Levon Helm Captures Spirit of Midnight Ramble on June's "Electric Dirt"

Levon Helm will release his new album Electric Dirt, the follow-up to 2007's Dirt Farmer, on June 30th. Electric Dirt comes a mere two years after Dirt Farmer, which won the 2008 Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy and was Helm's first solo studio album since 1982. Multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell once again serves as producer.

Dirt Farmer will feature the Band drummer covering the Grateful Dead's "Tennessee Jed," Randy Newman's "Kingfish" and "I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel To Be Free," made famous by Nina Simone. "Our objective here was to take the honesty, innocence and purity of the Dirt Farmer record which represents a true element of what Levon is all about but also expand on that and explore deeper the goldmine of Levon's musical artistry," Campbell said in a statement. He also told Rolling Stone that Electric Dirt "will have a little bit more of the spirit of the Midnight Ramble," a reference to the drummer's all-star concert series that he hosts at his Woodstock, New York studio (RS named it Best Jam Session).

Joining Helm on the album, which was recorded at Helm's famed Barn in Woodstock, is his daughter, vocalist Amy Helm, singer Teresa Williams and horn arrangements by Allen Toussaint. Helm also plans to stage more Midnight Ramble shows in Woodstock as well as hit the road for a few dates this summer.

Electric Dirt
"Tennessee Jed"
"Move Along Train"
"Growing Trade"
"Golden Bird"
"Stuff You Gotta Watch"
"White Dove"
"Kingfish"
"You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had"
"When I Go Away"
"Heaven's Pearls"
"I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel To Be Free"

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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