Levon Helm: Dirt Farmer : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The sole American in the Band, singer-drummer Levon Helm --the son of an Arkansas cotton farmer -- knew firsthand the hard labor, family ties and Dixie fireside tales that were the roots and soil of guitarist Robbie Robertson's songs. On Dirt Farmer, Helm goes home to the tunes and fables of his boyhood, including the traditional "Blind Child," the Stanley Brothers standard "False -Hearted Lover Blues" and A.P. Carter's cheeky "Single Girl, Married Girl," singing them next to rough modern diamonds by Steve Earle and Buddy and Julie Miller. The settings are vintage and natural, how the Band might have sounded in Big Pink during a blackout --fiddle and spindly acoustic guitar by ex-Bob Dylan sideman Larry Campbell, Helm's own mandolin and roadhouse-swing drumming, and porch-choir harmonies featuring Helm's daughter, Amy. Levon's vocals are a welcome miracle. His victory over throat cancer cost him some of his old soulful weight. But in "Poor Old Dirt Farmer," a Cajun waltz about a man left with only stones for harvest, Helm's drawling howl is heavy with the outrage and sorrow of someone with a deep connection to the land and those who live by it.