Levon Helm with The Band, 1974

He was born to music-lovin’ cotton farmers and grew up in a town called Turkey Scratch, pickin’ up the guitar by nine, blowin’ harmonica by ten; he hit the drum kit at fifteen after seeing Elvis and his band create frenzy with limbs that danced to heart-pumping rhythm.

His palette was formed of African-American minstrels, rhythmic blues and bluegrass, Grand Ole Opry and straight up rock n’ roll.  Calling music, “…one of the foods of our lives,” he ate and drank his fill, sharing a table filled with family and friends for more than sixty years.

In 1998, Levon (Lavon) Helm was diagnosed with cancer of the vocal cord and his soulful Southern voice became a whisper. No matter. He could still play drums, calling his drummer’s stool “the best seat in the house.”

The home he created for family was in Woodstock, New York – heritage of his humble beginnings with The Band and Big Pink. He used his house to stage “rent parties” in an effort to pay his mortgage and medical bills. The Midnight Ramble kicked off in the barn at 8:00 on Saturday night and shimmied ‘til midnight, becoming a continued event and one of the most cherished musical venues in the country.

Levon’s Midnight Ramble Sessions rejuvenated a creative spark, inspiring an ode to his family with Dirt Farmer, for which he received a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2008, and Electric Dirt, which won the Best Americana Album in 2010.

“As long as you can keep music a part of your life, you’ve got a hell of a chance!”

For those with a passion for music, it is a vocation that makes most that pursue it self-employed.  As Levon would note, “Most of us are self-employed.  We get sick too and we have to pay those bills and it’s quite a struggle at times.”

“…Especially with aging musicians – a lot of them don’t have any health care.  A lot of musicians really tip their hats to MusiCares.”

Levon’s message of late was keeping his American roots music alive, and passing it on.

“The power of music just kinda kills all those ills; it cures everything and you’ve got more energy just from the music.  And, I’ve never seen it fail.  It’s good for ya; real good for ya.”

To find inspiration in Levon’s music, we share:

-A video of Levon performing “Rag Mama Rag” with The Band on New Years Eve, 1983

-A video of Levon Performing “Ophelia” at Newport Folk Festival (Newport, RI) Aug 3, 2008

-A Levon Helm Tribute playlist

-A link to MusiCares

[Levon Helm – Dirt Farmer, American Minstrel is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

If you live in the Bay Area, chances are you’re familiar with Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Chances are you’ve even attended at least once over its 10 years running. It’s hard to disregard a massive, three-day festival that’s six-stages large and hundreds of thousands of attendees deep with a star-stacked lineup that takes place out in the emerald expanse of the Golden Gate Park every first weekend of October—the sunniest, warmest time of the year in San Francisco. Each year, Hardly Strictly features a staggering list of artists, with past festivals including performances by Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Randy Newman, Jonathan Richman, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Doc Watson, Roseanne Cash, Gogol Bordello, Hot Tuna, the Avett Brothers, Joan Baez, MC Hammer, Los Lobos, and Emmylou Harris, the festival’s reigning matron who has played every year since its inception – hardly strictly all bluegrass.  And the festival is entirely, absolutely, free.

Yes, free. Ticket-free, sponsor-free, advertisement free. Which means it’s also BYOB. With sprawling, happy crowds, homemade snacks, dogs underfoot, pot wafting in the air, toddlers running around, lawn chairs and blankets dotting every conceivable area, organic collaborations, and inspiring performances, it’s an event that takes the prize in terms of multi-staged festival events.

Yes, it’s crowded. Crowded as hell, in fact. But is there anything like this anywhere else? A privately funded festival of this stature with performers who, on their own, could fetch ticket prices reaching into the triple digits, playing to both yuppies and penniless patrons alike, all basking in San Francisco’s most celebrated park? No, there’s not. And it’s all the gift of Warren Hellman, San Francisco’s own bluegrass aficionado billionaire.

Hellman may have well-known roots in Wall Street, but it was entirely too easy to remove his illustrious career in investment banking from the candid, effusive personality that greeted me when I went to his office in the Financial District to interview him about his work behind Hardly Strictly. The 76-year-old philanthropist is invigorated when talking about his musical pursuits, so thrilled he is to be able to celebrate his musical passions with his fellow San Franciscans… and to such a marvelous degree. The cost of throwing the festival doesn’t even come close to the amount of joy he’s clearly derived from doing it. Throughout our interview, which took place in his swanky 12th floor office draped in Hardly Strictly memorabilia with a small cache of musical instruments on display and for his personal use, he laughed every few sentences and was humble and self-deprecating throughout. It’d be hard to find a more enthusiastic subject.

