By Will McGuirk
Being a mom has influenced Amy Helm’s music career just as much, if not more than, being the daughter of The Band’s Levon Helm and singer Libby Titus.
Helm is on tour with Matt Anderson, making a stop at the Regent Theatre in Oshawa on Friday, May 3, 2019. There are also dates May 10 and 11 at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto on the tour which takes in Ontario and Eastern USA. The two singers met via producer Colin Linden when Helm was asked to contribute harmonies to Anderson’s albums. Helm describes Anderson’s voice as one which “opens time and space, opens the skies.”
Her own career opened with ‘Didn’t It Rain’ released in 2015. Her sophomore album ’This Too Shall Light’ arrived in 2018 on Yep Roc. The gap between the albums is explained by her choice to focus on her two children, on family rather than fame, she says in a phone interview from the road on the way to her infamous home in Woodstock, NY.
Growing up in such a famous musical family gave her first hand experience of the effects touring and recording schedules have on musicians. Alcoholism and addiction were a constant, absenteeism too. It was not a functional space to grow up in. In response she has strived to be better at balancing parenting with performing, to be as good a mom as she could be she says, thus the time between her albums.
Levon Helm passed away in 2012. Amy had reconciled with her father, nursing him in his decline, healing their relationship. They had grown closer over music, Amy played in his Midnight Ramble band, co-produced his Grammy winning album, ‘Dirt Farmer’ and recorded his album ‘Electric Dirt’ and ‘Ramble at the Ryman’, both of which won Grammys in the new category, Americana. It’s a name, Helm says, no musician, who falls under the genre, really likes.
It is a style which is said to begin with the influential rootsy rock ‘n roll of The Band. Regardless of the name of the genre, the work of Levon Helm and the other members of a group which bridged the musical heritage of Canada and the USA, is inside the songs of Amy Helm. And certainly being the daughter of Levon, and being the child of a drummer resonates deeply in her work.
On ‘This Too Shall Light’ there is a pronounced rhythm in all of the songs, a bounce, even in the slower numbers. Helm says the first thing she ever lays down when she sings, is the drums.
Producer Joe Henry wanted a spontaneity to the recording session so he had asked her not to rehearse or play around with the tracks ahead of schedule which took place over four days in Los Angeles. Helm says in reply the only thing she did do was sing along to a drum track.
Levon’s presence is felt on the album; “The Stones I Throw,” is a song he had originally released as Levon and the Hawks in 1965, and “Gloryland” is an a cappella hymnal which too was passed from the father to his daughter.
Besides covering her father’s work Helm also covers Rod Stewart’s “Mandolin Wind”, Allen Toussaint’s “Freedom for the Stallion” and the Milk Carton Kids’ “Michigan.”
The title track was written by Mick Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger. It is a play on the phrase “This Too Shall Pass,” and could be interpreted as the songs on the album are beacons which light up a life.
Most certainly with its mix of percussively driven folk spirituals and country blues it is an album which lights up with hope and optimism, the same light perhaps as a mother may see in the faces of her own children or of a father who meant the whole world to her.
