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CNN Live Event/Special
Farm Aid Concert Live, A CNN Special Event. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired September 20, 2025 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:00]
MARGO PRICE, FARM AID BOARD MEMBER: And so I think that's what gives me hope, is just seeing new young people coming in and also being very creative about how they're solving these problems with climate change.
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Diversity, biodiversity is the key to a healthy farm, a healthy ecosystem, all those different things. So adding more to that is only healthy. Let me ask you about your -- your opening number. You played "Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down," which is also the song you played as the last musician to play on Jimmy Kimmel Live. And you then altered the lyrics for that particular appearance. You must have had butterflies going out there. I read after the fact you were. That song is inspired by Kris Kristofferson propping up Sinead O'Connor.
PRICE: Absolutely. I -- I wrote that song with Rodney Crowell and my husband, Jeremy Ivey. And, you know, I started off writing that song kind of about my frustration with the music business. But it's funny how the world changes and then it also changes the meaning of a song. I -- you know, I was talking about a businessman in the song. And we have a lot of people in power right now that, you know, they want us to feel defeated, they want us to feel divided, they want to distract us. What we need to do is unite and keep the hope and definitely don't let the bastards get us down, because they're everywhere right now.
WEIR: It is -- it is food for the soul to get into a stadium with people who love the same songs and sing along and maybe cheer for the same politicians as well. But what do you make of this moment we're in? And do you think this fever can break? Do you think we can get past this poisonous discourse of the day?
PRICE: I truly think that what is happening right now is the last kicks of the patriarchy that is dying off. And they are so scared because they know people are changing. They know that we're seeing through the veil. And I think, you know, it's -- it's very dark times, but hope is an act of resistance, and our shared struggles give us solidarity. And I just want everybody to use their voice while we still have it.
WEIR: Margo Price, thank you.
PRICE: Thank you.
WEIR: Do you have a name for your guitar, like trigger, Willie's trigger? PRICE: You know, I need to. It's a 1965 and I'm wearing a big hole in it, just like trigger.
WEIR: Yes. You broke your top string I saw. And it played through it.
PRICE: I know. Maybe I need to name it Rita Coolidge after, you know, Kris's -- Kris's love. Yes. Because she's kind of a redhead.
WEIR: Margo, thank you.
PRICE: Thank you.
WEIR: Great set.
PRICE: Appreciate it.
WEIR: John, Laura, back to you.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: What a fun conversation there with Margo Price talking about using your voice, which she may be losing a little bit after a set that just killed out there. I'm -- I'm here with Laura Coates here. We just been watching an amazing concert.
LAURA COATES, CNN HOST: I love her.
BERMAN: I do. I'm definitely -- I definitely love her. She is fantastic. We got a special guest with us up here right now. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is with us.
Thom Duffy: Thanks John.
BERMAN: It's always great to speak with the U.S. Senator.
KLOBUCHAR: Thanks Laura.
COATES: But also in this case, like kind of a fan girl, along with a fan girl and a fan boy here of this concert.
KLOBUCHAR: It's just this been incredible. So I got to talk to Margo because I introduced her before and I can tell you she was singing the -- I was in her dressing room, she was singing "Maggie's Farm," practicing it in the bathroom because it was a better acoustics in there. She is like, I thought it was so great how she brought back that song and also related to where we are right now.
And the fact that she was the last artist on Jimmy Kimmel. I said that in the introduction. I was saying, you know, we want her back on Jimmy Kimmel. And this concert tonight is about people coming together to help our farmers who have just had a gut punch from these tariffs and from all what's going on with the -- it's very difficult for a lot of the workers to come in now.
These are legal workers who know what's going to happen to them. So they're afraid. And this is in California, in Minnesota, at turkey farms, you name it. So we've got that going on. And then you just have the headwind of markets drying up for soybeans and other things. So the fact that they're gathered to help our farmers right now, especially small farmers who can just be road killing this, couldn't be more important.
And the fact that they are also giving voice and using their voices strongly at this really difficult time couldn't be more important.
