Turnpike Troubadours Played Farm Aid for the First Time

“This is our first Farm Aid,” Evan Felker told the crowd at the Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater in Virginia Beach on Saturday 26 September. The Turnpike Troubadours frontman gave a shout-out to fellow Oklahomans on the bill, the Wisdom Indian Dancers, who had opened the festival that day. Billboard’s Thom Duffy wrote that the “fiddle-fired septet turned the Virginia amphitheater into a Saturday night dancehall that made their Farm Aid arrival well worth the wait.”

It was a first on both sides of the stage. Farm Aid, the benefit concert founded in 1985, had never been held in Virginia Beach before, and it arrived there at a hard moment for the family farmers it exists to support. The music was the draw. The reason for the day was set out in figures that Farm Aid published before and after the show.

A Red Dirt Band Arrives at Farm Aid

The Turnpike Troubadours formed in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in 2005, according to Country Central. Billboard’s review of the day, republished by Yahoo, called them “proud inheritors of the ‘red dirt’ tradition of Oklahoma country music” and noted that they “have had a tumultuous history as a band”. Duffy described the Farm Aid set as “a new milestone for the group”.

The fiddle was the detail the review singled out, and it sits at the front of the band’s sound. Country Central lists the members as Felker on vocals and guitar, Kyle Nix on fiddle, Ryan Engleman on electric guitar, RC Edwards on bass, Gabe Pearson on drums and Hank Early on steel and accordion. For a festival built around country and roots players, a fiddle-led red dirt band was a natural fit that took a long time to arrive.

The Wisdom Indian Dancers opened the day in what Billboard called a Farm Aid tradition of acknowledging the roots of American farm land, with Margo Price singing “The Lord’s Prayer” alongside them. Felker’s nod meant Oklahoma was on the bill twice: once in the festival’s opening act, and once in a band making its debut there.

The Long Road Back to the Stage

The band’s route to Virginia Beach ran through a long silence. Saving Country Music says the Turnpike Troubadours entered their hiatus in 2019 “as a popular, but regional Red Dirt band” and came out of it headlining major festivals coast to coast. The return show was at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa on 8 April 2022, a night the site hears in the song “Brought Me”, where Felker sings: “At an old barroom in Tulsa, I looked up and you were there.”

The comeback album, A Cat in the Rain, arrived in August 2023. Sturgill Simpson initially agreed to produce it but, in Saving Country Music’s account, then set up parameters the band did not feel comfortable moving forward with, and Shooter Jennings took the job. The ten songs include a cover of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils’ “Black Sky”, carried by Early’s dobro, Lee Clayton’s “Won’t You Give Me One More Chance” and “Three More Days”, written by former Turnpike member John Fullbright. Red Dirt producer Mike McClure had made the record the site counts as their debut, Diamonds and Gasoline, and Wes Sharon handled the albums that followed.

Jennings produced again on The Price of Admission, released on 11 April 2025 through Bossier City Records and Thirty Tigers, Country Central reported. That week the band were booked for four sold-out nights at Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater, co-headlining with Cross Canadian Ragweed, and their 2025 schedule included the Outlaw Music Festival tour with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. The same report says the band were inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2024 and that their music has appeared in Yellowstone and Landman.

Why Farm Aid Went to Virginia Beach

Farm Aid announced in June that its annual festival was heading to Virginia Beach “for the first time”. Its announcement explained the choice: in Hampton Roads, direct markets and local food systems are growing even as the region faces inflation, farm policy choices, volatile weather, sea level rise and land use pressures from development and data centres. Tickets ran from $85 to $350.

The numbers behind the day were stark. Farm Aid’s post-festival release says Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies rose 46 per cent in 2025, the third year in a row that filings increased, and that around 15,000 farms closed nationwide in 2025. It names Virginia’s rapidly expanding data centre industry as one source of competition for land, and notes that in Virginia Beach more than 23,000 acres of farmland sit alongside neighbourhoods, businesses and one of the nation’s largest military communities.

