Neil Young Gets His Due at AmericanaFest Tribute Show at Troubadour

The evening before Music’s Biggest Night, there is always Music’s Smallest but Mightiest Night. That could serve as one way to describe the Americana Music Association’s annual Grammy Eve concert at the famed Troubadour club in West Hollywood, which is a very different kind of destination from the concurrent “Clive party.” The Americana affair annually presents itself as a tribute to one of the great singer-songwriters of all time, with a cast of performers partly pulled from a list of artists who are up for Grammys the following night. Many music titans have been saluted over the nearly 20 years the AMA has been doing this (think John Prine, Paul Simon and Willie Nelson), and there remain countless possibilities of music heroes who could still be feted with one of these evenings (like: they still haven’t done Dylan).

But perhaps they don’t really need to get to anyone else. Because…

“It’s gonna be Neil Young next year, too. Every year, moving forward,” promised Molly Jenson, the night’s emcee and house-band vocalist, taking stock of how the setlist was barely scratching the surface of the honoree’s song portfolio.

She didn’t mean it, but doing a second year of Neil for 2027’s event really wouldn’t be a bad idea: Shakey has been nothing if not steady in his prolific output over the last 60 years. At this year’s concert, the generous 21-song performance leaned more toward Young’s most familiar-to-every-household classics than obscurities; in other words, no Americana takes on “Trans,” say, at this event. But virtually every performance felt transformative enough, whether the interpretations took his time-honored material more into adjacently rootsy subgenres or stayed right within the Young wheelhouse. (Or the Neil-house.)

Among the participating performers who were nominated for Grammys this year were a murderer’s row of Recording Academy darlings: I’m With Her (who went on to walk away with two on Sunday), Jesse Welles, Margo Price, Rhiannon Giddens, Sierra Hull, Maggie Rose and Grace Potter. The cast expanded to include returnees who’ve been favorites at past such AmericanaFest salutes, including Milk Carton Kids and Chris Pierce, and notable first-timers like Young the Giant. This year’s concert, officially billed as the AmericanaFest Pre-Grammy Salute to the Songs of Neil Young, easily sold out despite the $200 price tag (being a benefit for both MusiCares and the AMA) and the availability of a name-your-own-price livestream. You had to be there; except, with the free stream, you didn’t; except you kind of still did.

Giddens made an early and glorious appearance in the show, dropping in with fellow former Carolina Chocolate Drop Justin Robinson to deliver “Comes a Time” in the banjo-and-fiddle configuration that was featured on their Grammy-nommed collaborative album, “What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow.” (Justin Harrington joined in as a third on handheld percussion, which came in handy when the tune finally erupted into a very un-Neil-like double-time rush.)

“Comes a Time” probably wouldn’t be mistaken for any of the Black folk traditional tunes on the duo’s recent album, but it was making Giddens think about race anyway, or at least the general overall atmosphere was. The crowd broke into an “Ice Out” chant during her commentary, and Giddens pointed to her button bearing that demand. “We are here also,” she said, “to remind about the history of this country, and slave catchers by any other name…” By the time she was finished with the song, it was a wonder tall trees weren’t falling down.

Race figured in as an even more unmistakable undertone in Chris Pierce’s supple and defiant rendering of “Southern Man,” which was, by acclamation, the most powerful number of the night. Unlike most of the other performers, Pierce has had this in his repertoire and been able to absorb it and make it his for a while, since he has done it in concert before and recorded a studio version for a 2025 tribute album, “Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young.” Seeing him do it live is an edge-of-your-seat experience, as he takes what Young wrote about racism as an admonishing outsider and makes something rivetingly relevant and personal out of it. The audience might still be recovering; the year is young, but no one who saw Pierce tear down the Troubadour is likely to experience anything more memorable in 2026.

Just about everyone else on the bill had to kind of settle for second-to-Pierce status when it came to sheer visceral impact, but that was still an exalted enough place to be.

If it ever comes down to a contest of who’s truly the MVPs at any AmericanaFest gathering, that would perennially come down to the men of the Milk Carton Kids and the women of I’m With Her. So it was a little like an Avengers meetup when that duo and trio joined forces near the end of the evening as a vocal quintet for an intricately arranged version of “Harvest Moon.” Earlier in the show, the Milk Carton Kids had done “Heart of Gold” on their own in their very quietest mode, going all sotto voce in their Everlys-go-to-Redwood take on one of Young’s most famously plaintive hits. I’m With Her did much the same with “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” which was soothing enough to sound like a candidate for a sequel to group member Sara Watkins’ lullaby album, should she ever make another.

