#amy helm

Song Review: Joan Osborne - “Rainy Day Woman #12 and #35” (Live)

Everybody must get Joaned.

And so it goes on Joan Osborne’s slinky rendition of “Rainy Day Woman #12 and #35,” single No. 2 from her forthcoming (April 25) Dylanology LP.

Though the concert document co-stars Amy Helm, Jackie Greene and Robert Randolph, this track, like the preceding “Highway 61 Revisited,” is just Osborne and her band.

It’s a complete rewrite, outfitted with a walking bassline and precision pin picks on electric guitar. Osborne’s wordless into and outro vocals are ill-fitting, but her “Rainy Day” interpretation is nevertheless successful.

Grade card: Joan Osborne - “Rainy Day Woman #12 and #35” (Live) - A-

“Amy’s father is Levon Helm, local hero and international star of music and film through his work as drummer and singer in The Band, and as a superb actor in films like “Coal Miner1s Daughter” and “The Right Stuff”. He’s even made a foray into publishing with one of the best bio-books to come out of the music world in our time, This Wheel’s On Fire.

Amy Helm sat for a recent interview in Saugerties, NY, grown into a beautiful, charmingly modest and accomplished woman. She said that as a child, she had no sense of being born into royalty.

“I thought my dad was in Rick Danko’s band,” she laughed. “Because the only song I knew was Stage Fright. All the kids loved it! ‘When it gets to the end,/he has to start all over again’. It has that clockwork quality. It was the only thing I wanted to see at The Last Waltz.”

At that historic, Scorcese-filmed finale of The Band, the children, a tight group of Dankos and Robertsons and Manuels, some of whom she is still friends with, were sequestered backstage, she says, “in an insane playroom, with toys and nannies and cartoons. I remember asking if I could go see Stage Fright. It was the favorite of all the Band kids.”

-from interview with Any Helm by Johanna Helm, 2008

It was a full house that came to see Texas borne Steve Earle at the City Winery in New York on Monday, January 16.

But it was not just any Monday; it was, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. As you all know, King was the chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the Civil Rights Movement, which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law.

I was in town for a retail conference and had managed to snag a ticket to see one of my favourite performers, Steve Earle. Given his history of protest he seemed like an appropriate artist to see on this day.

I’d never been to the City Winery and didn’t know what to expect. It was a pleasant surprise, a warm room with lots of wood and quiet conversation. While the tables were close together the room felt spacious and most seats had a good view of the stage.

The show opened with Amy Helm, a singer/songwriter with a deeply expressive voice backed up by two very talented guitarists. Helm has been playing guitar and mandolin since she was a child and in 2015 released her first album “Didn’t It Rain”. And yes, she is the daughter of the late Levon Helm of The Band fame.

After a 6 song set Earle joined the band for “The Mountain” and then after a short break returned and kicked off his set with an homage to singer/songwriter Greg Trooper who passed away the previous day by playing “I Don’t Care What You Do to Me”.

This was followed up with “Taneytown”, a song about racism and the civil war and then the bluesy number “You’re the Best Lover That I Ever Had”. Now Earle’s life is larger than most. With seven marriages to six different women; prison; heroin addiction and recovery; and his anti-death penalty/anti-war actions you have a lot of material for a story teller of his calibre. Now sometimes his between song stories can be a little windy but most of the time I feel like we’re sitting in his recreation room as he gives me the backstory on his songs or shares his logic on his political leanings.

The audience hung on every word whether it was about addiction (Cocaine Cannot Kill My Pain), past loves (Sparkle and Shine or Fearless Heart) or songs “only a twenty year old could write” (Ben McCulloch) or just plain old hard luck (Tom Ames’ Prayer). Here’s a picture of a 20 year old Earle.

Giving us a performance of nearly two hours, Earle also made sure to treat us to hits like “Guitar Town” and “Copperhead Road”.  He’d often introduce a song by strumming the opening chords while telling us the background. The audience’s love for this poet with a guitar was in fact never more evident than when he played Copperhead Road, probably his most recognized song. The ovation was loud, raucous even, with cheers and a warmth that the artist could feel. Here’s a peek...

My listing of all the songs is incomplete  but in honour of Martin Luther King he played “Tell Moses” and talked about all the work that remained in relation to equality. “The Galway Girl” had the audience singing along to the chorus and then he came back for a quick encore with “Christmas in Washington”.

