{"id":184,"date":"2016-04-21T00:01:07","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T04:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/departmentoftangents.wordpress.com\/?p=184"},"modified":"2016-11-09T05:12:51","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T10:12:51","slug":"perfect-inspiration-levon-helm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2016\/04\/21\/perfect-inspiration-levon-helm\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfect Inspiration: Levon Helm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By the time Levon Helm\u2019s music really struck me, he had already lived several lifetimes. He\u2019d had his wild days on the road as a youngster drumming and singing in clubs across Canada and the US with Ronnie Hawkins. He\u2019d played with Dylan and then quit the band to work on an oil rig in Houston when they got booed, and come back so The Band could exist and make several landmark albums. He\u2019d already gone through an acrimonious split with Robbie Robertson, reformed The Band. Throat cancer had left him with bills to pay and no voice to sing for his supper, and his house in Woodstock had burned down. When I found him, or rather, when I realized exactly what I\u2019d been missing for years, Helm had risen from a world of troubles to make some of the best music of his career.<\/p>\n<p>My wife Melissa had gotten us tickets to see Helm and his band at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston when he was touring in support of Dirt Farmer. After having read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moderndrummer.com\/site\/2008\/02\/levon-helm\/#_\">Steve Jordan\u2019s interview with Helm in Modern Drummer<\/a> and heard bits of the album on the radio, I\u2019d picked it up and fallen in love with it. I had seen Helm before when my dad took me to see Ringo Starr\u2019s All-Star Band in 1990 in Buffalo. I remember I\u2019d enjoyed seeing Helm and Rick Danko play, but that was overshadowed by seeing a Beatle live for the first time. Helm had played drums and harmonica that night, and that stood out to me, but for some reason, it didn\u2019t make me dive into his music any further at that point.<\/p>\n<p>But that night at the Orpheum, something clicked. Helm had a killer band, including his right-hand man Larry Campbell, his daughter Amy Helm, and a full horn section. And his drums, as always, were stage right facing the band. That meant he could sing and play drums while still facing the crowd, the way a lead singer would, and still be able to lead the band if need be. I hadn\u2019t yet absorbed enough history of the Band to know this is the way he\u2019d been doing it for decades. It was still new enough to be a surprise to me.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gSbg_EhSKXY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It occurred to me that night, watching everything Helm did, that he\u2019d created the perfect show. Every song was a winner. Every musician was as soulful as they were technically proficient. The songs came from everywhere \u2013 \u201cDeep Elem Blues\u201d off the new record, a cover of Bruce Springsteen\u2019s \u201cAtlantic City\u201d (in an arrangement I would later find on a later Band album without Robertson), Ray Charles\u2019s swinging \u201cI Wanna Know.\u201d And of course some select tracks from the Band. Phoebe Snow joined them for \u201cI Shall Be Released.\u201d \u201cLong Black Veil\u201d haunted me for days. It was part concert, part barn party, and complete joy from start to finish. And not a single hollering jerk in the crowd. Everyone was rapt, most were singing along.<\/p>\n<p>Later, when I got to see Helm at one of his Rambles at his place in Woodstock I&#8217;d see that was precisely the feel he\u2019d been working on his whole career, based on how he had experienced music. He was the son of sharecroppers in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, a link to another age altogether, and he saw rock and roll as it was being built. At six years old in 1946, his first live show was Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys playing in a tent in nearby Marvell. His family stood in crowds, segregated by the center isle into black and white sections, to watch the traveling medicine and minstrel shows. He saw Elvis in a high school gym, and Sonny Boy Williamson set up shop on a depot loading dock. He distilled all of that in his live shows.<\/p>\n<p>Drums were my first instrument. And when I was a kid, I idolized a lot of great progressive rock drummers. Ringo was there first, but Neil Peart of Rush and Stewart Copeland of The Police were in the mix pretty quickly. I still love that music, too. And I\u2019ll still put my headphones on and play it. Melissa and I had seen the Police reunion at Fenway in the summer of 2007, a few months before Levon\u2019s show. It was a good show to see, and I was happy to finally hear Copeland mix it up live, in person. He was forceful and creative, and the music just as tuneful. But seeing one of my childhood heroes didn\u2019t move me the way Levon\u2019s show did. Levon forced a shift in my thinking, in my disposition toward music, after that Orpheum show. Every ruff and drag and fill was crisp and exactly what the song needed. Throat cancer had taken some of the breadth from his voice, but none of its depth. His playing, and the way he interacted with the band, invited everybody to be a part of the experience. Perhaps most importantly, every note, from dirge to dance number, was filled with joy.