When Neil Young called Micah Nelson late last year and asked him if he wanted to join Crazy Horse for its Love Earth Tour, the 33-year-old musician didn’t think twice. 

It wasn’t the sort of position that just any artist could fill. Young is an incredibly mercurial performer, known for changing tempos and arrangements on the fly, and for quitting songs part way through because he’s not “feeling it” before veering off in another direction—with a grin and a nod as the only instruction to his band.

As the youngest son of the legendary Willie, Nelson has been playing music for his whole life and is not easily spooked. While still a kid, he joined his dad’s band, touring with the likes of Bob Dylan and The Dead—whose performance styles were anything but predictable. These days, whether playing with Insects vs Robots or his longtime solo project Particle Kid, Nelson remains attracted to the element of danger that improvisation allows.

So when Nils Lofgren, Crazy Horse’s regular rhythm guitarist, couldn’t join the tour—which kicked off in April in San Diego—because of a prior commitment to play with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Nelson was a natural choice to replace him. It’s been quite an adventure so far.

“I don’t know how to begin talking about it,” Nelson muses. “Crazy Horse’s music has always been part of my own personal mythology as an artist—so I understood the assignment, and somewhat knew what I was in for.” 

But only somewhat. He acknowledges that even after playing more than a hundred shows supporting Young with his brother Lukas’ band Promise of the Real between 2015 and 2019, he wasn’t really prepared for the “surfing down a roller coaster in the eye of a hurricane” approach that is central to the Crazy Horse experience.

“It’s a totally different beast,” Nelson reflects. “With Promise of the Real, I was peripheral. I played keys, guitars, and whatever was called for. Everything was more set. With the Horse, it’s just the four of us. You never know what’s going to happen.” 

While it must have been intimidating to try fitting in with a core group that has been together for more than half a century, Nelson says that early on, Crazy Horse’s long-time drummer Ralph Molina told him not to think of himself as the new guy and to do “whatever the fuck” he wanted. In fact, he’s been under no pressure to replicate the band’s signature sound. 

“Every now and then someone will have suggestions about how things should go,” he says. “It’s not like we rehearsed for six weeks and worked all this shit out so that when we went out on stage everything would be perfect. We don’t practice. We barely even soundcheck. The shows are the rehearsals. It’s happening as we go. It’s like life: some nights it’s great, other nights it’s falling apart and we have to pick up each other’s pieces.” 

Overall, Nelson admits it’s surprising that things don’t fall apart more often. The band’s repertoire is huge, and both the setlist and the approach to playing the songs change nightly. 

“Some songs like ‘Cinnamon Girl’ are pretty straightforward and have their set arrangement, but then there are songs like ‘Down by the River’ that are more expansive and anything goes,” Nelson explains. “When we played ‘Like A Hurricane’ in Toronto, we suddenly entered into a completely different rhythm by accident, and it was, well, like being in a hurricane. No one knew what the hell was happening, but miraculously we somehow found our way back to earth.” 

For Nelson (and, presumably, for Young), this unpredictable volatility is what makes live music worthwhile.

“Playing with Neil has really solidified the idea that songs are living entities, and that every performance is unique,” he says. “Thinking too much is never a good idea, in life or in art. Every night, we’re out there, holding on by the skin of our teeth. It’s just as much a surprise for us when things work as when they don’t. There’s no phoning it in.”

Neil Young & Crazy Horse were scheduled to perform at Deer Lake Park on July 22 and 23. News dropped yesterday (June 27) that the remainder of the tour, including the Burnaby dates, was being cancelled due to illness. Whether or not the shows get re-booked remains to be seen.