ST. LOUIS (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — The Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre in St. Louis played host to this year's annual Farm Aid event which featured headliner performances by Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Neil Young and Willie Nelson along with Wilco, Gretchen Wilson and Jason Mraz, Jamey Johnson and Phosphorescen and others.
If you didn't manage to make the Farm Aid scene this year, you can still catch the show on DirectTV's channel 101, which will be broadcast at select times over the next week or via the 'net on farmaid.com.
The annual fundraiser debuted in 1985 in response to a comment made by Bob Dylan a year earlier at Live Aid when he said "I hope that some of the money…maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe…one or two million, maybe…and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms."
A year later, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young organized the first Farm Aid event which was staged at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois. Dave Matthews joined Farm Aid's board in 2001.
Since then, the event has been going strong for 24 years and has raised nearly $35 million to help America's family farms. – CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