COATES: I thought she was so poignant. And she's someone who -- her family lost their farm the same year that Farm Aid really even began. And she talked about the farm crisis never really ending. I want to play for you something that John Mellencamp, one of the founders of this as well, performing here today as well. What he said back in 1985, Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN MELLENCAMP, CO-FOUNDER, FARM AID: Farming business has changed so drastically in the last 10 years that these people are losing what has been in their family for years and years and years. We're here for the farmers and we're here to try to make awareness across the country in New York and Los Angeles and some other towns people just look at as a commodity. It's a loaf of bread. Well, sure. It's always going to be in a grocery store.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[21:05:00]
COATES: I mean, the plight of farmers has not gotten much easier in the last four decades. How can it be that's the case? And what can we do?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, one of the strongest things about our country for decades and decades, and really centuries, have been that we haven't been dependent on foreign food. We make our own food. And to do that, you've got to acknowledge there's weather disasters, especially with climate change. There are ever changing challenges for our farmers. So we've always had a safety net for them. But what's been happening lately with this administration that they just can't keep going this course?
Our farmers want to be able to make stuff and export to the world. Twenty percent of what they make goes to other countries. They sell it, it goes in foreign aid, which the Trump administration has cut. And they also make the food for the SNAP program that's relied on by seniors and veterans and people with disabilities and skits, that was also cut this year. So you look at all these factors and the tariffs drying up markets, or it means you can't get a part for machinery. And it's just some of the big guys can handle it. But the little farms, they're the ones that are really hurting.
So that's what I've been saying to my Republican colleagues, on the -- the lead Democrat on the Agriculture Committee and I can tell you, the Democrats on the Ag Committee, it's not your grandpa's Ag Committee anymore. We've got Michael Bennet, Tina Smith, we've got Dick Durbin, Raphael Warnock, Cory Booker, Peter Welch, John Fetterman, Elissa Slotkin, Adam Schiff, and it is just -- and Ben Ray Lujan. And so we are united on this to say we've got to get some of that funding back for our nutrition programs for these kids. And we also have to help our small farmers.
BERMAN: Amy Klobuchar, do you want to introduce their next guest, Dave Matthews singing on stage right now?
KLOBUCHAR: OK. All right. Next up for your great viewers on CNN is Dave Matthews with more to come, including Willie Nelson, who I get to go meet in his trailer right now.
BERMAN: Senator Klobuchar, thank you so much. Tim Reynolds singing along with Dave Matthews right now. Take it away.
PRICE: Sick of me yet? It is my great honor and privilege to introduce the next artist. He has been a Farm Aid board member for 24 years. It's so wild I get to introduce him. I remember just being in the lawn, barefoot, a dirty hippie girl watching Dave Matthews band. Please give it up for Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds.
[21:08:10]
DAVE MATTHEWS, SINGER-SONGWRITER: It's good to be with you all. We just ease into it and then slide away quietly. Thank you all so much for being here. What a pleasure to share the stage with all these amazing people.
(MUSIC)
MATTHEWS: Tim Reynolds. Thank you very much everybody. What a place to be is so lovely to be here with you all and -- and we just play some music and look after each other because look at all this how we can just be together and look after each other. Don't believe what nobody tell you that we ain't all in it together.
(MUSIC)
MATTHEWS: Thank you very much. So if -- if -- if we've never been in the same room together, it's nice to meet you. So -- and if we're old friends or we've been in the same room together and it's nice to see you again. So when -- when I go to sleep at night, I think maybe -- maybe the world will better tomorrow. And then I wake up in the morning and I say maybe tomorrow.
But I do think that the more that we care about each other and love each other no matter who we are, and we remember that we're all neighbors, that -- that maybe we have a better chance whether we're neighbors next door or on other side of the world.
[21:18:21]
This is a song I've never played at Farm Aid. It's a little bit of a new song and I hope that you like it. It's a little bit funky maybe, I don't know. It's called "Peace On Earth."
(MUSIC) [21:22:20]
MATTHEWS: Thank you for indulging us. Thank you. Thank you. I hope everybody's having a lovely day, lovely day. A couple of my friends came down from North Dakota. There are people have lived here for, you know, so long it's like forever maybe, you know.
(MUSIC)
[21:30:54]
MATTHEWS: There's Tim Reynolds. So he's been up here already. I met -- I met this guy Jake in Montana and he -- he plays with Lukas Nelson and -- and so we'd like to ask Jake Simpson to come up and join us. Come in so we can see you. Come in from the dark so we can see you. There you are.