Though he clearly identifies himself as a native Bay Area man, Hellman was born in New York, which he accredits to being “a real tragedy ‘cause [he’s] the only one in six generations that wasn’t born in San Francisco.” After finishing up school at Berkeley and getting his MBA at Harvard Business School, he spent 18 years at Lehman Brothers and then six more in Boston with a venture capital firm. As he says it, “I didn’t go straight ‘til about 10 years ago, when I started playing the banjo again and my life straightened itself out.”

Hellman was always interested in music and took the obligatory piano lessons as a child, but it wasn’t until he was (in his words) “a big Wall Street mucky muck” that he decided to learn to play the banjo. Says Hellman of that period, “I found a teacher up in Greenwich Village, and once a week I would board the Lexington Avenue subway and ride up to 4th street, go to my lesson in my three-piece grey suit. [One day] I said to the guy I was taking lessons from, ‘Hey, I’m about to have my 30th birthday. Do you know some kid who could play the banjo at my birthday party?’ So I came back the following week and he said, ‘Yeah I gotta kid, his name is Don McLean. But he wants 50 bucks.’ So I hired Don McLean to play the banjo for 50 bucks for my 30th birthday!

“That was probably the only interesting thing that happened along the way, other than becoming a mediocre banjo player. I’ve kinda stuck with that ever since, with a hiatus of about 30 years when my lovely banjo disappeared with my son-in-law when he disappeared from my daughter’s marriage.”

When I ask him for clarification he goes on, laughing as he tells me how he lost, and then found, his revered Whyte Laydie banjo, a rare make of instrument crafted around the beginning of the 20th century at a firm outside of Boston called the Fairbanks Music Company. “So anyways, 30 years later, I started taking lessons from a guy out here called Jody Stecher. And one Christmas a couple of years after I started taking lessons, he said to my wife, ‘You know, if you’re looking for a Christmas present for Warren you ought to get him a good banjo.’ And she said, ‘Well, once he had a Whyte Laydie.’ And they found a Whyte Laydie that was for sale in a stringed instruments store outside of Boston, so they bought it, shipped it out—I’m sure you know where this story is going—and I opened it, and I got my banjo back! I’ve had such fun telling that story that I never corroborated it, because it’s such a good story what difference does it really make?

So, a couple years later my ex son-in-law called me and said ‘Warren, the story you are telling everyone about the Whyte Laydie? Well, it’s true. I sold it to that music store. The only thing is, you didn’t have to call me a jerk!’ So I got my banjo back and wrote a song about it called ‘Whyte Laydie.’”

Today, Hellman is in a bluegrass band called the Wronglers, of which he is quite proud, although of his own talents he is exceedingly self-effacing. They will be taking the Porch stage at 11am on Saturday of this year’s festival. The Wronglers, made up of Hellmen (banjo, vocals), his wife Chris (vocals), Colleen Browne (bass, vocals), Nate Levine (guitar), B. Martin (mandolin), and K. Martin (fiddle), met a few years back when they were all taking lessons from the same teacher, who suggested they meet and play together. It was instant chemistry. Says Hellman, laughing, “We even have a mantra: ‘Simple tunes played by complicated people.’”

When I ask him if he plays any other instruments, he scoffs and says, “I’m not a good enough musician, and I’m old enough that if I can become a mediocre banjo player, that’s all I want.” When I point out they are in fact playing big stages, he laughs and says, “I understand, but that’s probably for the wrong reasons. Don’t you want to talk about the festival? Isn’t this just drudgery for you?”

I insist I am indeed interested in his work as a musician, and he responds. “Well, it’s really been fun, because at my age, everything is new to me, it’s like I was 10 years old or something.”

I inquire if he thinks he’ll be sharing the stage with any other artists this year, or if he can clue me in on any surprises or guest appearances. Hellman says, “I’m going to sit in with Earl Scruggs, and probably Ron Thomason and Dry Branch Fire Squad and he with us, if I’m lucky. And I want Jimmie Dale Gilmore to sit in on a song of his we do called ‘Deep Elem.’… I think there’s a pretty good chance that Robert Plant is going to fly in, like he did last year, and just sit in with everybody. That’s the thing I love the most about the festival. These great names come in, Emmylou Harris and everyone, and they play with all kinds of other people, and it becomes sort of a… party.”

