Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real Talks Being Recruited By Neil Young

"I'll get a little break for about ten days," Lukas Nelson tells The Music, on the line from Rifle, Colorado, where he's about to do a show with his band, Promise Of The Real, "and then we're out for the rest of the year — some [shows] with Neil Young, some with my dad and some on our own."

Neil Young? As it happens, the veteran Canadian music legend called in Nelson and the band for the recording of his 36th studio album, The Monsanto Years, and they've been backing him as he's been touring it. And his dad? Why that would be none other than Willie Nelson. So the younger Nelson has certainly had himself a pretty impressive entrance into the heady world of writing, recording and touring.

"We learned 78 tunes of his from his back catalogue and we've just been on an incredible journey, man." 

Not that he hasn't put in the hard yards. The 26-year-old started gigging with Promise Of The Real back in 2008 and has cut an EP, two studio albums and two live albums to date. The most recent of these is Promise Of The Real's 2012 studio effort, Wasted, and there's a new album in the can, recorded a year ago. Then of course there's been touring and recording with his dad, who's recorded several songs written by the younger Nelson. This past year, though, he's been learning a whole lot more from Neil Young.

"We're still pinching ourselves," he admits of being recruited by Young. "It's just a magical thing. We've learned a lot from him artistically and business-wise. I mean there are so many things it's almost impossible to narrow it down; he's just so sharp, but I think the main thing that we've learned from him is how to keep our minds and our intentions focused on the task at hand. We have a regimented warm-up before every show... I mean, we learned 78 tunes of his from his back catalogue and we've just been on an incredible journey, man." 

It'll be in their own right that Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real will be taking to the Bluesfest stage in 2016. Nelson has described the band as "cowboy hippie surf-rock", so can we expect the boys to be hitting the beaches around Byron? "Yeah, 'cowboy hippie surf-rock'," he chuckles. "I grew up in Hawaii mostly, so I ended up surfing the North Shore. So there's a bit of Dick Dale, Stevie Ray Vaughan — though I was never really into the surf bands. And then of course there's my dad. As much as I love playing with Neil, nothing beats being on stage with my dad.

"I think the main difference between us and other artists is that we're not trying to make a statement necessarily that each album we put out is what we wanna be remembered by. It's just what we feel at the time, and I think that we're similar to Neil in that way. We plan on being career artists, so in my lifetime I hope that we release 50 albums or more, and I think each one of them is going to have its own unique thing."