Legal wrangling continues at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, where new CEO Brian Parillo recently seized control of the storied music venue from Levon Helm’s daughter, Amy Helm. But for many in the music community, Levon Helm Studios and Amy Helm are inseparable.
John Scheele met Levon Helm, the drummer and singer for The Band, in the late sixties. Scheele took some of the earliest photographs of Levon, including many at Levon Helm Studios, Levon’s home and recording studio, which later became the site of the legendary Midnight Ramble concert series.
Around the time it was being built, Scheele took a portrait of Levon and his daughter Amy. In the photograph, Levon’s in his early thirties. He's got his arm around Amy, who’s maybe five years old. They’re both looking directly into the camera. Amy has her hand over her heart.
For Scheele, the picture tells the whole story of Levon Helm Studios. "There's not two sides of this coin," he told me. "I think it's all one coin together. It's Levon on one side, and Amy on the other. You can flip it in the air. It's the Helm family, and it's a beautiful thing."
By the early 2000s, Levon had been a fixture in the Woodstock community for decades. After years of drug problems, money problems, and feuding amongst the members of The Band, Levon Helm Studios - a big wooden barn in the woods that fans refer to simply as "The Barn" - had become a kind of sanctuary for him. It was also a place that music lovers made pilgrimages to visit. People thought of it as hallowed ground.
Tyrell Lisson, a music historian and host of the long-running podcast, “The Band: A History,” remembers his first trip to The Barn. He knew Levon lived there, and he didn’t want to bother him. But Lisson had to see it. "I literally just sat on the road, kind of like a weirdo in my car," he recalled. "Just kind of letting it kind of steep a little bit."
Around this time, Levon was battling throat cancer. His crooning tenor voice was gone, and so was his money. So, he and Amy, who had her own music career by then, started a concert series at The Barn to raise money. They called it The Midnight Ramble.
Radio host Carmel Holt was working at WDST, Woodstock’s pioneering music station, back then. She remembers Amy coming by the station to promote those early Rambles. Holt was in the crowd at the Barn for some of the first shows. She gets chills when she thinks back on those nights.
"There was just like a very like roots feel about it, a comfort," she said. "A familial quality that was so real, because of the family element."
When people talk about The Midnight Ramble, they often have trouble describing it. They use words like “sacred,” “magical,” and “communion.” At least some of that is because in those early days, they were literally watching a kind of resurrection.
As Levon’s health improved, his voice started to come back.
"I just remember the feeling in the room anytime he would sing," said Holt. "The massive, like...just...that's an indescribable feeling. The level of love and support."
John Scheele, the photographer, remembers it the same way.
"Levon on stage with his daughter, you know, finding his voice again," Scheele said. "He lost his voice and found it again, literally, in the course of those performances."
At first, the Rambles were just a way to raise money. But they quickly became a sensation. Another reason to make the pilgrimage to the Barn, particularly for musicians.
Oliver Wood and his brother Chris started their band, The Wood Brothers, around the same time as those first Midnight Rambles. Today, the Wood Brothers are one of the biggest acts in Americana music.
"It's truly medicine for a lot of people," said Oliver Wood. "It has so much to do with Levon and Amy being so accepting of us from the early days."
Levon and Amy used to bring the Wood brothers up on stage to sing “The Weight,” one of The Band's signature tunes. The Helms often closed out Ramble shows by inviting guests to perform it with them.
"That's the spirit of the place, you know?" said Wood. "That's the spirit that he left there - that it's very inclusive. And I absolutely felt Amy [was] carrying on the legacy, and doing it in that same spirit."
Singer-songwriter Marco Benevento came to Woodstock in 2010, two years before Levon died. He says the Rambles changed his life.
"You could just feel the audience being filled with love, and being filled with music," said Benevento. "It almost felt like a like a church kind of vibe, where you were getting replenished, you know?"
These days, Marco also runs a recording studio in Woodstock. He built it out of the same wood Levon used for the Barn.
"I got all this rough-cut pine," he said, pointing to the studio's walls and ceiling. "Basically my whole studio smells and feels like Levon's."
Stories like that, and like Tyrell Lisson’s about traveling to Woodstock just to sit in his car across the street from The Barn - are a big part of why, for many people, the idea of a business dispute at Levon Helm Studios doesn't make much sense.
Storey Littleton is one of those people.
"I mean that's…that's her family home," said Littleton. "That was Levon's home. It's completely absurd and devastating."
Littleton has known the Helm family since she was a little girl. As she puts it, she basically grew up at the Barn, where she and her parents played in bands with both Levon and Amy.
"For me, it it feels like my family, and it feels like the deepest connection you could have to a very close community," she said. "So it's just a special, personal, sort of spiritual feeling."
Littleton said she won’t be going back to the Barn until Amy’s back in charge. "It's not The Barn without Amy," she said. "It's just a building."
Lisson agrees.
"To me, it's a travesty," Lisson said. "Amy Helm has heralded it for over a decade. And if it doesn't feel like that anymore, and it becomes another one of these soulless venues...? It's no different than a bar on a Nashville strip having some guy's name tagged on it."
Oliver Wood said he’s not going to perform at the Barn if Amy’s not running it. Neither will Marco Benevento.
"I can't detach myself," said Benevento. "I'll go back when Amy can go back."
They’re not alone. Since new CEO Brian Parillo cut Amy Helm out of running operations at Levon Helm Studios, at least ten bands have canceled shows they had scheduled there. At this year's Newport Folk Festival, artists like Mavis Staples wore buttons that said, "Team Amy."
Parillo, meanwhile, has publicly alleged that Amy Helm engaged in decades of what he calls "malfeasance," and that running Levon Helm Studios is not a "birthright."
"We respect Amy and everything she means to this place," he said in a statement. "The leadership change was made to put the venue on stable financial footing for years to come. At the end of the day, our goal is not for people to take sides. Our goal is transparency, and to preserve the legacy of Levon Helm. Amy still has a 40% stake in the Barn, and that's not changing. Ultimately, the success of the Barn benefits all parties involved."
Amy declined to comment for this story. But as shows disappear from the calendar at Levon Helm Studios, WAMC asked Holt, the former DJ at WDST, what’s at stake for the music community.
Her eyes filled with tears.
"That makes me feel like I want to cry," she said. "I mean, it's so much more than a music venue. Whatever transpired, what's indisputable is that Levon would want this to keep going, and that Amy belongs there if she wants to be there. It's her birthright. And, you know, the main thing is for the integrity of that space, that holy sanctuary, to be preserved as it was intended. That's what's going to honor Levon. Everything else doesn't matter."
In a video of Levon and Amy performing "The Weight" together at a Midnight Ramble, Levon's face is gaunt, and he's having a hard time singing. You can hear him straining as he reaches the end of a verse – struggling to find the notes he’s sung so many times.
But just as he starts to falter, Amy comes in, harmonizing with him on the chorus of a song about sharing a mysterious burden. "Take a load off, Fanny," they sing. "Take a load for free. Take a load off, Fanny. Hey…put the load right on me."