A party that is 10 years strong and fast becoming a live music institution here in the Bay Area. Hellman, who is part owner of Slim’s and Great American Music Hall, recruited club booker/manager Dawn Holliday and her staff way back in 2001 to run the show, and it’s been a harmonious relationship ever since. “That was blind luck that we got them [to run it] because they are just sensational. Back then, none of us had the foggiest notion… I said, ‘Do you think anyone is going to show up?’ [The first year] was in the park, where the Banjo Stage is, and it was two days, and we called it ‘Strictly Bluegrass,’ because Emmylou, who agreed to come, was not playing bluegrass; I thought if I called it Strictly Bluegrass she’d put together the Nash Ramblers again. So after the second year we started calling it Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and by then we had a pretty good diversity of musicians. I think ‘Hardly’ is more prevalent than ‘Strictly’ now.”

I ask if he ever considered throwing the festival elsewhere, and Hellman says, “Well, at one point the city administration was being pretty bureaucratic, and so I threatened to move it to Oakland, but they said, ‘No, no, we love you guys, this is just normal city practices,’ and in the ensuing eight years, the city’s been wonderful, just really great.”

As to my inquiry of what kind of pushback they’ve received in terms of permits and things, Hellman hesitates, then says, “Well, eh… various departments at some point… there are some things that are hard, like the bicycle question. I mean, there are tens of thousands of bicycles, and the bicycle coalition has been great, but there are just an awful lot of bicycles, and when people are chaining them up in trees… And so that’s a perennial complaint. And a couple of the artists’ language—I always get emails from parents or letters saying ‘How could you allow someone to use this language in front of my children?’”

I express my disgust for trifling, annoying parents, and Hellman continues, saying, “Maybe there’s something else they could do with their time for that hour. Your poor children’s tender ears. They’re going to hear much worse stuff than this. But the city’s been wonderful, and we do this thing Friday morning where we bus in all the Middle Schoolers in San Francisco for a free concert, and they love it. We have five or six thousand kids there. And we have very, very traditional bluegrass there; MC Hammer is the performer. He really gets the kids going.”

I would think, for someone who clearly has such an affinity and passion for throwing big musical events, he’s probably considered pursuing other similar projects. Hellman, after first expressing this is not, in fact, the case, retracts that and admits, “Well… It’s crossed my mind. I’ve done a couple benefits; I’ve done two or three other benefits for KWMR out at my barn in Bolinas. We had Robert Earl Keen and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Steve Earle. You can imagine how Steve Earle went over in Bolinas. It was the biggest love fest you’ve ever seen in your life.”

When I ask Hellman if he has a favorite or most notable moment from the festival of year’s past that he’d like to share, after a long pause, he answers. “Hmm. No, there’s always, I mean every year there’s something that just blows my mind, leaving aside the performances. Sitting there at sunset on Sunday listening to Emmylou Harris has got to be emotionally one of the more poignant events of my life. But just stuff like, two or three years ago, I was listening to Emmy, and I was sitting there next to this woman who looks absolutely like an outer Broadway matron, dressed very, very upscale. And she’s sitting on the lawn, and I’m sitting next to her, and we started talking like everyone in the festival starts talking to each other, and I said ‘Boy, is there a strong smell of pot.’ And she said, ‘Want some?’”

Though I didn’t ask him whether or not he chose to imbibe, we shared our appreciation for how overtly tolerant San Francisco is, and Hellman continued. “Ya know, there are episodes like that. I love old banjos, as I told you about my Whyte Laydie, but at the festival everybody in the world it seems like, is trying to sell me something. Either a band—‘you gotta listen to our CD’—or if it’s beanies with propellers on them, or just something. And so I’m dodging and darting. My wife came up to me, I guess it was two or three years ago, and said ‘Warren, there’s a gentleman outside in the friends and family area who would like to show you his banjos.’ I thought, ‘Oh Christ.’ So I walk out and there’s this gentleman sitting there on the ground and he’s got three banjos. He said, ‘I understand you like old banjos, I’d like to show you some.’ And I said, ‘What, you trying to sell them?’ And he said, ‘No, I just want to show them to you.’ So you have to take that with a grain of salt. And he opens the first two, and they’re really beautiful. And he said, ‘But I understand you like Whyte Laydies. Well, I’d like to give you this one.’ I said, ‘Are you crazy!? That’s like a 3,500 dollar instrument!’ He said, ‘No, no, for what you’ve done for the festival, I’m giving you this banjo.’ And I, I just burst into tears!”

Hellman shows me the banjo, throwing in, of course, a requisite joke. “So I have three Whyte Laydies now, not including my wife and daughters.”

I ask at this point if it ever crossed his mind to charge money for tickets. Hellman responds with a resounding, “No.

