This is a great story Ted. As always. I read a lot of them, but as a general avoider of comment sections - for well understood reasons - I hadn't seen this part of your site before and didn't realize it was a kind of ongoing conversation with so many interesting and interested folks. Very cool!
This is a great story Ted. As always. I read a lot of them, but as a general avoider of comment sections - for well understood reasons - I hadn't seen this part of your site before and didn't realize it was a kind of ongoing conversation with so many interesting and interested folks. Very cool!
As you may know, I'm an unreasonably determined fan of THE BAND and came in contact with Levon Helm and his circle in 1999 after we covered BESSIE SMITH on our Holiday Romance album for Universal. Rick Danko had just died and Helm had just been diagnosed with cancer. And things got worse from there in every way imaginable. Especially money.
It was at that time, with the help of the indefatigable manager Barbara O'Brien that, out of necessity and to pay the rent, he re-imagined his career as a stay-at-home affair where he simply invited people over to his house to play and listen to music.
By the time he went back to the studio in 2007 to record Dirt Farmer, these Ramble Sessions in his barn in Woodstock, patterned after the medicine shows of his youth, had taken on a mythic and financially viable path forward. Pilgrims visited by the thousands to pay their respects.
Comparing his bandmates who passed in near total obscurity, Helm left a lasting legacy. Today's global Last Waltz tributes would be the most unlikely thing if not for Helm's evangelism and prosperity preaching of the music of The Band.
This month the lead singer, Myles Goodwyn, of my hometown-band-made-big, April Wine announced a retirement at 70 something. The idea is the band (with no original members) will stay on the road without him. We'll see. I'd like to encourage him, and others in their position to consider the Levon Helm strategy. Seems to me it's a good way to extend the fun in a healthy way. But as Levon liked to say, "we ain't in it for our health."
This is a great story Ted. As always. I read a lot of them, but as a general avoider of comment sections - for well understood reasons - I hadn't seen this part of your site before and didn't realize it was a kind of ongoing conversation with so many interesting and interested folks. Very cool!
As you may know, I'm an unreasonably determined fan of THE BAND and came in contact with Levon Helm and his circle in 1999 after we covered BESSIE SMITH on our Holiday Romance album for Universal. Rick Danko had just died and Helm had just been diagnosed with cancer. And things got worse from there in every way imaginable. Especially money.
It was at that time, with the help of the indefatigable manager Barbara O'Brien that, out of necessity and to pay the rent, he re-imagined his career as a stay-at-home affair where he simply invited people over to his house to play and listen to music.
By the time he went back to the studio in 2007 to record Dirt Farmer, these Ramble Sessions in his barn in Woodstock, patterned after the medicine shows of his youth, had taken on a mythic and financially viable path forward. Pilgrims visited by the thousands to pay their respects.
Comparing his bandmates who passed in near total obscurity, Helm left a lasting legacy. Today's global Last Waltz tributes would be the most unlikely thing if not for Helm's evangelism and prosperity preaching of the music of The Band.
This month the lead singer, Myles Goodwyn, of my hometown-band-made-big, April Wine announced a retirement at 70 something. The idea is the band (with no original members) will stay on the road without him. We'll see. I'd like to encourage him, and others in their position to consider the Levon Helm strategy. Seems to me it's a good way to extend the fun in a healthy way. But as Levon liked to say, "we ain't in it for our health."