"Harvest Moon," a Neil Young Classic

Having known each other since high school, Randy Hamilton and Danny Cox have bonds and shared musical instincts that bring lots of riches to our room.

Whenever Randy and Dan put a song on the table — as they did with “Deep River Blues” and “Sunny,” as they did with “Ready for the Times to Get Better,” “Windy and Warm” and “When You Say Nothing at All” — they usually already have an arrangement started. It’s ready for the rest of us to just jump on board and ride!

That certainly was the case last week when they arrived at the rehearsal ready to share the latest tune they were woodshedding on: Neil Young’s gorgeous composition, “Harvest Moon.” As you’ll hear in this track, as soon as Danny started playing it and Randy hit the first lines, the band dropped right into their groove.

About the Song

Considered one of his all-time best songs, Neil Young released “Harvest Moon” in 1992 as the title tune of his 19th album, written in honor of his second wife, Pegi, whom he had married a dozen years earlier.

The song quickly drew praise from the music press. AllMusic’s Matthew Greenwald, for instance, said the song epitomized "the power of nature and music, as well as a feeling of celebrating lifetime love.”

Calling the melody “positively gorgeous,” he added, “It’s one that could have easily framed a heavier song."

Joining the jubilation, music critic Alexis Petridis wrote that “Harvest Moon” is a "genuinely beautiful hymn to marriage and enduring love."

Some see the Harvest Moon album, which went multi-platinum in 1997, as a kind of an unofficial sequel to Young's Harvest album of 20 years earlier, noting the two discs even share many of the same guest musicians.

The Moon

Meanwhile, the moon is a big deal in the Neil Young oeuvre; lunar imagery show up in no fewer than 28 of his compositions.

"Before there was organized religion, there was the moon,” Young told Harp magazine back in 2005. “The Indians knew about the moon. Pagans followed the moon. I've followed it for as long as I can remember, and that's just my religion.”