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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.
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Not surprisingly, the Midnight Rambles were an immediate success when they started last summer, and now they are selling out weeks in advance, mostly through word of mouth and Helm's Web site. "We do everything over the Internet in these modern times," Helm says, pleased by the irony of his deeply rooted music finding its audience with the help of technology.
A kind of community feeling hovers over the proceedings, which take place every other Saturday night in a loftlike barn in the woods on his property -- Helm is one of those cultural bridges that connect people who are ordinarily at odds with one another. "Levon is the link between the hippies and the firemen," says his daughter Amy, 35, and it's true. In fact, a few local police officers and firefighters volunteer for "Helmland Security," a way to lend support and enjoy the show for free. People come with dogs and children; there's a free buffet and most of the food is brought by the guests themselves.
Something always happens. On a cold night last winter, not only was the place packed, but Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint braved the season's biggest snowstorm to drive up from New York to sit in with Helm and his friends. Two weeks ago, on a balmy summer night, it was less star-studded, but there were special guests just the same -- Helmland Security issued a laconic warning that a mother bear and her two cubs were on the property and had tried to scratch their way into Helm's bedroom.
Levon Helm is an inexhaustible, irreplaceable fountain of American music, and the people who gather to hear him play know it. Even in the populist atmosphere of the barn, his entrance brings on an explosion of shouts and cheers. At sixty-six, he is as thin as the dividing line on a two-lane blacktop, and yet his smile has the pop and dazzle of a flashbulb, his energy so immense that when he plays his mandolin, or the drums, or opens his mouth to sing, fans often rise to their feet.
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These home concerts can give you a kind of alternative-universe look at what it would have been like if rock & roll had never taken off commercially and its most able performers were simple, everyday people who were more than content to play for a few people at a time. In this universe, there are no agents, no labels, no bookers; there is no curtain of cash separating the musicians from the audience. Helm shows obvious delight as he plays blues and bluegrass and Springsteen covers and doo-wop, and when there is, as often happens, a famous musician in the house, she or he blends into the proceedings with as little fanfare as possible. Dr. John has been there, as well as Donald Fagen, Emmylou Harris, Rickie Lee Jones and former Band organist Garth Hudson.
Toussaint told me that playing at Helm's house party was one of the highlights of the past year: "The whole atmosphere was Levon -- it was just so honest to the bone. Take your shoes off, relax, you're with friends. You can't have stage fright. You can't do anything wrong."
"These shows," Helm says, "every one of them is a celebration. You know, you can take the things you have for granted. But when you lose something, like I lost my voice, and then you get it back . . . well, there's nothing quite like it." But I also must ask him about the practical economics of these home concerts. Clearly, they are peak experiences for the audiences, but does the money work out?
"Right now, it's OK," he says. "Everyone goes home with some pocket money. Enough to buy firewood, anyhow."
"But can you actually make a living like this?" I ask.
"We're going to find out, I guess," he says, laughing.