Back at the helm

Levon Helm battles cancer, sings again on powerful ‘Dirt Farmer’

by Jeff Schwachter


Kids need to see real people playing real songs on real instruments,” levon helm, 67, told the New York Times earlier this year. “There’s too much phoniness in the world.”

There’s not a hint of spuriousness, however, on helm’s new album Dirt Farmer (Vanguard), the long-time member of the Band’s first solo studio outing in 25 years.

Dirt Farmer was co-produced by the multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell (a former member of Bob Dylan’s band) and helm’s daughter, Amy, a member of roots-gospel group Ollabelle. Both contribute their musical talents as well on the album, which was recorded in helm’s home barn studio in Woodstock, N.Y., the artist enclave where the iconic musician has lived since the late 1960s. That the new album was recorded at helm’s barn is notable not only for the organic, down-home sound of the new release, but also because most of the building burned to the ground in 1991.

“I never thought you would be able to hear the sound of the barn studio again,” helm writes in the liner notes for Dirt Farmer, a project that follows a stretch of some pretty hard road for helm. About six years after the fire, already struggling with financial problems, helm was diagnosed with throat cancer.

Now, a decade later, and following 28 radiation treatments, helm is back, cancer-free and singing again. His new collection of old folk, gospel, blues and Appalachian tunes, exquisitely peppered with a few contemporary songs, has been widely praised as his best album effort since his heyday with the Band, the original formation of which split in 1976.

Featuring lush backing vocal harmonies, top-notch musicianship and a loving production team, Dirt Farmer, released Oct. 30, has sparked a sort of renaissance for the musician who has not only successfully battled cancer, but also from the threat of losing his voice forever.

At one point, the owner of that legendary twangy yelp of a singing voice, which fueled classic band songs like “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Up on Cripple Creek” thought that he might not ever sing a note again. “He just thought that that was it, ‘I’m just going to be a drummer for the rest of my life,’” says Campbell.

During the period after his radiation treatments, although he couldn’t sing, helm could still play the drums. So, he put together a couple of different bands and hit the road. Eventually, to raise some much needed funding to save his home and get out of debt, helm put together a series of intimate barn concerts that came to be known as the Midnight Rambles. Different musicians would sit in on the sessions, including occasional guests like Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris and Nick Lowe.

“I had been playing with levon at these Rambles up at his house in Woodstock [since early 2005] and Amy had wanted to do a record with levon,” Campbell explains during a recent phone conversation. “The original idea was to do a duet record with levon, and Amy asked if I would co-produce it with her and I said [yes], of course. And then it morphed into this thing [where it] started with these songs that levon grew up with. Then it became something larger than that.”

Among the many songs recorded during the sessions for Dirt Farmer were several, such as “Little Birds,” “The Blind Child” and “Single Girl, Married Girl,” that helm learned as a youngster growing up on a cotton farm in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas. The album’s musicians — including levon helm (on drums, guitar, mandolin and vocals), Amy helm (vocals, drums, mandola), Campbell (guitars, fiddle, dulcimer, mandolin), Teresa Williams (vocals), Byron Isaacs (bass), Brian Mitchell (piano), Glenn Patscha (pump organ) and George Recelli (percussion) — also recorded tunes from contemporary voices like Steve Earle (“The Mountain”) and Buddy & Julie Miller (the gorgeous closer “Wide River to Cross”). Throughout the recording process, Campbell knew he was experiencing something special.

“Just hearing him sing,” says Campbell. “You know, that voice, when I heard years ago that he had lost it, I thought it was a tragedy for American music. And when I realized that voice was back, to me it was like hearing that the Beatles had just gotten back together.”

Campbell says that he feels Dirt Farmer captures some of the magic that made the early Band albums so powerful.

“On all those great Band records, they always sound like they were just done for the love of doing the music and that there was nothing contrived,” says Campbell. “It just sounded like a bunch of guys hanging out having a good time ... and oh, by the way, let’s push the record button and see what happens. And this is exactly how [Dirt Farmer] was made.

“There was a point,” adds Campbell, “when we realized that this was everything we hoped it would be. We were really trying to get at the essence of levon, the way that you haven’t really heard since the first couple of Band records. And when we started to see other people’s reactions, and ours too, we realized that, yeah, we got it. It’s certainly a different approach than those records, but the essence of who he is is there as bright and shiny as it was on those records. And we started sensing that when we were about halfway through this thing. It was magic to us. It just felt right.”

Some of that magic started brewing right here in South Jersey.

“I’ve known levon for a while, since working with Dylan,” says Campbell, who served as Dylan’s guitar player from 1997-2004. “We had just finished the Love and Theft album with Bob [in 2001] and I had done the Patty Blee record.”

