You never asked for my advice, but here it is anyhow. As soon as you can, get to Woodstock, New York, and attend one of Levon Helm's Midnight Rambles. You will have a front-row seat to some of the best music you will ever hear, and that's a promise. If, back in the day, you were a fan of the Band, with whom Levon Helm played drums and sang, then you will be thrilled to learn that Helm's musical power is undiminished. If you are too young to have been a Band fan, too young to have heard them back up Bob Dylan in what some say was the most vital part of Dylan's career, then my advice still holds. Get to Woodstock, get a ticket to the Rambles: Not only is there nothing quite like them, there is, arguably, nothing their equal.

How is it that a man who was once at the pinnacle of the music business is performing in his barn for a hundred or so people at a time? One reason is purely financial: Helm still works for a living. Some people got rich off the Band, but Helm wasn't one of them, and his Midnight Rambles concerts keep him current with the bank that holds his mortgage -- a ticket to the intimate evening under the rafters is a hundred bucks, with home-baked cookies and chips and salsa thrown in for good measure.

The other motive behind these biweekly home concerts is that nine years ago, Helm had throat cancer, and the radiation treatments left him almost without a speaking voice, let alone his signature deep country yowl. Singing for friends and neighbors was a kind of spiritual and physical therapy that caught on. "I wanted to get my voice back in shape, and this seemed like a good way to do it," says Helm.