The Honey Sliders harvest

NEIL Young’s classic album Harvest defined a generation and divided the world – to Harvest or not to Harvest. You could only be one or the other.

Songs like Heart of Gold, Old Man, and Needle and the Damage Done from the then-26-year-old rising star recall the salad days of classic rock to this day.

Young’s sensitive songs and yearning drawl are perennially loved, so much so that the esteemed Honey Sliders will present the album in its entirety in concert at Byron Theatre.

For the second act, an extended final set comprises a ‘mix tape’ of the band’s favourite Young tunes and big screen projections transporting the audience back to 1972.

The Honey Sliders are a highly respected motley crew of Australian musicians fronted by the multiple award-winning Danny Widdicombe (The Wilson Pickers, Bernard Fanning, Tim Rogers, Shane Nicholson), Dan Mansfield (You Am I, Gin Club), Bos Borley (Bernard Fanning, The Resin Dogs), and Ben Carstens (Mexico City).

Widdicombe is a musician, astrophotographer, cancer survivor, father, educator, and record collector whose work spans folk, blues, rock, bluegrass, country, jazz, electronic, and ambient genres.

He won the 2021 Queensland Music Awards for Best Jazz Release for his experimental collaboration with Trichotomy. He received three ARIA nominations for each studio album he released with his bluegrass band, The Wilson Pickers.

The Honey Sliders began in 2013 as Widdicombe was enduring a third round of chemotherapy for the leukaemia he battled for over 25 years.

Diagnosed at 19 and far from secretive, the musician speaks, writes and performs in open acknowledgement of the context of living with the disease.

Described as an authentic, world-weary voice that soars, his lifelong battle seems not to have defined him but to propel him on the enriched journey of his musical talent as far as it can.

Celebrating 10 years of re-creating their favourite albums live on stage, The Honey Sliders Harvest follows their acclaimed tribute to Young’s classic 1969 album Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.

Adding Dana Gehrman, Michel Rose, and Luke ‘Fiddleboy’ Moller, the expanded seven-piece re-creates songs that have touched the hearts of so many by a band of musicians passionate about paying homage to the music that changed their lives.

The Honey Sliders play Harvest at Byron Theatre on May 24.

For tickets, visit byroncentre.com.au/theatre-events/the-honey-sliders-play-neil-young .