My Morning Jacket and Modest Mouse cover Neil Young for tribute albums

My Morning Jacket and Modest Mouse have each released a Neil Young cover as part of a growing tribute series. The two tracks appear on the second and third installments respectively of the compilation series Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young, both due out on November 6 via Cinema Music Group and Killphonic Records. Proceeds will benefit the Bridge School, the California nonprofit that Neil Young founded forty years ago together with his former wife Pegi to support children with severe speech and physical disabilities.

My Morning Jacket recorded their version of "Like a Hurricane" together with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the legendary New Orleans jazz ensemble. The song, which Young wrote in 1975 but didn't release until 1977 on the album American Stars 'n Bars, was captured live at Marigny Studios in New Orleans under the direction of producer Ross Hogarth. The guitar solo from the original has been kept intact, but singer Jim James brings an unusual melancholy to the track, while the Preservation Hall Jazz Band's horn section erupts in an explosive finale. "We were so honored to get to be at several of the Bridge School Benefit concerts in the past, and are so honored to once again be a part of raising funds for this amazing school, with these amazing songs of Neil Young," James said in a statement. "We felt like teaming up with Preservation Hall Jazz Band would add some magic to this track, so we all got together with producer Ross Hogarth down in New Orleans and recorded it live at Marigny Studios."

Modest Mouse collaborated with Chicago group Califone for their contribution. They went with "Barstool Blues," a song Young recorded in 1975 for his seventh studio album Zuma, made at the time with Crazy Horse. The result has a new wave feel, with shimmering synthesizers and frontman Isaac Brock's signature staccato vocals. Brock revealed that he originally had a completely different Young song in mind. "I had initially chosen and started working on a cover of 'Cortez the Killer' before I realized that, in order to pull this off the way I'd like to, it was going to take me a thousand hours," Brock said. "Then it struck me: there is a song that I like just as much and find personally more relatable, 'Barstool Blues.' This was a song I could really sink my teeth into." On what the project means to him, he added: "Getting to do a cover of one of Neil's songs on a project like this matters both because it gets to be helpful for an important cause like the Bridge School, and because it's actually attached to the person whose song we are covering. It's really… well, it's a stressful honor. The stakes seem a little higher. I like that."

The two new volumes also include previously released singles from King Princess and Draco Rosa, alongside contributions from artists including Lucinda Williams, Ann Wilson, Peter Frampton, MJ Lenderman, Ben Gibbard, Los Lobos, Kurt Vile and The Violators, Cold War Kids, Edie Brickell, and LP. Bridge School director Gabriela Berlanga responded to the series: "As the Bridge School celebrates our 40th anniversary, these Heart of Gold tribute albums are a meaningful reminder of the incredible community that has supported our mission for so many years."

The first volume in the series came out in April 2025 and featured fourteen tracks sung by artists including Eddie Vedder, Fiona Apple, Brandi Carlile, and Courtney Barnett. With the release of volumes two and three on November 6, the collection grows into a substantial monument to Neil Young's songwriting, while also serving a very concrete purpose: sustaining a school that has been giving children with complex communication disabilities a voice for four decades now.