Two years ago, Levon Helm, legendary singer and drummer for The Band, released his first solo album in 25 years, Dirt Farmer. A bluegrass leaning record with elements of country, blues and R&B, it brought Helm back in a big way after his bout with cancer of the vocal cords in the early 2000s.

His voice had changed somewhat but the trademark quality that graced so many of The Band’s signature tunes was intact with a slightly raspier flavor.

Now Helm has followed up the Grammy winner with Electric Dirt, on which he comes a little closer to the style of The Band while retaining his own musical identity. With the help of extraordinary guitarist/producer Larry Campbell, who among many other projects has played with Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour band, Helm’s daughter Amy of Olabelle and a host of other distinguished musicians, Helm has shaped a rocking, bluesy, down home sounding record that is about as earthy as it gets when it comes to roots music.

There are tracks as good but none better than the opener Tennessee Jed, a Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter tune, on which Campbell plays an infectious slide riff in answer to Helm’s vocal. It’s augmented by a full horn section that includes Howard Johnson on tuba. An easy rocking groove makes this a song you can’t sit still to.

The gospel flavored Move Along Train follows with Amy Helm and Teresa Williams, Campbell’s wife, on harmonies, as they are on much of the album. Jimmy Vivino, a repsected studio musician and member of Conan O’Brien’s Tonight  Show Band adds a second electric guitar to Campbell’s.

Campbell often is playing more than one instrument on the album, including mandolin, fiddle, dulcimer and resonator and acoustic guitar as well as singing background. He’s a master of strings who is a marvel to watch live as I’ve seen him play twice with Dylan and as a guest on about six songs with Elvis Costello during his tour with Emmylou Harris in support of Delivery Man.

Growing Trade, a Helm/Campbell composition, talks of the farmer who has had to abandon his usual farming techniques to enter a growing business, which one gets the impression is on the wrong side of the law. Happy Traum’s bluegrass ballad Golden Bird, the one tune played without trap drums save for Amy on bass drum, and Carter Stanley’s melancholy waltz-time White Dove are both given effective readings wrapped around Muddy Waters’ Stuff You Gotta Watch, a full-on blues rendition.

Helm returns to Waters’ book once more for You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had, another lyrical lesson in down-to-earth philosophy. The full band is again recruited for the alternately dixieland and rocking treatment of Randy Newman’s Kingfish and the closing uptempo and uplifting I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free.

Perhaps the highlight besides the opener comes in Campbell’s When I Go Away, a meditation on leaving this life, with a moderate groove and wonderful vocal chorus. Heaven’s Pearls, an Ollabelle tune, completes the album.

The musicianship, lead and harmony vocals and arrangements are executed with a rootsy feel, adept playing and precision. And yet the album still retains a looseness that rocks in a way the music of America can only rock, all driven by one of our great band leaders in Helm.