Nashville's given Neil Young triumphs and challenges over the years — this week he returns to keep it real

For a little over a year, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City exhibit has spotlighted the contributions of Music City session aces to landmark recordings like Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and The Byrds' country-rock masterpiece Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Another significant figure named as part of this legacy is Neil Young, who tapped the city's well of instrumental talent for sessions that would comprise his '70s commercial high-water mark.

Already regarded as something of a stylistic maverick by the late '60s, Shakey had laid out the basic template for what, decades later, became known as grunge on 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere before switching gears to the plaintive folk balladry of his lauded 1970 LP After the Gold Rush. Leading off Side 2 of that LP was a cover of Don Gibson's country Top 10 "Oh, Lonesome Me," exposing Young's affection for the country music he heard growing up in Ontario and Manitoba.

Despite that bit of foreshadowing, Young still managed to surprise with his next outing. During a visit to Nashville to sing on The Johnny Cash Show, Young decided to record some of his songs at Quadrophonic Studios. Producer Eliot Mazer assembled musicians including drummer Kenny Buttrey and pedal steel player Ben Keith (who had played on Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces"). The finished album, which pulled together enduring classics like "Heart of Gold" and "Out on the Weekend" — with its glowing splashes of steel — with non-Nashville tracks like the live take of anti-heroin anthem "The Needle and the Damage Done," would prove to become one of Young's most commercially successful. In later years, the Harvest cut "Are You Ready for the Country" would go on to be cut by Waylon Jennings and, in 2015, Hank Williams Jr.

Young returned to Nashville for 1978's Comes a Time, which brought him back to the gentle, crowd-pleasing country-folk hues of Harvest after noisier — though critically favored — excursions like Time Fades Away and On the Beach, which Young released in the mid-'70s. For the Nashville sessions, he was joined by members of Crazy Horse as well as studio vets like Keith (reprising his role on pedal steel), pianist and legendary Muscle Shoals session man Spooner Oldham and Cajun fiddler Rufus Thibodeaux, some of whom toured behind Young intermittently as the International Harvesters. Highlights included the delicate "Peace of Mind" and "Lotta Love," which would become a solo hit for Nicolette Larson (heard harmonizing all over Comes a Time). However, Young was so displeased with the sound of the initial pressings — due to a mastering error — that he reportedly used several thousand copies as shingles on a barn.

In 1985, Young went full-on country with Old Ways, a revamped version of an album that had initially been rejected by Geffen in 1982 for being too out-of-character (eventually leading to the label suing the singer). Indeed, songs like "Get Back to the Country," with its honky-tonk affectations and liberal use of mouth harp, sound very little like "Southern Man" or "Cowgirl in the Sand." Old Ways was recorded at The Castle in Franklin; credits include Nashville cats from the International Harvesters, along with Hargus "Pig" Robbins, Béla Fleck and Marty Stuart. Even more significantly, Old Ways features prominent vocal contributions from Willie Nelson ("Are There Any More Real Cowboys?") and Waylon Jennings ("Bound for Glory"), giving it serious country credibility.

Joining forces with Nelson and John Mellencamp, Young helped launch Farm Aid in 1985 to benefit and raise awareness for American farmers. Nearly 20 years later at another Farm Aid, Young would find his new backing band by jamming with the progeny of one of his co-founders.

Promise of the Real, led by Willie's sons Lukas and Micah Nelson, has been an integral part of Young's touring and studio apparatus since then, their rough-edged roots rock being a clear descendant of Crazy Horse in its prime. POTR backed Young on 2015's protest album The Monsanto Years (billed as Neil Young + Promise of the Real), and he returned the favor by lending his vocals to the song "San Francisco" from their 2016 release Something Real. They're also working with Young on his forthcoming 37th LP and are backing him on his current tour, which hits Ascend Amphitheater on Thursday.

At 70, Young is one of rock's great remaining elder statesmen, but seems as iconoclastic as ever, zagging where he should zig and refusing to fall into a comfortable, predictable pattern of releases. In his current outspoken and highly politicized incarnation, Young's outrage is matched by the noise made by Willie Nelson's talented kids. In his next, ultimately unknowable phase, he may well decide he wants to be back in a Nashville studio.

And if he does, he can still find a few killer players around town.

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