01. False Hearted Lover Blues
02. Poor Old Dirt Farmer
03. The Mountain
04. Little Birds
05. The Girl Left Behind
06. Calvary
07. Anna Lee
08. Got Me a Woman
09. A Train Robbery
10. Single Girl, Married Girl
11. Blind Child
12. Feelin' Good
13. Wide River to Cross

Amy Helm – mandolin, percussion, piano, drums, vocals, harmony vocals, mandola
Larry Campbell – dulcimer, guitar, fiddle, mandolin, percussion, background vocals, guitar
Levon Helm – acoustic guitar, mandolin, drums, vocals
Byron Isaacs – bass, percussion, background vocals
Buddy Miller – harmony vocals
Julie Miller – harmony vocals
Brian John Mitchell – piano, accordion, background vocals
Glenn Patscha – pump organ
George Receli – percussion
Teresa Williams – background vocals, harmony vocals

Levon Helm's first record in more than a decade, Dirt Farmer, will be released to the public on October 30, through Dirt Farmer Music LLC in conjunction with Vanguard Records. Levon sings and plays drums, guitar and mandolin on the CD, accompanied by Larry Campbell on guitars and fiddle, and the voices of Amy Helm and Teresa Williams. The record explores songs Levon learned as a boy in Arkansas and others in that style.

"Growing up on a cotton farm in the Arkansas Delta, Dirt Farmer rings true to home," Levon said. "Amy encouraged me to go all the way back and try to record some of the family songs from home that we always loved best."

The record reveals the essential beauty of traditional songs like "Little Birds" and the Stanley Brothers' "False Hearted Lover Blues," and takes a new look at Paul Kennerley's "A Train Robbery," Buddy and Julie Miller's "Wide River To Cross" and another sentimental favorite, Lauralyn Dossett's "Anna Lee."

Levon said: "'The Girl Left Behind' was one of the first songs my parents taught me as a child, along with 'Little Birds' and 'Blind Child.' 'The Poor Old Dirt Farmer' is a song that my wood-carver musician friend Michael Copus and I learned together when we worked with Jane Fonda on The Dollmaker down in Tennessee. 'Single Girl, Married Girl' is one of my favorite songs of the whole session. It gave us the chance to address a traditional standard with the entire rhythm section using non-electric instruments and a full set of drums. It also gave us the chance to monkey up the rhythm of a traditional country beat."

The tracks are elevated by the musicianship of Brian Mitchell on piano and accordion, Byron Isaacs on bass, Glenn Patscha on pump organ and George Receli's percussion. Buddy and Julie Miller contribute backing vocals on Steve Earle's "The Mountain." ---Levon Helm Studios, August 2007, theband.hiof.no

During the Band's original run (from 1968 to 1976), Robbie Robertson may have been the group's strongest songwriter and the idea man behind most of their best work, but Levon Helm was truly the group's heart and soul with his tough, sinewy Arkansas vocals and his indomitable, loosely tight drumming. Robertson' solo work since leaving the Band has been the product of a man whose lofty ambitions outstrip his ability to make them interesting, but Helm's music has been the greater disappointment; with the exception of 1980's American Son, most of his solo recordings have been thoroughly disposable, offering plenty of good-time boogie but none of the gravity one might hope for from the man who made "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" come to such compelling life years ago. Which is why Dirt Farmer is such a pleasant surprise; it's easily Helm's best recorded work since American Son, and an absorbing look back at his roots as the son of a farm family in the rural South.

Dirt Farmer was produced by Larry Campbell, a session guitarist and member of Bob Dylan's road band, in collaboration with Amy Helm, Levon's daughter, and they've assembled a solid but clutter-free acoustic band for these sessions, and the simple but iron-strong backdrops and superb songs are just what was needed to bring out the best in Levon. Helm survived a bout with throat cancer that was diagnosed in 1998, and his voice is noticeably more weathered than it once was, but in many respects the additional nooks and crannies suit this material beautifully; his interpretations of traditional rural folk songs like "Poor Old Dirt Farmer," "Little Birds," and "False Hearted Lover Blues" sound thoroughly authentic but with a bracing sense of force and commitment in Helm's vocals, and if Steve Earle's "The Mountain" and Buddy & Julie Miller's "Wide River to Cross" aren't venerable classics, they sound like they should be once Levon's done with them. Though Helm adds a touch of boogie to "Got Me a Woman" and a jumped-up interpretation of the Carter Family's "Single Girl, Married Girl," in this context they add some welcome spice to the stew, and Helm's drumming remains superb. Dirt Farmer is a hard-edged but compassionate and full-hearted set of roots music from a master of the form, and it's a welcome, inspiring return to form for Levon Helm after a long stretch of professional and personal setbacks. --- Mark Deming, Rovi

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01) Tennessee Jed
02) Move Along Train
03) Growing Trade
04) Golden Bird
05) Stuff You Gotta Watch
06) White Dove
07) Kingfish
08) You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had
09) When I Go Away
10) Heaven’s Pearls
11) I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel To Be Free

