Jitterbugging for Jesus

Woodstock is a pretty little town in the Catskills, a couple of hours north of New York City. You might say that its fame is mostly undeserved: the legendary rock-music festival that borrowed the name actually took place near Bethel, some 50 miles away. But Woodstock’s other artistic associations are real enough. Over the years, it has been home to a remarkable roster of writers, painters and musicians. Lately, one of these, all by himself, has been reason enough to travel any distance to get there.

Levon Helm’s association with Woodstock goes back decades. It is where he and the other members of The Band worked with Bob Dylan in 1967 on songs later released as The Basement Tapes. It is where The Band recorded its first album, Music from Big Pink, a critical and commercial success that helped as much as Dylan’s own work to alter the course of American popular music. More than 40 years later, Helm is still there – and, for the past few years, he has been performing again with friends, for tiny audiences, at his home.

Word of these Midnight Rambles, as he calls them, has spread. No doubt many devotees of The Band turn up to pay homage to an artist they expect to be past his peak, thinking this is partly about nostalgia – especially if they know something of Helm’s health problems. He fell ill with throat cancer in the 1990s. He recovered, but recently has had to rest his voice again. At the past few shows, he has played drums and mandolin but his uniquely expressive vocals have been absent. In this intimate setting you can literally touch the hem of his garment, which is something one should do – but how good a concert could it be?

If you arrive with those thoughts, you are in for a shock, because you might very well see the best show of your life. The audience left the most recent Ramble enraptured – that is the only word. Miraculously, Helm and his collaborators are making music as good as he has ever made, which is saying something. The second flowering of this talent is a joy to witness.

Helm’s place in the history of rock music owes much, of course, to his association with Dylan. As leader of the Hawks, as The Band was then called, Helm toured with him in 1965 and 1966. Dylan would perform a first set alone. Songs like “Mr Tambourine Man” and “Visions of Johanna”, with their weird poetic imagery, were perplexing to the folkies who wanted variations on “Blowin’ in the Wind”, but at least no electric guitars were involved. Then he would return with the Hawks for a second, electrified, set. For extra provocation, this would include loud, raging versions of his beloved folk songs.

The crowds detested it. Night after night, they booed. Night after night, with a point to prove, Dylan and the Hawks turned up the volume and kept going. Before long, the world caught on; Helm had assisted at the birth of a new kind of music.

In a subtler way, The Band’s own albums were also revolutionary, and no less influential. Their records merged every stream of the American musical tradition: drawing especially on country, early rock and roll and blues, but with influences too from soul, gospel and traditional jazz. The Band can fairly claim to have made the quintessential American music – quite a distinction for a group that was four-fifths Canadian (Helm, an Arkansan, was the only American).

All five were multi-instrumentalists and the group had three lead singers, including Helm, each of a quite distinct character. This gave them tremendous range and allowed them to give authentic, unforced performances across the wide expanses of their material.

The group, together since they were teenagers in the early 1960s, broke up in 1976. Helm and Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist and principal songwriter, fell out. In 1986, Richard Manuel, singer and pianist, killed himself. Rick Danko, singer and bass player, died in 1999 of a heart attack, at the age of 56. Helm undertook occasional recording projects, with or without his former bandmates but, until recently, devoted much of his time to acting.

Then, in 2005, the Midnight Rambles began, at first as ad hoc gatherings, then as a more regular event. On the evidence of last weekend’s show at the Barn, the small studio and concert room built on to Helm’s home in Woodstock, those Band-like traits of musical depth and authenticity are stronger than ever.

The great man’s taste in material is still broad and impeccable. Sets change almost entirely from show to show but last weekend there was a judicious sprinkling of Band classics – including a version of “It Makes No Difference” that would make a dead man weep – blues and country numbers, two contributions from the Grateful Dead songbook, and surprises such as “Do Right Woman” in a rendering that would have Aretha Franklin smiling.

Helm has surrounded himself with 11 superb musicians who are tight, yet fresh and relaxed. With nothing to prove, there is no showing off; the impression is of unstressed reserves of talent wherever you look on the stage. (Well, strictly speaking, there is no stage.) On the night in question, Helm was barely missed as a singer – the highest tribute one could pay to Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Brian Mitchell and daughter Amy Helm, fine singers all, who shared the vocals.

Campbell, a multi-instrumentalist of renown, deserves much of the credit for this renaissance. Helm’s chief musical officer in this venture, he co-produced (with Amy Helm) the critically acclaimed album Dirt Farmer, released in 2007. Campbell went on to produce Helm’s newest album Electric Dirt, if anything an even better record, released earlier this year.

All being well with Helm’s voice – which, on those albums, is changed from the one that anchored The Band but not a whit less expressive or appealing for that – a third album in the series will follow. Meanwhile, there are the Rambles, with Helm laying down his inimitable drum patterns, every grinning member of the group contributing something thrilling, and Campbell, in his element, presiding genially over all.

In decades of dogged concert-going, this reviewer cannot remember an evening as uplifting or as satisfying. Interviews had been arranged with Helm and Campbell after the show. They had to be postponed: “At the moment we have something in common,” the man from the Financial Times told Helm. “We are both speechless.”

In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel’s On Fire, Helm explains how he dropped out of the European part of Dylan’s tour in 1966. After weeks of being booed, he had had enough. “I’d been raised to believe that music was supposed to make people smile and want to party.” If that is the test, it would be hard to think of a more successful practitioner of the art, and today the man is at the peak of his powers.