Tag: Amy Helm

I remember when this album was released, it sounded so pure. Some singers you can spot a mile away. Dylan, Young, Cash, and Levon are part of that group. His strong southern roots tie him to a worn-in in earthy sound. 

Sometimes a singer is married to a feeling that no one else has, and Levon had that quality. Some songs are meant to be heard by him, and Robbie Robertson was the first to notice this and used it to its full effect.  This song was on Dirt Farmer, Levon’s 2007 comeback record and his first solo album in a quarter-century. He was battling throat cancer when he recorded it, his voice raspier than in the old Band days, but somehow more potent.

The song was written by Steve Earle, and Levon brought the song to life. Earle does a great version of it as well, but it was a perfect song for Levon to interrupt. The arrangement is a slow march of banjo, fiddle, and mandolin, paced like a funeral procession up a foggy Appalachian ridge. But it’s that voice that carries the load. Levon sings it not as a narrator but as a ghost buried with his kin under the mountain he gave his life to.

What’s remarkable about Dirt Farmer is how Helm made it in the twilight of his life, and yet it plays like the core of his legacy. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone or reinvent The Band; it’s pure Levon. It was produced by Larry Campbell and Amy Helm, his daughter. 

The album won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008. I usually don’t list Grammy awards, but if any album deserved an award…this one does. 

This live video is shaky but the only one I found. The sound is fine. 

The Mountain

I was born on this mountain a long long time ago
Before they knocked down the timber and stripped mined all the coal
When you rose up in the morning before it was light
To go down in that dark hole and come back up at night
I was born on this mountain, this mountain’s my home
She holds me and she keeps me from a worry and a woe
Well they took everything she gave, she gave it now she’s gone
But I’ll die on this mountain, this mountain’s my home

I was young on this mountain but now I am old
And I knew every holler, every cool swimmin’ hole
Til a one night I lay down and I woke up to find
That my childhood was over I went back down in the mine

There’s a hole in this mountain it’s dark and it’s deep
And God only knows all the secrets that it keeps
There’s a chill in the air only miners can feel
There’re ghosts in the tunnels that the company sealed

…