“We don’t have any corporate sponsors; we don’t have anything given away; we don’t let a clothing company give away… I mean, we’ll buy [the artists] something some years; we bought everyone underwear that says “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass” on them once. And that ribbon on the lamp over there, we gave to each of the bands last year. But nobody gets to advertise, and it’s a struggle, because all kinds of not-for-profits, say, ‘Gee, can’t we just set up a booth at your festival?’ And we sorta rejected that; we allow the California Bluegrass Association to have one, because that seems to be fairly connected, and I think there may be one or two others, but they are all related.”

Hellman is pretty clear that he has nothing to do with the booking of Hardly Strictly. When people ask him, he’ll pull from his pocket a customized business card with Holliday’s booking info for GAMH and Slim’s on it and ask the inquiring mind to turn it over. On the back in big, bold, black letters, it says, “Warren has no authority.”

He is, however, pretty well-versed in who most of the bands are that are slated to perform. And as a musician who’s taken to spending some time on the road himself, he is exposed to many unique and disparate artists that could easily fit into the Hardly Strictly billing. “Basically, the one thing I do contribute now that we travel a lot, is if there’s some kind of group that I think would not be that well-known and I like, I’ll bring back. There’s a band Friday afternoon at two that we found at a festival up in Colorado where we were playing called the Ebony Hillbillies, and they’re an all black band from Jamaica, Queens, who got their start busking at Grand Central Station. It’s kinda bluegrass, but it’s kinda sensational. You need to be there; they are fantastic. And we found a band a few years ago called the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers. And the reason I’m smiling is because there are about three teeth between the group of them. So anyway, that’s my part… About 90 percent of the time [Holliday] ignores me. But it’s good to have the separation.”

Of bands or artists that he’d like to see take the Hardly Strictly stage but haven’t yet, Hellman replies, “I would love to get Merle Haggard… It’s pretty disappointing that he’s never played.”

Since Hellman is so warm and eager to talk about his work, I figured it’s time to ask about the after-parties, and how I can crash them. Unfortunately, I’m shot down.

“There is one after-party, but it’s only for musicians. And I’ll tell you why you can’t crash it: The first couple of years I had a lot of friends there, and I almost got in fistfights with my friends, because it’s Saturday night and they get really drunk. And you know, we have unbelievable musicians there! So we made it strictly for musicians. And for the most part, we don’t even have their families there.”

So how does he feel the community of San Francisco lends itself to the overall experience of the festival? “I think, over the years, on the one side you now have people saying that they hate it because it’s too crowded and they’ll never go see it, and I say, ‘That’s really dumb. Forget the festival. Choose one stage and spend the day there and you’ll see at least four or five of your favorite bands, and if you don’t like the crowds don’t try to fight them from stage to stage.’ I mean, you’ll end up doing that anyways, but there are a lot of people who just go to the Rooster stage, settle in, and spend the day there, or two days there. But you know, I love the atmosphere; it’s kinda like Burning Man on steroids. People really try to get along; people are kind to each other. I think the people here really love it.”

I tell him that it’s perhaps my favorite event in San Francisco, and I think that’s the consensus among the people that go. It’s a very special and immensely generous gift that he’s given an entire community of people, and that’s quite a lofty legacy. Hellman replies, “I can’t decide if it’s just a lovely thing to do or if it’s the world’s most selfish gift. Maybe a little of both. But to be able to do this, to be in a position to be able to do it—the contrast I always draw is, would you rather own a Cezanne or put on a festival? And in my mind, maybe because my taste level is so low, you know it’s not even close. To be able to give this to three-quarters of a million people other than just something that’s in my house and is something I look at every night… It’s fun to give. I mean, I’ll be in an airport some place and see some guy wearing a Hardly Strictly t-shirt.

“The things that happen like that… I was driving back from Stinson one evening, and there was this young woman out there hitchhiking. And so I stopped, and I said, ‘Are you an axe murderer or something?’ And she said, ‘No, are you?’ And I said, ‘No. Well, jump in.’ And I was listening to classical music on the radio, and she said, ‘Oh, you like classical music? What you really ought to see, there’s this unbelievably wonderful festival…’ And I said—and this shows how self-centered I really am—I said, ‘Do you know who puts on that festival? Me!’

“So those are the things. I ran over a curb going over to Berkeley a couple weeks ago and flattened three of the tires on my car. And I was standing there waiting for Triple A and this guy comes up and said, ‘Are you the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass guy?’ And I said ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘My whole year revolves around that.’ And how can you not be sorta vain abut that? I’m just as thankful to them for coming and hanging out.”