Willie Nelson put the stakes plainly. “When farmers can’t make it, we lose access to food, businesses lose customers and communities lose people and land that can’t be replaced,” he said in the release. When the festival was announced he had made the same point: “Family farmers grow our food and strengthen our communities. And when farmers struggle like they are now, communities feel it too.”

The concert capped several days of events for farmers, including a Distressed Borrowers Assistance Network training, the annual Farmer Forum, two local farm tours and the Farm Aid Family Reunion: “We the Farmers” Takeover.

The Rest of the Bill

Nelson, 93, opened his own set with “Whiskey River”, Billboard reported, and closed the night by gathering the day’s musicians for “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “I Saw the Light”. Margo Price covered Dolly Parton’s “9 To 5” and John Prine’s “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore”, and brought out Dave Matthews and Jesse Welles for Blaze Foley’s “Oval Room”, from her new album Days of Unrest.

Sierra Ferrell, following up her Farm Aid debut at last year’s 40th anniversary festival in Minneapolis, played an early afternoon set backed by fiddle, banjo and stand-up bass, including “Lighthouse” from her album Trail of Flowers. Neil Young opened with “After the Gold Rush” and leaned on ballads, including “Comes a Time”, “Old Man” and “Harvest Moon”, before Old Black, his vintage electric guitar, came out with the Chrome Hearts for “Powderfinger” and “Rockin’ in the Free World”.

The full bill also included John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds, Nathaniel Rateliff, Lukas Nelson, Ty Myers, Mike Campbell & The Dirty Knobs, Jesse Welles, Mon Rovîa, I’m With Her, Amythyst Kiah, Lily Meola and Chris Pierce. Duffy also noted the weather: a storming nor’easter shut down major music events throughout the New York region that weekend, while Farm Aid, some 300 miles south, went ahead.

How Farm Aid Has Carried On Since 1985

In its 41st year, Billboard wrote, Farm Aid is “the longest running concert for a cause”. Since 1985, with artists contributing their performances each year, it has raised more than $90 million, according to Farm Aid. Nelson, Mellencamp and Young launched it, Matthews, Price and Rateliff now sit on its board with them, and all six played on Saturday.

The festival reaches well beyond the amphitheatre. CNN aired a four-hour special with live performances, artist interviews and reporting from the festival, SiriusXM carried audio coverage and backstage conversations with artists and family farmers, and fans followed livestreams on FarmAid.org, Farm Aid’s YouTube channel and nugs. The food follows the same principle as the cause: HOMEGROWN Concessions serves ingredients grown or raised by farmers who use ecological practices and are paid a fair price, and this year’s festival beer, Well Sown Estate Lager, was grown and brewed by Wheatland Spring Farm + Brewery.

The fundraising continues after the music. The Farm Aid 2026 memorabilia auction is open for bidding at farmaid.org/auction until Friday 9 October at 5pm Eastern, with proceeds supporting Farm Aid’s work. That is the tradition Turnpike stepped into on Saturday: country and roots music used to carry a message about the people who grow food.

What Comes Next for Turnpike

Farm Aid came ten days after the 25th Americana Honors & Awards at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on 16 September, where Turnpike Troubadours were up for Duo/Group of the Year. MusicRoots.News had set out that field: Flatland Cavalry, I’m With Her, Mumford & Sons, Turnpike Troubadours and Gillian Welch & David Rawlings. Welch and Rawlings won, The Current reported.

The Virginia Beach bill doubled as a reunion of that ballot. I’m With Her were Turnpike’s rivals in the same category, Margo Price and Jesse Welles were nominated for Artist of the Year, which went to Molly Tuttle, and Mon Rovîa was up for Emerging Act of the Year, which went to Ken Pomeroy.

The next question is the record. Saving Country Music’s release radar for the rest of 2026 files Turnpike under its rumour mill: on 9 December 2025, Felker posted on Instagram, “New Record in 26? You tell me.” The site lists no confirmed date.

Until one arrives, the Farm Aid set stands as the band’s most visible stage of the year: a first appearance at a benefit with four decades of history, in a city hosting it for the first time, played with the fiddle out front and Felker’s own words to mark the occasion.