Goodbye, cowgirl in the sand

There it was, so close you could almost touch it – two, possibly three, nights of Neil Young playing live in Telluride this August. His people had reached out to the town of Telluride to hold the multi-day event Aug. 16-20. It was all supposed to work out.

But then – Telluride Mushroom Festival.

According to a report in the Telluride Daily Planet, after hearing the news of Young’s proposed shows, organizers with the Telluride Mushroom Festival – which is planned for the same weekend – were up in arms, concerned about the crowds the legendary rocker would bring into town.

This year, the Telluride Mushroom Festival is expected to bring in somewhere around 800 to 1,000 attendees. By contrast, Young’s show could have upwards of 8,000 people packing into town, stressing Telluride’s limited infrastructure and lodging.

“We do feel that it’s important for the community to honor not over-doing it with how many events come into town,” an organizer with the mushroom festival told the Planet. “The overlap dilutes the value of each event. Even if each event is valuable in itself, when there is an overlap it creates a disruption and shifts the energy of the event … We think it’s about quality over quantity – more is not better.”

As a result of the pushback, Young’s team decided to cancel the shows. As of Wednesday, it’s not clear whether Young – who splits his time between Malibu and a ranch outside Telluride – will reschedule or not.

It should be noted, too, that the Telluride Mushroom Festival, which has been going on for four decades, had first dibs on that particular weekend. And we get it – Telluride is a sh*t show in the summer, with a festival on nearly every single weekend. For mushroom festival-goers, what would have been a low-key event celebrating the wonders of the fungi would have turned into absolute chaos of stoned dads trying to remember the words of “Cripple Creek Ferry.”

But, at the same time, we can lament not having Young play live for a couple nights so close to Durango (especially because this writer, for reasons that remain unknown to this day, missed the last time he played in Telluride in 2016, and ever since, has had to endure stories of how “absolutely amazing” that show was).

And who knows? Maybe Young will reschedule. In the meantime, keep on rocking at the free box.