Neil Young & Crazy Horse were in a retrospective mood on Saturday in Bridgeport, CT where the band dusted the cobwebs off songs from After the Gold Rush and Broken Arrow. The show at the Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater was part of Young’s Love Earth Tour with his longtime backing band, which just announced the release of a new archival album Early Daze for June 28th via Reprise Records.
After over a dozen shows on this tour, Young & Crazy Horse’s setlists have become fairly solidified. There are always classics like “Cortez the Killer” which often opens the show, “Cinnamon Girl”, “Powderfinger”, and “Down by the River”. There are also deeper cuts like “Fuckin’ Up”, “Scattered (Let’s Think About Love)”, and “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere”, which all appeared on Saturday. And at all of their headlining shows—excluding a festival appearance at New Orleans Jazz Fest—there is always a solo acoustic interlude where Young straps on the harmonica for favorites “Heart of Gold”, “Comes A Time”, and “Human Highway” (replaced at Jazz Fest by a solo electric performance of “Ohio” on the 54th anniversary of the Kent State shootings).
But that rigidity doesn’t mean there isn’t room to color outside the lines. At the tour opener, Young introduced a new verse to “Cortez the Killer” that had been lost for almost 50 years. In Tennessee, Young added “Vampire Blues” to the Crazy Horse live songbook and offered up his first performance of “Sedan Delivery” in over a decade. Then over the weekend in Bridgeport, he revisited a pair of classic albums recorded with and without his backing band—which on this tour features Billy Talbot on bass, Ralph Molina on drums, and Micah Nelson on guitar subbing in for Nils Lofgren who is touring with The E Street Band.
First up was “When You Dance I Can Really Love” off Young’s 1970 solo masterpiece After the Gold Rush. Though perhaps not as memorable as the title track, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, or “Don’t Let It Bring You Down”, the grit of “When You Dance” that made it an outlier on the folk-leaning Gold Rush made it a perfect companion to the heavily distorted oeuvre of Crazy Horse. Young and Crazy Horse had not performed “When You Dance” since May 5th, 2018 in Bakersfield, CA per Setlist.fm (Neil hasn’t performed it solo since 2009).
Young and company saved the second bust-out for last, returning to the stage to perform “Big Time” for the encore. Taken from Young and Crazy Horse’s 1996 album Broken Arrow, the contemplative, jangly rocker left the evening on a reflective tone as Neil sang the chorus, “I’m still living the dream we had / For me it’s not over.” The 78-year-old is six decades into one of the most prolific songwriting careers of all time, now back onstage with his longtime brothers for their first tour together following years of being sidelined by a global pandemic, and he’s still living the dream he had.
Last week, Young also confirmed the release of a new archival album, Early Daze, featuring rare and previously unreleased recordings for Neil and Crazy Horse from 1969. The lineup for the band at that time included Danny Whitten (guitar and vocals), Ralph Molina (drums and vocals), Billy Talbot (bass and vocals), and Jack Nitzsche (keyboards, tambourine, and vocals), the same lineup heard on the Live at Fillmore East album recorded in 1970 and released in 2006. The ten-track Early Daze includes unreleased versions of “Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown”, “Winterlong”, “Wonderin'”, “Look At All the Things”, “Helpless”, and “Down By the River”. See below for the full tracklist and album artwork, and visit Young’s website to pre-order.
Check out some fan-shot videos from Neil Young & Crazy Horse in Bridgeport, including the After the Gold Rush and Broken Arrow bust-outs, below. The Love Earth Tour continues on Wednesday in Clarkston, MI and runs through September. Visit Young’s website for a full list of tour dates.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse — “When You Dance I Can Really Love” — 5/18/24
[Video: George George]
Neil Young & Crazy Horse — “Down By The River” — 5/18/24
[Video: Matt Frazier]
Neil Young & Crazy Horse — “Love And Only Love” — 5/18/24
[Video: George George]
Neil Young & Crazy Horse — “Big Time” — 5/18/24
[Video: Christian Scioli]
Setlist: Neil Young & Crazy Horse | Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater | Bridgeport, CT | 5/18/24
Set: Cortez the Killer, Cinnamon Girl, When You Dance I Can Really Love [1], Fuckin’ Up, Scattered (Let’s Think About Livin’), Barstool Blues [2], Danger Bird, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Roll Another Number (For the Road), I’m the Ocean, Down by the River, Powderfinger, Love and Only Love, Comes a Time [2], Heart of Gold [2] Human Highway [2], Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)
Encore: Big Time [3]
[1] LTP 5/5/18
[3] Neil solo acoustic
[4] 5/5/18
