Documenting change

Neil Young stood on stage at the mother church of country music and wondered aloud what Hank Williams might think if he were to walk outside and see the gleaming new sports arena across the street.

Such thoughts about change and the passage of time are central to Young’s latest project, a rootsy, country-tinged record called “Prairie Wind” – due in stores Tuesday – and a related concert film shot last month over two nights at Nashville’s storied Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Ole Opry.

The performances were the 59-year-old singer-songwriter’s first full-length shows since undergoing surgery for a brain aneurysm last spring and the first since the June death of his father, Canadian sportswriter and author Scott Young.

Footage from the concerts will anchor the film, which is directed by Young’s friend Jonathan Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs,” “Philadelphia”) and scheduled for release in February.

Looking like a gentleman farmer in an antique gray Western suit and white broad-brim hat, Young was backed by a shifting cast of Nashville musicians that included a string section, gospel choir and horn players, along with guest vocalist Emmylou Harris.

Young performed “Prairie Wind” in its entirety against a homespun painted backdrop depicting wheat fields and other pastoral images. After a break, he returned for a set of familiar acoustic songs including “Heart of Gold,” “Old Man” and “Harvest Moon.”

Demme, who directed the Talking Heads’ 1984 concert film “Stop Making Sense,” was the catalyst for the project.

“Jonathan had nothing to do for a year,” says Young, who wrote the closing-credits song for Demme’s 1993 movie “Philadelphia.” “He called us up and said, ‘I’ve got a year off – you guys got anything?’ “

Young sent him a copy of “Prairie Wind” and suggested he visit Nashville, where Young has recorded periodically over his nearly 40-year career, including his 1972 country-rock masterpiece, “Harvest.”

“He studied the Grand Ole Opry and studied all the old pictures and looked at books,” Young says. “He really did his homework to try to figure out what it was, and then he said we should just do a show at the Ryman and build things around it.”

Young, a former member of the seminal rock groups Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, seems an unlikely documentarian of country music.

He’s one of rock’s most influential figures – and one of its most erratic, shifting from tender folk ballads to feedback-drenched grunge, electronica, rockabilly, blues and full-blown country. His timing can be as puzzling as his music, following some of his most successful albums with his least accessible.

“I have no idea who’s steering, and I don’t really care,” says Young. “I just keep going whatever the inclination is.

“But there are threads that are continuous and that hold everything together, and a major thread is this kind of music (country). … ‘Old Man,’ ‘Heart of Gold,’ ‘Comes a Time’ – they sound as country or more country than a lot of things that are on country radio.”

With “Prairie Wind,” Young ponders family, home, nature, God, and his childhood on the Canadian plains (four of the 10 songs contain the word “prairie”), but he remains rooted in the present.

The title track, for instance, begins with a reference to his late father’s dementia: “Tryin’ to remember what my daddy said / Before too much time took away his head.”

He composed the songs on “Prairie Wind” quickly, some in just 15 or 20 minutes, and sequenced them in the order they were written. He alternated recording sessions in Nashville with treatment for the brain aneurysm in New York.

“They’re all there,” Young says when asked how his health problems affected his music. “When you have health issues, they give you a sense of your own frailty.”

He sought treatment in March after experiencing blurred vision at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, where he performed with the Pretenders for their induction.

“I was just really lucky,” he says. “They found it by accident. It wasn’t what they were looking for and it had nothing to do with the symptoms they were trying to solve.

“It was just a complete fluke – ‘Hey, look at this thing.’ If you have one of these things, and you don’t find out, it will kill you.”