Remote Paradise: What is really inside Neil Young’s barn?
It takes a great deal of effort and inspiration to look at an 1850s barn and see greatness. “It’s just beautiful, just a beautiful building,” Neil Young once said, describing how he managed to oversee a once-rustic location transform into an iconic recording studio.
Although he maintained it was restored to its “original greatness” as much as possible, he also incorporated the subtle upgrades that would form the perfect vessel for his 2021 album Barn.
For the album, Young reunited with his longtime band Crazy Horse, letting its historical character and in-built warmth guide the infiltered intimacy that came as a response to the room’s natural acoustics. “It’s flawless,” the musician reflected, adding, “It sounds like God because there’s no square to it, it has no standing waves, because it’s all the insides of these big logs one on top of another. It’s a bunch of round surfaces.”
During the renovation, a stage was built in the space, allowing Young and his band to perform with complete freedom and immersion, not just during the recording process but while performing. Their appreciation for the ‘old ways’ also filtered through in many aspects, like Young’s choice to disregard all digital practices and replace them with analogue ones.
But where is Neil Young’s barn?
The ponderosa pine barn used to be “an overnight stagecoach stop”, Young explained to The Globe and Mail, and when he first saw it, it was in desperate need of some love. “When I first saw it, it had sunk into the ground,” he added, “It was half as high as it used to be.” The 19th-century find is located in Colorado and became as much a statement for Barn as it did a symbol of renewal and transformation.
In Young’s mind, all music can be saved with the appropriate amount of care and attention, provided the right techniques are used to make it feel entirely real. Throughout Barn, Young and Crazy Horse delivered an ode to the forgotten gems in music history, extracting the beauty in weathered walls and existing in a place where creativity can thrive under the power of resilience.
Beyond its sound qualities, everything about Young’s barn points to a more relaxed and simplified life, fitting into his daily routine as easily as walking his dog. “I walk for a couple of miles through some aspen forest and then down past an old windmill and a couple of lakes with my two dogs,” he explained, adding, “I walk through a great valley with the Rockies behind me. And it’s a beautiful old barn. It’s restored to exactly the way it was when it was built.”
So, what’s in Neil Young’s barn?
In the documentary Barn (A Band, A Brotherhood, A Barn), it might seem surprising that nothing about Young’s barn seems conducive to the ‘perfect’ acoustic environment, but Young claims nothing is more suitable, mainly due to how he chose to restore the place. “It’s a perfect acoustic space because of the logs,” he told NPR. “There’s no flat surfaces. The barn has a sound. But it’s not an echo. It’s like you’re inside of a – you’re being held inside something that is very friendly.”
Aside from musical equipment and a stage, the barn seems relatively minimal, with wooden walls, rustic beams, and exposed rafters bracketing the open space, giving it a sense of spaciousness but also intimacy. However, Young always knew it would make the perfect space for recording music. Its remoteness was also the best thing during the pandemic because it enabled people to get in and out safely without any additional stress.
Beyond Barn, it’s also his own private, solitary place that allows him and his fellow musicians to exist in one perfect moment, with minds focused solely on the music and nothing else. As he explained to the Associated Press, it became a place where he gets to explore creative outlets and jam with bands like Crazy Horse “without a care in the world.”
