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What Levon Helm Meant to Woodstock

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If you go to the Woodstock the way I go, crossing the Hudson and heading west, before you get into town you'll pass a sign on the side of the road. This particular sign celebrates the most recent album by Levon Helm, Electric Dirt, its cover writ large on a blown-up canvas. But, really, the sign celebrates Levon himself, the Midnight Rambles he throws that feature musicians from all over the Hudson Valley, if not the world, and the link these things serve to connect the Woodstock today to the past that imbues its name with something resembling importance.

Though they may have rejected the festival that came to bear their name, the people of Woodstock seem today to try and grapple onto whatever is left. And besides the few be-dreadlocked hitchhikers that pass through every summer, you'd have trouble finding anything like that at all. Which is not to disparage the town, as it's home to a beautiful monastery, the best radio station in the valley and a hell of a taco place. But as you climb on your way up to Overlook Mountain, you pass larger and larger homes, illustrations of the bizarre economic bipolarity of the Catskills. Needless to say, these homes were not built on "peace, love and music", though you could probably own one purely by selling Woodstock 40th anniversary t-shirts.

Because as the original festival has blown up to mythical proportions in the popular imagination, the town has tried to attach some of that image to itself. I doubt an up-and-coming band could rent a house and record their Music From Big Pink in the Woodstock of today; they would never be able to afford it.

And that is where Helm comes in. While I've never been to one of his midnight rambles (tickets run over 100 dollars), I've heard they're amazingly fun, roping in local acts like the Felice Brothers and Elvis Perkins, who cut their teeth performing at Woodstock venues like the Colony Café, to kick and scream for hours on end. Sure, in some sense Helm could be considered an old-timer, but he's still doing it. And that is important for the town, as he isn't merely some relic to be sold a store next to a bunch of tie-dye shirts and demo cds of bands trying to exactly replicate the "Woodstock '69" sound. In a local industry that seems to thrive purely on preservation-based nostalgia, Levon is one of the few living things there.

Well, was. Last week, it was announced that he was in the "final stages of his battle with cancer." And just today, he died. Immediately, my mind jumped to the sign. While I've never met Helm, I can see the canvas immediately, a living monument to someone who never had to give it up. In a sense, I guess, it's the closest I'll ever get to the connection this community can feel for an esteemed member like Helm.

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If this sounds like a rant, please don't take it that way. It's just the best way I can think to express the tenuous grip we hold on the past, especially if it's all that keeps us from drifting into absolute anonymity.

I originally wrote this piece in Levon's final days. I had no clue just how serious his battle was, and, stupidly, held onto a tiny strand of hope that he'd make it through. But cancer is a bastard of a disease, and it doesn't particularly like to give up. The point of this piece was, originally, to wonder what Woodstock would do, losing bit by bit what makes it unique. But in his death, I think it makes sense to expand it: What do we do now? Losing a piece of our history, what makes us us, where do we go? I can't say I have satisfactory answers to any of those questions. So I open it up to you: What can we do in Levon's wake that builds on everything he did, every contribution that made him, and by extension the rest of us, so unique?

Rest in peace, Levon.

Singer Levon Helm Dead at 71


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