Anyone able to revive a neglected Crepe Myrtle?

I would leave it alone and give it some time.

I have oak trees that are leafed out and others that have not just yet.

Crepes seem to thrive on neglect.

Crepe Myrtles have thin bark, which you can scratch with your fingernail to to check the health of your tree. If the bark underneath is green, your tree is still alive.

You can remove most of the Spanish moss with your hands. I'm not sure if its harmful to crepe myrtles, but it wont hurt to remove it.

How do the leaves look? You mentioned yellow and red. Are there any spots? If so, it could be Cercospora infections, which wont kill a crepe myrtle, but it will reduce foliage. That's quite common in South LA.

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This is that nasty Ball moss junk:

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How do I get rid of that? I think you might be right based on google pictures of Ball Moss.

Can this tree be saved?

https://www.wafb.com/2020/02/11/how-get-rid-invasive-ball-moss-plant/

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You want to use two parts water to one-part baking soda. That would be five pounds to ten gallons of water and spray it on the ball moss," Kirk-Ballard said. The spray can be applied using a pressurized sprayer to reach each ball of moss.

Huffstickler says if homeowners use the spray method, they should wash off surroundings vegetation so other plants will not dry out.

He says they’re adding ball moss upkeep across the city-parish to the general maintenance program. The best time to treat the ball moss is during the winter months when leaves are off the trees, according to Huffstickler.

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Interesting. I will try the baking soda method.

Second question…is this moss here because of less dense foliage? Or is it causing less dense foliage?

If it’s there because of a less dense foliage then there might be an underlying issue like the Cercospora issue that Ping Pong mentioned. Guess I should treat for both.

Can't tell from pictures, but you may be dealing with lichen.

LINK

Your tree looks good.

None of my crepe Myrtle’s have put out leaves yet. Give it some time.

(no message)

So an update. The tree is leafing up, and it's now ahead of the other more mature crepe myrtles in the area. It's still nowhere near as green as the younger ones yet but it's improving quickly.

I'm not sure if I'm out of the woods with this weird moss that's growing on it. I'm hearing the only real way to completely get rid of it is to trim the tree back below the area with the moss. So that's going to happen but not until the fall.

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Jobes tree spikes around the drip line. Worked wonders on my crepe. Leaves were brown and dropping off.

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Thanks! I did this back in October, and after this post I did it again last week. Both were the Miracle Grow brand spikes, and I followed the instructions as closely as possible except that part of the drip line goes over a walking path. That fertilizer plus the trimming we did last year seems to have seriously improved this tree. The canopy is already looking better than last year. Hopefully it gets a little thicker and chokes off any kind of fungus that might materialize on the lower trunks.

May be unrelated, but there is an old gas lamp right underneath this tree (you can see it in the picture in the OP). It was unlit and just leaking gas underneath the canopy before we moved in. I imagine it was left unlit for months. I've since re-lit it and kept it on, so there shouldn't be as much gas leaking under the canopy anymore. Not sure if that would have caused an issue or not but it was definitely unlit for months before we moved in, and I read on NPR that it might be a contributing factor. LINK

The lamp gets blown out in heavy wind, but that's only happened a few times since we moved in and I'm very quick to relight it. I need to get it re-glazed and re-finished (or just replaced) so it doesn't happen again.

Thanks for everyone's help.