All One Song :: Meg Baird and Charlie Saufley on "Interstate"

Welcome back to All One Song, A Neil Young Podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard. We’re spending the summer talking to a few of our favorite artists and writers about their favorite Neil Young song. 

This week, you’re getting two fantastic guests for the price of one: Meg Baird and Charlie Saufley. Meg first came to my attention thanks to her work with the innovative Philadelphia psych-folk collective Espers, and since then she’s created a pretty much flawless solo career — her most recent record, 2023’s Furling, is a perfect showcase for her pristine guitar work and beautiful vocals.

Charlie Saufley co-produced that record with Meg and the duo also played in Heron Oblivion with Ethan Miller and Noel Von Harmonson — a group that only managed one studio record during their existence, but that’s ok. That one studio record was awesome. Charley also played in the Bay Area psychedelic rock group Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound; he’s a killer guitarist, and — like Meg — is a serious Neil head.

That last fact should be apparent in the tune Meg and Charlie selected for their All One Song appearance: “Interstate.” This brilliantly moody number is a strong candidate for the best Neil Young song that barely anyone knows about. Though you probably know about it if you’re here. Neil debuted “Interstate” onstage in 1985 with the International Harvesters. But like so many of his strongest songs during that era, it was set aside for reasons that only Shakey can fathom.

A few years later, producer David Briggs convinced him to cut the song with Crazy Horse during the Ragged Glory sessions. It’s an incredibly haunting performance, with skeletal acoustic guitars and high, lonesome Horse harmonies. But Neil still wasn’t feeling it —we guess “Farmer John” needed to be heard! Finally in 1996, that Ragged Glory performance was released on the Big Time CD single and as a vinyl only bonus track on Broken Arrow. These days, you can get it on the recent “Smell The Horse” edition of Ragged Glory.

So yeah, it's a long, twisted story, as is the case with a lot of things in the Neil Young world. But “Interstate” deserves a place in the pantheon of Neil classics, regardless of its relative obscurity. It’s this kind of song that turns a casual fan into, well, an obsessive, promising that there’s always more buried treasure lurking in the Shakey archives.

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