Live Music Report: Levon Helm at the Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore

Most rock shows make you glad to be alive. Some make you glad to be there — you think, Shit, something a little special is happening tonight, thank god I got my ass off the couch and schlepped down here. Other shows, like the Levon Helm Band at the Ram’s Head Live last week, are so great that they actually make you wish you had followed a very different career/life path, one that might bring you, eventually, at, say, the ripe old age of 67, to lead an eclectic and ridiculously talented group of friends and musicians in a two and a half hour show that can only rightfully be called a celebration.

And it was a celebration of a lot of things, not the least of which that Levon Helm is still with us, still making music, and still singing in that rough-hewn Arkansas whiskey voice. It’s a voice unlike any other — as American as Joe Strummer’s was English. It’s a voice that he comes by honestly — Helm was the drummer and one of the primary vocalists in The Band, he played on Dylan’s first electric tour and then, tired of being booed every night, quit to work on an oil rig outside Texas, then came back into the fold when the Band holed up in Woodstock to make the first of their legendary albums, Music from Big Pink. Later, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer (3 packs a day), underwent chemotherapy, literally lost his voice, then got it back and started making music at his house in Woodstock. Eventually, they invited the public, where for a fee you could watch the Levon Helm band jam at their weekly “rambles,” where guest like Elvis Costello or Allen Touissaint regularly stopped by. The ramble is a low key, family affair, and this is what Helm brought with him to Baltimore.

From the opening notes of Ophelia, the entire show had a gently rollicking feel, with people coming on and off stage regularly, vocals shared among 6 people, and instruments regularly traded between songs. Helm’s daughter Amy even came off the microphone and got behind her father’s drums for one song, and the incredible brass section played just about anything that can be played (seriously — sousaphone, piccolo, along with every kind of saxaphone, trombone, trumpet). If there’s a word that describes the vibe it would be generous. Helm regularly took a back seat while members of the band or other vocalists took their turn in the center stage.

The music was amazing. They worked through a number of the Band’s greatest hits, including Ophelia, It Makes No Difference, Chest Fever (with Garth Hudson’s organ intro played, amazingly, by Campbell on the electric guitar), The Shape I’m In, and The Weight. Nobody on stage would likely pass muster with Simon Cowell — they were all a few years past twenty, a few pounds past belly shirts — but a more talented group of musicians is unlikely to grace that stage anytime soon.

If you’re a fan of The Band (and I’m always surprised to find people who are not, to which my only response is “Dude?”) or of Americana in general, you need to see this band while they’re still around. Go to Woodstock — it’s worth the money. Or see them on the road. See them while you can.