<\/p>\n<p>The trickle started after that. I had to hear \u201cLong Black Veil\u201d again, so I turned to Big Pink. I had the bounce in my bones for \u201cUp On Cripple Creek,\u201d so I went to the eponymous second album. And that\u2019s where it really got cooking. \u201cRag Mama Rag,\u201d \u201cThe Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,\u201d \u201cLookout Cleveland,\u201d \u201cAcross the Great Divide\u201d \u2013 all of them are classics, even if some get stomped into the ground on classic rock radio and others almost ignored completely. This is how you build a song. You find out what it needs and you cut everything else out.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MlegqCMcYGI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That was the effect Levon and the Band had in \u201968 and \u201969. <em>Big Pink<\/em> helped precipitate Eric Claption\u2019s decision to leave Cream. \u201cThis is what it\u2019s all about,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biography.com\/people\/eric-clapton-9249026\/videos\/eric-clapton-the-bands-influence-2080111524\">he remembers thinking, in an interview for Bio.com<\/a>. \u201cAnd I\u2019m in the wrong place with the wrong people doing the wrong thing.\u201d In the book <em>Across the Great Divide: The Band and America<\/em>, George Harrison called them \u201cthe best band in the history of the universe.\u201d Roger Waters, who was part of a touching tribute at the Love for Levon show, has said <em>Big Pink<\/em> was a very important record for Pink Floyd.<\/p>\n<p>What everybody else had known for years, it seems, I was just internalizing. There was a lot of turmoil surrounding The Band. The rift between Levon and Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel\u2019s suicide, Rick Danko\u2019s death. And if you watch the documentary Ain\u2019t In It For My Health, there are moments you can feel every ounce of that on Levon\u2019s brow.<\/p>\n<p>Onstage, that was all gone. When I went up to Woodstock to <a href=\"http:\/\/thephoenix.com\/boston\/music\/122685-levon-helm-brings-rambles-to-solid-sound\/\">interview him for <em>The Boston Phoenix<\/em> in 2011<\/a>, I wound up sitting on the \u201cradiator seat\u201d about three feet behind him for the entire show. His voice was gone halfway through, but he reached everybody in that room, and made sure he turned around once or twice and gave me a smile. I was the audience, too. And I had found him just when I needed him.<\/p>\n<p>My own musical ambitions are infinitely, regressively humbled in the context of this story, but it is, at its heart, a personal story. So I will allow myself this. I played drums and wrote songs differently after 2007. The album I finally released in 2015 after years of threatened to do it owes a lot to my discovering Levon and The Band. Listen to the first track, <a href=\"https:\/\/nickzaino.bandcamp.com\/track\/live-through-you\">\u201cLive Through You,\u201d<\/a> and it may be more than obvious. I may have written that song some other way without Levon, but now it\u2019s got bounce. And it has, to me, anyway, joy.<\/p>\n<p>After Levon died in 2012, a lot of people wrote about his fantastic second act. The two studio albums, <em>Dirt Farmer<\/em> and <em>Electric Dirt<\/em>, and his live album, <em>Ramble at the Ryman<\/em>, all won Grammys. And he did that all after coming back from throat cancer. I\u2019m grateful for that second act, because I might not have found something important without it. That\u2019s the thing about inspiration \u2013 as long as it comes, it\u2019s never too late.<\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit0\";\namzn_assoc_enable_interest_ads = \"true\";\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"thedepaoftang-20\";\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"auto\";\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\namzn_assoc_linkid = \"f2cbe1aa3ba1a6957aab0125ca18b05c\";\namzn_assoc_emphasize_categories = \"130,5088769011,195209011,301668,16261631\";\namzn_assoc_fallback_mode = {\"type\":\"search\",\"value\":\"levon helm\"};\namzn_assoc_default_category = \"All\";\namzn_assoc_rows = \"1\";\n<\/script><br \/>\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By the time Levon Helm\u2019s music really struck me, he had already lived several lifetimes. He\u2019d had his wild days on the road&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,8,1],"tags":[15,24,26,29,31,34,42,47,53,55],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","category-perfect","category-uncategorized","tag-boston-phoenix","tag-cream","tag-dirt-farmer","tag-electric-dirt","tag-eric-clapton","tag-george-harrison","tag-levon-helm","tag-music-from-big-pink","tag-ramble-at-the-ryman","tag-roger-waters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/levondirtfarmer.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7lGwW-2Y","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1223,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/1223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}