Fred Leo

Almost two years ago I went to one the Leveon Helm Rambles. It was one of the finest shows I’ve ever been to,  an intimate performance in the big, open area of Leven Helm’s post-and-beam structure where he lives and works. I’d tried to get my then 17-year-old son to go, but at the time, he wasn’t interested. Now, of course, he wants to go; he calls me in to see Levon Helm & Co perform on Conan via youtube. I’d love to send him, but…things have changed since then. For instance, General Motors is selling on the pink sheets. You’d think teenagers, who at any given moment know their taste is just the coolest, would come to suspect that outlook over time, but that’s asking too much.

But if you have money, now is a good time to catch a even Helm show, and I say that because they have an official fan club that gets some cool bennies in addition to the Ramble shows. The club is called the Helmland Outlaws and here are the details.

Be sure to check out the Ramble guest artists, because the one July 11th is Arlen Roth. He puts out some of the most useful tutorials for guitarists I’ve ever  seen, courtesy of Gibson. Here’s one with a cool blues turnaround.

And far from incidentally, his new release, Electric Dirt, is due out in a few weeks, and I’ve previewed some tracks at Amazon. It sounds fantastic. Here’s a vid on the making of it. The key line for me was the producer describing it as “music simply for the sake of doing it.” That about captures my impression of Leveon Helm. To me he’s an example of authenticity winning in the end, and that’sa world view I’d like to cultivate and protect whenever possible.