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. Continue reading Electrified Levon
Rosanne Cash does that, perhaps as well or better than anybody. At the Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut Tuesday night, Cash mixed songs from Black Cadillac, an album dedicated to her late father Johnny Cash, and a few requests with songs from her upcoming album The List, which will consist of some of the pillars of the great American country songbook.
He rarely plays in the States but Taylor was scheduled to be at four venues in or near Connecticut: Toad’s Place in New Haven, Black-Eyed Sally’s in Hartford, the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton, Mass., or if you wanted to drive a little further, Misquamicut Beach in Westerly, R.I.
I caught The Beehive Queen and her remarkable band Rebel Montez Saturday night at Cafe Nine, a tiny club that might hold 200, in New Haven, Connecticut. Chris showed why she is one of the state’s legendary R&B/soul singers as I watched her play the first of two 90-minute sets that included original tunes from each of her five albums and a number of meticulously chosen covers that not only put her vast talents on full display but also carried a sense of blues and soul history.
The place was called The Stone Balloon and was fashioned directly after the Cafe Au Go Go in New York. It was a long, narrow room with a low ceiling. Tables and chairs took up most of the audience area in front of a small stage on the right-hand side wall toward the front half of the room. Unlike the Au Go Go it was brightly lit between sets. The Au Go Go was always like a cave.
My main interest was not in the Director’s Cut, which I had bought back in the early ’90s, but in the Extras disc, Woodstock: Untold Stories. It includes about three hours of material with nearly 150 minutes of previously unreleased performances, the rest consisting of documentary video segments.
For details about the project, including specific mastering techniques, as well as a wealth of other information on The Beatles, check out 
Sebastian’s charming and engaging style of entertaining creates an immediate connection with his audience as he mixes interesting anecdotes from his career with a type of humor that is so easy to relate to, especially for his contemporaries as he puts it.
For the uninitiated, Rockpalast is a long-running German TV show that started in the early 1970s and broadcasts live concerts. Many performances from those shows by scores of artists have been officially released or generally available over the years.