During this year’s Love Earth tour, Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts’ unexpected opening act is spreading the word about climate change and anti-consumerism. Their tour’s American leg began in Charlotte last week.
At PNC’s Music Pavilion, Billy Talen was seated at a picnic table close to the Village. Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts Love Earth Tour will open for his outfit, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. Talen and his choir will take the stage after Young and the band have already begun soundchecking. Even though he isn’t actually in ministry, he will be preaching tonight.
“We want everyone to yell, Earth-allelujah!” he said. He pretended to be Reverend Billy for a time. Today, I need someone to give me an Earth-allelujah. Earth-hallelujah!
Talen, who is in his mid-seventies, has white and gray hair that falls back from his face in a mane. He is amiable, pausing to tell passing employees about Neil Young’s discography or Abraham Lincoln. He quickly brought up the fact that Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama was composed in response to Young’s Southern Man, a song that mentions the reparations due to the families of former slaves, among other things.
Talen has a strong interest in the environment. While organizing against mountaintop removal coal extraction in West Virginia, he met Young’s boyfriend, Daryl Hannah, who is also an environmental activist. Later, they reconnected while opposing Monsanto, the massive agricultural corporation that created the Roundup chemical.
“Back in 2016, they asked us to open for them,” Talen stated.
Talen claimed that he makes fun of televangelists. A large portion of his job entails disrupting the shopping experience. Since so many of the factors contributing to climate change are related to consumer purchases, we aim to catch individuals in that low-grade trance of shopping, he said. Fossil fuel-derived polymers, automobile fuel, and even the food we buy fall under this category.
Arrests are occasionally the result of those spontaneous performances. At other times, the message is incredibly effective, Talen added. He claimed that after an unexpected Earth concert in a Starbucks, the choir decided to add a new member.
According to Talen, she removed her Starbucks apron, leaped over the counter, departed with us, and remained with us for ten years.
The sermon will be surprising to the majority of concertgoers. Most people didn’t appear to believe there was an opener at all, and Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir aren’t listed as the opening act.
While Neil is playing, I put on my gospel whites. “I go out into the audience and people see my costume when we’re done,” he remarked.
How are you measuring the audience’s response? I inquired.
The intensity of the embrace is a clear sign.
Big corporations that pollute more than certain nations are warming the world, contaminating the oceans, and making the air unfit to breathe. Climate news frequently takes the fatalistic stance.
Because of the extent of the issue, some people may lose their feeling of agency and perhaps reject that there is a problem at all. However, Talen’s message appears to be essentially hopeful despite dealing directly with impending disaster.
“I preach about how I used to go out under the stars when I was nine or ten years old, when I lived in South Dakota,” Talen remarked. He claimed that he would simply visualize the impossible of nature on a clear night. How you can see miracles if you look at anything long enough.
Talen preaches about fostering community when discussing climate solutions.
During one of his sermons, he stated that the only way to overcome this is to share, form our beliefs together, confess, and make pronouncements.
Through mid-September, Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts will continue their Love Earth tour. The Sun Is a Star That Keeps Me Warm, the most recent CD by Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, is currently available.