[The Vault bids farewell to Warren Hellman, founder of San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

[Wayne Kramer, MC5, Detroit and Metal is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

Michelle Kath Sinclair’s documentary “In Search of Terry”  is being funded via KickStarter, a funding platform for artists to be able to develop creative projects without a major corporate entity. Find out more here.

Searching For Terry

We wish her and the producers much success with this project and look forward to the film she is creating.

[Chicago’s Terry Kath is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

[Tom Waits is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

And our friend Bess Rogers has a new release as well.   Here are some samples of what you might enjoy.

Marketa Irglova:  she is best known for her part in the Swell Season and in the film Once, now the Academy Award winning singer and songwriter celebrates her first solo release: Anar.

Joe Henry is a critically acclaimed songwriter and producer, a Grammy-winner, in fact whose 12th release is available today.

Vault Sessions alumna Bess Rogers has a new independent release entitled Out of the Ocean, featuring the single Anchor- and she offers a free download of that song for a limited time at BessRogers.com

[New Releases: Marketa Irglova, Joe Henry, Bess Rogers is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

This week, Will Hoge releases his seventh record, the aptly titled “Number Seven,” via Rykodisc. The new single from the disc is actually the last track, titled “When I Get My Wings.” It weaves together an emotionally poignant story from the vantage of an old man laying his beloved wife to rest after a long and happy life together. The video debuted just last week online, view it below.

YouTube Embed: “When I Get My Wings”

Will Hoge shared with us his musical influences, read about it on the Will Hoge Playlist here, or enjoy a clip of Will discussing the story behind “When I Get My Wings” in more detail:

Will also just kicked off his “When I Get My Wings 2011 Tour” in support of Number Seven. For more information on the dates, go to his website: http://willhoge.com/wired/tour.

And to purchase Willl’s new album Number Seven online,  go here: http://bit.ly/WHitunesEW

Get to know this great musician on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/willhoge

[Will Hoge is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

Tinariwen is an ever-evolving guitar-driven project that brings together musicians: Touareg (nomadic Saharan people from multiple countries including Libya), with western musicians including members of Wilco and TV On The Radio. Take a look.

Wolfgang’s Vault is proudly filled with the history of previous musical expressions of the people of Africa reaching for their ideals. In 1980, Peter Gabriel started WOMAD, the annual music and arts festival that meant to bring World Music to the world. In 1986 U2, Gabriel and other supporters of Amnesty International created the Conspiracy of Hope tour with Bill Graham to raise awareness of the plight of the Prisoners of Conscience around the World. In 1984 and 1985 Bob Geldof championed the starvation of Ethiopia as a solvable crisis with the attention of the world in the Band Aid, and then Live Aid projects. Just last week, Bono – fresh off the worldwide U2 360 tour took to CNN to bring attention to the current starvation crisis in Somalia. It was even via music in 1984 that enough pressure was mounted in the South African effort to abolish Apartheid and Free Nelson Mandela, that the campaign succeeded.

With the August 30 release of Tinariwen’s record Tassili, the band seeks only to connect musically. The political backdrop maybe dramatic, but the Tinariwen music is a beautiful and harmonious melt of culture. And so we invite you to lend your ears to Tinariwen.  Purchase Tassili here.

[Introducing Tinariwen is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

In his career with America, and later solo, Peek contributed to so many hit songs that are indelible in the minds of millions of music fans worldwide, even if we haven’t heard those songs in a while. We take this moment to send our condolences to the Peek family, and to remember the great music he helped create, including “Ventura Highway,” “Horse With No Name,” “Sister Golden Hair Surprise,” “Tin Man,” “I Need You,” and “Lonely People.”  

A medley of performances by Peek of some of America’s hits follows:

Dan Peek’s former bandmates, Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley, who continued America since Peek left the band in 1977, wrote a tribute to Peek on their site VenturaHighway.com.    Peek’s own site, DanPeek.com simply and movingly reads: “Dan went to Heaven on July 24 2011″

You can listen to four different post-Peek America concerts at http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/america/.

Please share your memories of these songs and this great band in the comments.

[Remembering Dan Peek of the band America is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

For years, Paste Magazine has been a ground-breaking music and pop culture magazine. Their history is described here.  Earlier this year, Wolfgang’s Vault proudly added Paste Magazine’s editorial team and archive to our family of music sites.  Today, thanks in part to the support of Wolfgang’s Vault, the Paste team introduces the mPlayer: the reimagined magazine in an innovative, new and digital format.

With this introduction, the Paste team brings long-form content, Paste Samplers and interactive media to their digital magazine offerings.  Check out the first issue here.

[Paste Magazine mPlayer is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]