Campbell appeared with fellow Dylan band member Tony Garnier on the South Jersey singer-songwriter’s debut, Disguise, for the Egg Harbor Township-based label, Treasure Records. Around this time, Jerry Klause, the label’s president, began discussing ideas with Campbell about recording with one-time Band members levon helm and Garth Hudson at his studio in Scullville.

“That’s when I first met Jerry,” says Campbell. “We got along really well. So after Patty’s record we were thinking of something we could do with Garth and levon. We thought it would be great to get those two together and just do a record and one thing led to another.”

The project they discussed informally soon became real in the form of the legendary gospel group the Dixie Hummingbirds’ 75th anniversary album. The record, Diamond Jubilation, which was born in a Philadelphia hospital where Klause’s father was rooming with the Hummingbirds’ (late) Ira Tucker, was eventually released on Rounder in 2003. helm, Hudson, Campbell and several other guest stars contributed.

“Garth and levon with the Dixie Hummingbirds, what a great idea!” recalls Campbell. And it turned out to be a great idea. While working together on the Hummingbirds record Campbell recalls that helm could barely even talk. “It was just a hoarse whisper,” he says, “but I could tell that he wanted to [sing].”

Campbell would return to Scullville to record a solo guitar album, Rooftops, which was released on Treasure in 2006. Soon, Amy helm asked him to produce her band Ollabelle’s 2006 album, Riverside Battle Songs (Verve Forecast).


“BUT levon AND I HAD ALWAYS Talked about making music together in whatever capacity we could,” says Campbell. “It was really from Jerry to the Hummingbirds to Ollabelle and then to levon, that’s pretty much the path it’s followed.”

But Dirt Farmer’s Jersey Shore roots run even deeper still.

In 1965, helm fronted the rockabilly bar band levon & the Hawks, which was booked for the summer at the Tony Mart’s club in Somers Point. Soon, Bob Dylan caught wind of the band’s amazing club show and stole them away from the club, taking them on the road for his first electric tour. Following a motorcycle crash the next year, Dylan cancelled the rest of his tour and retreated to Woodstock to recuperate. The Hawks, now known as the Band, joined Dylan there, playing and recording songs, some of which would later appear on the double-album The Basement Tapes. The Band was also preparing their own debut, Music from Big Pink, which came out in 1968.

Although levon & the Hawks never played Somers Point again, helm has returned several times. In 1986, he appeared with Band-mates Garth Hudson and the late Rick Danko (who passed away in December 1999) at a memorial concert for Anthony Marotta, the long-time owner of Tony Mart’s.

helm once again returned to Somers Point in 2002 with his band, the Barn Burners, for a jam-packed concert at the former Bubba Mac Shack. Not long after that performance — a few miles away in Scullville — he participated in the recording sessions for the Dixie Hummingbird’s album. (Another local tidbit: In concert, helm still sings the Bruce Springsteen-penned “Atlantic City,” which the Band recorded for its 1993 album Jericho.)

In another local twist of fate, Klause, of Margate, has been assisting helm with the business side of Dirt Farmer. “I met levon when we were working on the Hummingbirds record,” says Klause. “We stayed in touch and earlier this year he asked me to help get involved as a business advisor with regard to the new album.” Klause, who has also witnessed helm’s voice slowly return over the past few years, couldn’t be happier for the great response to the new record.

“He’s getting his just rewards,” says Klause. Further rewards could be coming down the line. Dirt Farmer has been submitted for Grammy consideration in the Best Traditional Folk Album category. “We’re hopeful,” says Klause. “We’ll find out Dec. 6 if it got nominated.”

Campbell believes that the project was very lucky to have Klause’s business-savvy in the mix. “I got to give a lot of credit to Jerry for helping us make this thing happen,” says Campbell. “Once it was past the creative side and the nuts and bolts business thing had to be ironed out, Jerry was amazing. Absolutely amazing.”

One could posit that helm, who grew up listening to early American music like the Stanley Brothers and the Carter Family, and then in the 1950s witnessed the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, and later in the 1960s was at the forefront of the new music revolution with Bob Dylan and the Band, has come full circle with Dirt Farmer. Not helm, however. He’s said that playing and releasing new music is something he wants to continue to do.

Campbell acknowledges that the Dirt Farmer sessions produced a lot of material that didn’t make it on the album.

“We’re not real sure what the next record’s going to look like yet,” says Campbell. “It doesn’t make much sense to repeat this formula again. But there’s a lot of stuff in the can and a lot more recording to be done, too.”

That’s something we can all be thankful for. In this iTunes age of mp3 album releases, laptop studios and regurgitated soulless pop formulas, there aren’t enough projects like Dirt Farmer seeing the light of day — real songs, played on real instruments, by real people.

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