Neil Young at The Grand Ol' Opry

Good to see he's feeling pretty good, and was able to keep going at it in the studio, despite the aneurysm.

NASHVILLE, Aug. 19 - A lanky man in an antique-style pewter-gray suit and a gaucho hat stood onstage Thursday night at Ryman Auditorium, the hallowed country-music landmark that was the longtime home of the Grand Ole Opry. An old-fashioned painted backdrop was behind him; an old guitar was in his hands.

The guitar, he told the audience, had belonged to Hank Williams, who was fired from the Grand Ole Opry in 1952. Neil Young, the man holding the guitar, said he was happy that Williams's guitar was returning to the Ryman stage. And then he sang "This Old Guitar," a quietly touching song from his coming album, "Prairie Wind," that observes, "This old guitar ain't mine to keep/ It's mine to play for a while."

Thursday night Mr. Young began a two-night stand at the Ryman Auditorium that was a tangle of new and old, of remembrance and reinvention. With him were more than two dozen musicians: a band, backup singers (including his wife, Pegi), a horn section, a string section, the Fisk University Jubilee Singers and Emmylou Harris. They were assembled for what would be the only performances of all the songs on "Prairie Wind" (Reprise), due for release on Sept. 20.

The musicians were costumed like old-time country performers, in suits and modest coordinated dresses, but they weren't playing old-time country music. A film crew directed by Jonathan Demme, who made the Talking Heads concert film "Stop Making Sense" as well as "The Silence of the Lambs," was shooting for a documentary scheduled for a February release.

A day before the concerts, Mr. Young took a break for an interview between rehearsals that had been running 12 hours a day. "We're doing 10 songs with 20, sometimes 30, musicians on them," he said. "I pick musicians who are in the moment, and when you get guys who are in the moment to try and recreate some other moment, that's a hell of a lot of work to do. They can't even remember what they played."

I guess it's not surprising after all this time to see how much Neil and Bob Dylan mirror each other's career and sensibility. At least their fashion sense.

I sure am glad they're both still creating and performing. Remarkable, really.