“It was the biggest country music concert in history,” the Tribune wrote the day after the first Farm Aid on Sept. 22, 1985. “For more than 14 hours Memorial Stadium on the University of Illinois ...

In Iowa and throughout the Midwest, even century-old farms weren’t spared from the struggles that came in the mid-1980s. Urbana-born, Rantoul-raised Dave Stawick was a news reporter/anchor and farm ...

Arlo Guthrie waits to perform at the first Farm Aid concert at Memorial Stadium in Champaign on Sept. 22, 1985. Dancing in the rain at the first Farm Aid concert at Memorial Stadium in Champaign on ...

Farm Aid was conceived after Bob Dylan made a famous statement at Live Aid a few months prior. Live Aid was a similar benefit concert that used proceeds to benefit charity. That concert, which was ...