feature a 1990 Crazy Horse club show he’s labeled Way Down in the Rust Bucket, and a January 22nd, 1971, solo acoustic gig he played at the Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, Connecticut. The exact timing on those projects is unclear.
A Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunion is unlikely, considering his poor relationship with David Crosby, but Young also posted a letter from a fan urging him to reform the band “for the common good” in this election year. Surprisingly, Young didn’t rule it out completely. “For the common good!” he wrote back. “Anything is possible.”