BY GEORGE VARGA
george.varga@utsandiego.com
Neil Young and his band, Crazy Horse, will launch their first tour together since 2019 with a pair of April performances in San Diego that are the only California dates on their itinerary. The North American concert trek will conclude May 23 in Chicago and includes stops in Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto. All dates and cities appear below.
The tour-opening concerts are set for April 24 and 25 at San Diego State University’s Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theater Theatre. This will be Young’s first San Diego performance since his often mesmerizing July 2023 solo concert at The Shell.
The upcoming “Love Earth Tour,” as it is being billed, will coincide with the release of Young’s new double-album with Crazy Horse, “F##in’ Up.” The album’s title is the name of a song that first appeared on 1990’s “Ragged Glory,” the seventh of 20 albums Young and the band have made together thus far.
When purchasing their tickets for the tour, fans “can opt in to receive a physical CD” of the new double-album “for no additional cost,” according to a press release issued Tuesday morning by Live Nation, the tour’s promoter.
Young has led Crazy Horse, off and on, since 1969. His 2019 tour with the band was the first since rhythm guitarist and periodic keyboardist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro retired from the group in 2014.
Young, 78, has not toured with Crazy Horse in five years. But he did perform two special club shows with the band last fall at The Roxy in Los Angeles, followed by a date in Toronto at Rivoli, a bar that has a capacity of just 240.
All three of those gigs last fall featured Crazy Horse co-founders Billy Talbot on bass and Ralph Molina on drums, along with multi-instrumentalist Nils Lofgren, who came on board in 1970, and Micah Nelson, who is one of Willie Nelson’s sons and performed with Young between 2015 and 2019 as a member of the band Promise of The Real.
Young and Crazy Horse’s upcoming new double-album features nine songs that were recorded at those three concerts last year. A limited edition color vinyl pressing will be released April 20 on national Record Store Day.
“In the spirit it’s offered… (we) made this for the Horse lovers,” Young said in a statement released Tuesday. “I can’t stop it. The Horse is runnin’. What a ride we have. I don’t want to mess with the vibe. I am so happy to have this to share,”
It remains to be seen if Crazy Horse’s lineup will change for the pending “Love Earth Tour.” Lofgren is scheduled to resume touring as a longtime member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band on March 19 in Phoenix, as part of a tour that includes a March 25 concert at Pechanga Arena San Diego.
But the Springsteen tour will be on a break between April 22 and May 4. That means — at least in theory — Lofgren could play with Young and Crazy Horse for the first few dates of their spring tour before re-joining Springsteen for the May 5 launch of that band’s 2024 European tour.
“Love Earth Tour” tickets go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. Friday at ticketmaster.com. Tickets for the two tour-opening San Diego concerts are prices from $75 to $250 each, plus service fees.
A two-day pre-sale for Neil Young Archives members begins today, Tuesday, at 7 a.m. PST. A Live Nation pre-sale begins at 10 a.m. Thursday.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse ‘Love Earth Tour’ dates
Wednesday, April 24 & Thursday, April 25: San Diego, CA, Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre
Saturday, April 27: Phoenix, AZ, Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
Wednesday, May 1: Austin, TX: Germania Insurance Amphitheater
Thursday, May 2: Dallas, TX, Dos Equis Pavilion
Sunday, May 5: Huntsville, AL, Orion Amphitheater
Tuesday, May 7: Atlanta, GA, Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
Wednesday, May 8: Franklin, TN, FirstBank Amphitheater
Saturday, May 11: Bristow, VA, Jiffy Lube Live
Sunday, May 12: Camden, NJ, Freedom Mortgage Pavilion
Tuesday, May 14: Queens, NY, Forest Hills Stadium
Friday, May 17: Mansfield, MA, Xfinity Center
Saturday, May 18: Bridgeport, CT – Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater
Monday, May 20: Toronto, ON, Budweiser Stage
Wednesday, May 22: Clarkston, MI, Pine Knob Music Theatre
Thursday, May 23: Chicago, IL, Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.