There are good festival lineups, and then there are utterly insane festival lineups.
Farm Aid 2018, which arrives at Hartford’s Xfinity Theatre on Sept. 22, brings together country, Americana and jam-band A-listers Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews (with Tim Reynolds).
The so-called under-card is just as strong: Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Kacey Musgraves, Margo Price, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Lukas Nelson (Willie’s son) & The Promise of the Real, Particle Kid and others.
Farm Aid, now 33 years old, is longest-running benefit series in the country. The first benefit, which took place in 1985 at the University of Illinois in Champaign, drew 80,000 people and raised more than $9 million to help benefit family farmers. Nelson, Mellencamp, Young, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Roy Orbison and B.B. King performed.
Farm Aid communications director Jennifer Fahy says Hartford is the ideal choice for this year’s event.
“We do move the concert around the country, as you know,” Fahy says. “Willie [Nelson] always wanted that to be the case. We wanted to come back to New England [in 2008, Farm Aid took place at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, Mass], and we haven’t been to Hartford. The venue is great for us, and we look forward to celebrating New England agriculture.”
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Family farmers, Fahy adds, often travel across the country to attend Farm Aid and prefer to visit new states.
“They’re on vacation, but all they want to do is be on farms. To bring them to a state where they haven’t been is great for them. They always like to be in a place they haven’t been before.”
Another factor: Mark Rothbaum, Nelson’s longtime manager, operates out of Danbury.
“[Rothbaum] is one of the major producers and the visionary behind the lineup, and he’s from Connecticut,” Fahy says. “This means a lot to him. He’s been dedicated to Farm Aid all these years.”
Compared with Midwestern states, Connecticut has relatively few family farms — 6,000 or so, Fahy estimates — but the situation here is unique.
“They go back to the nation’s founding,” Fahy says. “There are really positive things that are happening with the food system here.”
Many Farm Aid acts — Margo Price, for example, whose 2016 debut album, “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter,” was a huge critical success — have deep connections to family farming. Others, including Price, Young, Particle Kid, Simpson, Lukas Nelson and Rateliff, are currently on the road as part of Nelson’s 2018 Outlaw Music Festival Tour.
Chris Stapleton, one of country music’s biggest stars, makes his Farm Aid debut in Hartford.
In addition to music, there’s the Homegrown Village, a county fair-type experience, with hands-on exhibits about making cheese, raising livestock and growing vegetables, and the Farmyard Stage, where audience members can engage with farmers on stage.
Farm Aid also works with the venue to reinvent concession items to contain locally sourced ingredients.
“We try to highlight the regional cuisine,” Fahy says. “Last year, in Pittsburgh, we did perogies and local sausages. We always have grilled corn on the cob and fresh seasonal fruits.”
Outreach to Connecticut farmers and food organizations — the Connecticut Farmland Trust, Wholesome Wave (a national organization with headquarters in Connecticut), the local branch of the Northeast Organic Farmer’s Association, the New Haven-based City Seed, the Hartford Food System, and others — started some time ago, Fahy says.
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“[Farm Aid] has always been about raising money and raising awareness. We take it on an event-by-event, festival-by-festival basis. We’ll invite those organizations to become grantees.”
And states that host Farm Aid, Fahy says, see a huge boost in awareness of the issues facing family farms.
“A lot of farmers will say ‘I’ve never felt so appreciated. I feel like a rock star,’” Fahy says. “That goes a long way.”
Tickets ($54.50-$279.50) to Farm Aid 2018 go on sale this Friday, June 29 at 10 a.m. through livenation.com or by calling 800-745-3000.
Editor’s note: This concert is sold out.