(MUSIC)
BERMAN: Oh, man. So much good music.
COATES: Oh, my God.
BERMAN: We're going to have much more from Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds after the break, including the hit song, "Ants Marching." Whoa.
[21:39:54]
COATES: I'm 18 again.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC)
[21:46:50]
MATTHEWS: Thank you very much.
(MUSIC)
[21:51:46]
MATTHEWS: Jake Simpson and Tim Reynolds. Thank you all so much. Thank you all so much.
COATES: He has not missed a beat. That was incredible.
BERMAN: Oh man, they brought it. They --
COATES: This whole audience is going crazy behind us right now. I'm telling you. He was great.
BERMAN: Dave Matthews, Tim Reynolds --
COATES: Wow. BERMAN: -- great job.
COATES: Wow. Look, he wrote anthem for small towns all across America. The very towns, farms is in aid is here to fight for tonight. John Mellencamp is just minutes from taking the stage. Stay right here. You're watching Farm Aid Live, a CNN special event.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:56:19]
BERMAN: All right. John Berman here with Laura Coates at Farm Aid, the 40th anniversary. What a show it has been already. So many great performances in some of the biggest still to come from John Mellencamp taking the stage after him, Bob Dylan, 40 years after a comment that he made inspired Willie Nelson to create the very first Farm Aid.
We are now joined once again by Thom Duffy, senior editor at Billboard. Thom, great to see you.
THOM DUFFY, SENIOR EDITOR AT BILLBOARD: Great to be back.
COATES: You were at the Live Aid concert, Live Aid, which was before Farm Aid, the Live Aid concert, where Bob Dylan said what he said it inspired Farm Aid. What was it like then when you heard it? And also, what are you expecting tonight from Bob?
DUFFY: Well, it's striking. I remember to this day exactly where I was on the side of the stage. Bob came out with Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, and it was really an offhand comment that kind of came and went. You thought it was kind of out of sync with the focus of Live Aid on African famine relief. But what's changed in 40 years is the realization that how we farm will have a lot to do with how we save the planet.
Willie has a wonderful comment he's made in the past. We set out to save the family farmer and the family farmer may save us. You know, not to get into the details of regenerative farming and keeping carbon in the earth, but the very fact is that family farming, as opposed to industrial agriculture is really going to be very important to dealing with climate change. We had no idea of that 40 years ago.
COATES: Perfect segue to Bill Weir because, you know, he has been so invested in the reporting and doing such a phenomenal job and keeping that to the top of our minds collectively. Bill, you're in the audience, the vibe behind us, unbelievable. Who do you have with you?
Bill -- see, Bill's doing what Bill does. Bill makes friends with everyone there. He's never met a stranger. He loves everyone, and we love him. While I have you here, though, I'm going to ask you and I were talking about just how remarkable this setting is. I mean, everyone reunited around a single cause. And we're talking about a very diverse crowd behind us.
DUFFY: Now we're in Minnesota, but you have to realize that the tens of thousands of people in this stadium have traveled from across the United States.
COATES: Yes.
DUFFY: And whether they're from blue states, whether they're from red states, whether they're from rural areas, whether they're from urban areas, they're united here. This event for me, and I've seen this going back elections, has been one of the most unifying and hopeful events in America.
BERMAN: Yes, I mean, I do think one of the things that everyone can get behind is farming and farmers, I think there's universal support from them that spans the political spectrum. So it's wonderful to see that here tonight. And you're absolutely right. You walk through the crowd just talking to different people. They tell you where they're from, how many Farm Aid concerts they've been to. Talk to us about, we've seen so many great acts already. It's hard to believe that some of the biggest are still to come. What have you liked so far? What have been some of the highlights?
DUFFY: I want to comment just on the last two we've seen, because behind you guys there's a big, dark stadium bowl. And that's where I go to hear Dave Matthews. I go to the furthest, farthest, upper most reaches of any venue at Farm Aid, when Tim Reynolds and Dave Matthews are playing. And I just let the magic of that acoustic guitar roll over the crowd at me.
[21:59:49]
And then Margo Price, very striking choice of song tonight. Woody Guthrie's "Deportees," written, I believe, in the 1930s about farm laborers. And look at what we're dealing with now with immigrant farm laborers and how they're treated in this country. So it was a very significant choice for her to play that song.
