Prairie Wind is the 28th studio album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, released on September 27, 2005.

After an album rooted in 1960s soul music, Are You Passionate?, and the musical novel Greendale, Prairie Wind features an acoustic-based sound reminiscent of his earlier commercially successful albums Harvest and Harvest Moon.

Songs were also inspired by the extended illness of his father, Canadian sportswriter and novelist Scott Young, who passed a few weeks after the album was completed.

The album was written and recorded after diagnosis but before undergoing minimally invasive surgery for an aneurysm in the spring of 2005.

You have to be pan of what it sees as it's looking around, what it takes as natural, so that it doesn't regard you as a threat.

[2] "Falling Off the Face of the Earth," was inspired by a voicemail left for Young wishing him well as he went into surgery.

A friend of mine called, knowing I was going through this, and left me a voice mail that was, 'Thinking about you; just want to tell you that you mean a lot to me,' that kind of stuff.

With songwriting, the key thing is not to have any preconceptions, to be wide open and never worry about whether it's cool or not.

"[3] Young elaborates to NPR's Terry Gross: I had a melody that I was writing, that'd just come up with that night.

[4] "Far From Home" finds Young remembering his father buying him his first musical instrument, an Arthur Godfrey ukulele, and learning to perform songs from his family members: "When I was just a kid, about eight years old or something, I was a chicken farmer.

And if you stand on top of a ladder with a flashlight and look up through the holes you can see the church windows.

But all hymns seem to have these little passages on the piano between them that sets up the next verse, kind of gets everybody in the key and kicks it around and gets ready to go.

Young explains in an October 2005 interview for Time Magazine: I went into the studio on Thursday and recorded three songs.

[9] The album features the rhythm section of Rick Rosas and Chad Cromwell, with whom he had previously recorded on 1989's Freedom.

Emmylou Harris and his wife Pegi Young provide backing vocals.

Director Jonathan Demme recalls Young raving about working with many of the musicians: "One of the things that Neil talked constantly about in our early conversations on the telephone was just his tremendous regard and love for the other musicians, Pegi and Emmylou and Ben Keith and everybody.

A premiere live performance of Prairie Wind was held in 18–19 August 2005 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.

These concerts became the subject of a film directed by Jonathan Demme entitled Heart of Gold.

Young debuted the album's closing track, "When God Made Me", at the Live 8 concert in Barrie, Ontario, Canada.

The record was regarded by Robert Christgau as "one of those nearness-of-death albums", along with Mississippi John Hurt's Last Sessions (1972), Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind (1997), Warren Zevon's The Wind (2003), and Johnny Cash's American VI: Ain't No Grave (2010).

[19] All songs written by Neil Young Additional roles DVD production ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.