Now Christmas in Washington is one of my favourite Steve Earle tunes. This song is about the state of the nation, but Earle says” it’s also about some of the things I've lost along the way.” He opened with a lengthy commentary on the recent election and the fact that he was in Ottawa on election day (he voted in the advance polls). He told us how he was asked if he was moving to Canada and then explained why now was the time to stay in the United States and fight for what was right. It was a long preamble to this song but it was pure Steve Earle and made me love him even more. The audience loved it too singing along to the chorus of a song which is about bringing back heroes and the need for more heroes in these challenging times. It goes like this:

So come back Woody Guthrie  Come back to us now  Tear your eyes from paradise  And rise again somehow  If you run into Jesus  Maybe he can help you out  Come back Woody Guthrie to us now

He played the chorus at the end a few times and the audience got louder and louder until Earle strummed it to a close. And then as quickly as the night had started it was over; a rousing round of applause and we all headed back out into the cold with a little more warmth and humanity in our hearts thanks to Steve Earle.

Song Review: Joan Osborne - “Highway 61 Revisited” (Live)

The music was nearly identical to that that laid down for Songs of Bob Dylan. But Joan Osborne’s voice was slightly hoarse - deep and dusky - when she performed the version of “Highway 61 Revisited” that announces Dylanology Live.

The result is a powerhouse. A complete rewrite of the music, which sounds like a dust storm, with Dylan’s lyrics coming from the other half of humanity. Osborne is deep in it, singing the Bard’s words with a sincerity that makes it sound as if she herself transcribed the conversation between God and Abraham.

God said, ‘You can do what you want Abe, but/the next time you see me comin’, you better run,’ she intones.

Out April 25, Dylanology Live reprises six songs from its 2017 studio predecessor and adds “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “Tonight I’ll be Staying Here with You.” Amy Helm, Osborne’s former Trigger Hippy bandmate Jackie Greene and Robert Randolph are featured guests on half the tracks; Osborne, however, travels “Highway 61” on her own.

Grade card: Joan Osborne - “Highway 61 Revisited” (Live) - A+

Song Review(s): Phil Lesh and Friends - “Althea,” “China Cat Sunflower” -> “I Know You Rider” (Live, Oct. 18, 2021)

Though anti-authoritarian by nature, Phil Lesh is happily playing traffic cop with his latest big group of Friends.

With three guitarists in Eric D. Johnson, Josh Kaufman and Grahame Lesh; saxophonist Stuart Bogie; plus drums (Joe Russo) and keys (Benmont Tench), this group is a traffic jam waiting to happen. But bassist Lesh kept things running smoothly and the three songs shared from the Friends’ Oct. 18 gig/stream in New York State indicate jamming - not getting tied up - was the order of the evening.

Johnson did the singing on “Althea” and the arrangement left plenty of room for Bogie and Tench to shine. While this show-opener was tentative, the second-set kick off was not.

“China Cat Sunflower,” also with Johnson on the mic, allowed the band to weave a multi-colored tapestry that fell seamlessly into “I Know You Rider.”

Amy Helm appeared on stage to soften up the vocal harmonies and the final round of solos, wailing sax and screaming guitars propelled by Russo’s two-drummers-in-one-guy pounding of the kit, proved a Dead, 81-year-old traffic cop is still perfectly capable of orchestrating sweet, controlled chaos.

Grade card: Phil Lesh and Friends - “Althea,” “China Cat Sunflower” -> “I Know You Rider” (Live - 10/18/21) - B/A-/A

Song Review(s): Cindy Cashdollar - “Foggy Mt. Rock” (feat. Albert Lee) and “Ring Them Bells” (feat. Amy Helm)

With help from Albert Lee and Amy Helm, respectively, Cindy Cashdollar converts Flatt & Scruggs and Bob Dylan songs into tracks from her sophomore solo LP.

The veteran steel guitarist (Asleep at the Wheel) will release Waltz for Abilene Feb. 21 and the initial singles indicate it will be a diverse - potentially uneven - affair.

Fully electrified and instrumental, “Foggy Mt. Rock” is a barnburner as Cashdollar and Lee weave their guitars into a tapestry of hard-charging country-blues-rock-grass that’s impossible to resist.

“Ring Them Bells” is the antithesis - acoustic, with Helm over-singing Dylan’s words and lessening their impact in the process. Cashdollar’s Dobro is gorgeous; however, and leaves the listener to wonder why this wasn’t cut sans vocals.

Other guests on the LP include Larry Campbell, John Sebastian, Rory Block and Sonny Landreth.

Grade card: Cindy Cashdollar - “Foggy Mt. Rock” (feat. Albert Lee) and “Ring Them Bells” (feat. Amy Helm) - A-/C+