The country side of Young got some showcasing right from the start, with the house band kicking off the show with the promissory “Are You Ready for the Country.” Margo Price revived “Love Is a Rose” with just a little more twang than Linda did, in an old-school country suit festooned in flowers. Keith Secor was more than ready for it with a fiddle-soloing version of “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”; the Old Crow frontman also sat in on Molly Tuttle’s “Helpless,” although he left the fireworks to his better half as she rounded out that coming-of-age anthem with a characteristically great acoustic guitar-solo coda. Tuttle was not the be-all and end-all of female pickers on the roster, as her fellow Grammy nominee Sierra Hull added a beautiful mandolin wind to “Look Out for My Love.”

The pop side of Neil Young? That might sound like an oxymoron, but not when Molly Jensen is singing a straight-up cover of Nicolette Larson’s not-so-straight-up, adult contemporary cover of Young’s “Lotta Love,” which became a top 10 hit in 1978 — complete with a house band member providing both the flute and sax interludes.

No one would have mistaken the concert for a Crazy Horse gig, but rocking out did take place, starting in earnest with a Katie Pruitt-led rendering of the sadly relevant “Ohio,” followed some time later by Maggie Rose wailing terrifically and in earnest through a high-dynamics, no-hurry version of “Down by the River.” Those numbers thrive on unleavened tension, but Grace Potter was all smiles and all bounding around while delivering “Cinnamon Girl” with one of the night’s guitar heroes, Leif. He had earlier taken a turn in the spotlight, firing off some instrumental gunplay while singing his own version of the beautifully fatalistic “Powderfinger.”

If it feels sacrilegious to the music’s humble ethos to say the Americana movement has “stars,” it’s inarguable that Jesse Welles has become one in this modest corner of the culture. So there were few appearances as highly anticipated as his taking to the stage for “After the Gold Rush,” offering a raspier take on the choirboy delivery Young gave to his eco-protest sci-fi anthem 55 years ago. Young the Giant — no relation to Neil Young the giant — took on “Old Man,” with Sameer Gadhia sweetly up to the very ungrizzled task of playing the role of an actual young person.

Whatever else the org does, the Americana Music Association can be counted on to provide two of the year’s best Various Artists concerts — one being its performance-heavy annual awards show at the Ryman in Nashville each September, and then this much more intimate gig at the Troubadour in January, which is a tighter, less-talk-more-rock affair. The latter, with its “twas the night before Crypto” timing, inevitably raises talk about how the artists and genres represented here have real singers playing real instruments, yada yada, in comparison to some of their more choreographed brothers and sisters in prime time. There might be some undue moral superiority in some of that, but you don’t even have to hate Addison Rae or Katseye to revel in the emotion and virtuosity on a night like this one and conclude: This, truly, is the shit. Long may it run… to paraphrase a song that, with any luck, will be performed at the AmericanaFest Salute to the Songs of Neil Young Part II next year.

Setlist for the AmericanaFest Pre-Grammy Salute to the Songs of Neil Young, the Troubadour, West Hollywood, Calif., Jan. 31, 2026:

“Are You Ready for the Country” — house band
“Field of Opportunity” – Evangeline
“On the Way Home” — Alex Amen
“Comes a Time” — Rhiannon Giddens
“Heart of Gold” — Milk Carton Kids
“Look Out for My Love” — Sierra Hull
“Powderfinger” — Leif
“Lotta Love” — Molly Jenson
“Southern Man” — Chris Pierce
“Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” — Keith Secor
“Love Is a Rose” — Margo Price
“Helpless” — Molly Tuttle with Ketch Secor
“Down by the River” — Maggie Rose
“Ohio” — Katie Pruitt
“Old Man” — Young the Giant
“My, My, Hey, Hey” — Gold Star
“After the Gold Rush” — Jesse Welles
“Only Love Can Break Your Heart” — I’m With Her
“Harvest Moon” — I’m With Her and Milk Carton Kids
“Cinnamon Girl” — Leif and Grace Potter
“Rockin’ in the Free World” — Jesse Welles, Maggie Rose, Leif and cast