With love and gratitude to Levon Helm in his last days and always

Listen to Levon Helm and The Band and The Staples Singers.

After Richard was drafted into the U.S. Army in April 1969, and before he left for basic training at Fort Lewis in Washington State, he took me to Winterland in San Francisco to see The Band. We were 19 years old. We loved their music. We danced. It was one of their first performances as The Band.

From Ralph J. Gleason's review:

"Somehow, four Canadians and an Arkansas country boy ("Give us a song, Levon," I can hear them saying at some Sunday West Helena picnic) found it in themselves to express part of where all of us are at now while expressing where they are at themselves in language and metaphor that can ignite explosive trains of thought inside your head."

Listen to "Ophelia"

("Woman Dancing," chalk pastel on paper, by am, from the early 1980s)