Acoustic Guitar, Vocals, Resonator Guitar, Electric Guitar, Fiddle, Mandolin, Dulcimer – Larry Campbell
Backing Vocals – George Receli (tracks: A4)
Bass, Backing Vocals – Byron Isaacs
Drums, Lead Vocals, Mandolin – Levon Helm
Horn [Alto], Cornet, Trumpet – Steven Bernstein (tracks: A1, B4, B5)
Organ, Electric Guitar – Jimmy Vivino (tracks: A1, A2)
Piano, Organ, Harmonium, Accordion – Brian Mitchell (tracks: A1, A3 to A6, B1, B3 to B5)
Soprano Saxophone, Trombone, Tuba – Erik Lawrence (tracks: A1, B1, B4, B5)
Tenor Saxophone, Backing Vocals, Vocals – Jay Collins (4) (tracks: A1, A5, B1, B3, B5)
Trombone, Tuba – Clark Gayton (tracks: A1, B1, B4, B5)
Trumpet – Steven Bernstein (tracks: B1)
Tuba – Howard Johnson (3) (tracks: A1, B1, B5)
Vocals – Catherine Russell (tracks: B5)
Vocals, Autoharp, Acoustic Guitar – Teresa Williams (tracks: A1 to A4, A6, B1, B3 to B5)
Vocals, Drums [Bass] – Amy Helm (tracks: A2 to A4, A6, B1, B3 to B5)

Levon Helm never could understand why The Band had to be dissolved in 1976. “What a sin it is, to take a good group from productivity to oblivion,” he scowled in his autobiography 20 years later.

The puzzle is why it took Helm so long to make an album that extended The Band’s pioneering canon, that subtle fusion of modern music and old-time sensibilities in which Levon Helm ‘s plaintive, Southern vocals played such a central role. After the split there were a couple of half-cocked solo works, and later The Band Redux, but without leading light Robbie Robertson, and with Richard Manuel and Rick Danko in perilously poor health. Small wonder that, in the studio at least, the group produced only flickers of their old magic.

Then, two years ago came Dirt Farmer, an album majoring on songs with which Helm had grown up on his parents’ Arkansas cotton farm, and that recaptured the voice and persona that animated Band landmarks like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”. Justly hailed, the record won a Grammy. Furthermore, in the fiercely contested battle between Helm and Robertson – the prize being not just songwriting credits but status as presiding spirit of The Band – Dirt Farmer tilted the contest away from the cerebral guitarist and toward the ornery Arkansas drummer.

Perhaps it was impossible for Helm to engage fully his talents before The Band had been put to rest. Perhaps, too, his protracted show-down with throat cancer – in which the Reaper blinked first – added focus. Certainly Levon now carries the air of a man in a hurry. Nor should one overlook the contribution of his daughter, Amy, who encouraged Pop to engage with the music of his earliest years, and whose own harmonies beautifully temper her father’s grainy, miraculously restored vocal tones.

Amy’s present again on Electric Dirt, which, as the title suggests, doesn’t stray far from its predecessor’s template. Once more it was recorded at Helm’s beloved Woodstock studio, The Barn (rebuilt after it burnt down), with Bob Dylan sideman Larry Campbell in the producer’s seat, deftly guiding the performances and mix and adding his multi-instrumental skills.

The musical palette, however, is wider this time round, emphasising the breadth of Helm’s interests rather than the stuff on which he was weaned – numbers by Muddy Waters and Nina Simone rub shoulders with works by Randy Newman and the Grateful Dead. Nonetheless, Helm’s roots as a farmer’s son get an airing on “Growing Trade”, the only original here. With references to hardships willingly borne and the beauty of harvest time and cottonfields, it’s a clear nod back to The Band years – the intro almost quotes “The Weight” – but this is no pastoral idyll. “I used to farm for a living, but now I’m in the growing trade,” confesses a narrator driven to raising an illegal cash crop to feed his family.

Elsewhere the moods and influences tumble breezily over one another. The opener, a cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Tennessee Jed” swings joyously, the trademark clatter of Helm’s drums set against a juicy Southern horn section. Those particular flavours blaze even more brilliantly on Randy Newman’s “Kingfish”, where Allen Toussaint himself arranges blousy New Orleans horns and Helm gives his all to lyrics like “I’m a cracker and you are too” that celebrate the South’s good ol’ boy as hero rather than villain.

“Stuff You Gotta Watch”, a much covered Buddy Johnson song familiar from The Band, and Muddy Waters’ “You Can’t Lose What You Never Had”, explore the up and down sides of 12-bar blues, the former shriling gorgeously to a Cajun accordion. A take on The Staple Singers’ “Move Along Train” has more than a touch of gospel, and what Helm describes as “the slowed-down rock’n’roll beat, with more beat on the downbeat”. “Golden Bird”, penned by Happy Traum, another Dylan associate, strikes a solemn, Appalachian note of transcendence, a quavering voice set against aching violin.

Add “Heaven’s Pearls”, a number from Amy’s group Ollabelle, and Simone’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” and you have a remarkable set in which the joys and pains of this world are touched by the uncertainties of the next. Nina’s idiosyncratic melody proves a little elusive for Levon, but he sings with infectious fervour. Hang up his rock’n’roll shoes? Not just yet. ---Neil Spencer, uncut.co.uk

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