I wrote something about his death for Spinner.com back when he passed, but it wasn't really finished. I updated it, but not on their site. So, I've got the full text in the quote below if anyone wants to read it. Sorry if it's so long.
For Levon Helm
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 threw that featured musicians from all over the Hudson Valley, if not the world, and the link these things served to connect the Woodstock of today with the past that imbues the town’s 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 Music From Big Pink in the Woodstock of today; they would never be able to afford it.
And that is where Helm came in. While I never was able to make it to one of his midnight rambles (tickets ran over 100 dollars), I heard they were 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 have been considered an old-timer, but he was still doing it. And that was so important for the town, as he wasn’t merely some relic to be sold in a store next to a bunch of tie-dye shirts. In a local industry that seems to thrive purely on preservation-based nostalgia, Levon was one of the few living things there.
In mid April, it was announced on Helm’s website that he was in the “final stages of his battle with cancer.” And just two days later, he died. Upon hearing about his death, my mind jumped to the sign. While I 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 felt for an esteemed member like Helm.
I grew up in the Hudson Valley, and even when I’m away I realize that my heart is here. And people like Levon help me find my grounding. I’m clearly not the only one: on April 26th, thousands of people drove to Woodstock and boarded buses bound for Helm’s farm, merely to say their respects to a man they knew best through record players or the glare of stage lights. To them, he was hardly a man, even in death; the truth is, Helm is as much a legend as ever.
And the Hudson Valley is full of legends, even if they seem hidden from us that spend every day here. From Rip Van Winkle to Spook Rock, we live among magic both fantastical and actual, and many of these stories find a way of living far past our infatuation with them, becoming as integral to the place as the peaks and streams, fields and forests. In other words, these legends ground us in the place where we live. Woodstock, arguably, sells itself wholly on the legends that people the world over associate with it. In Levon, they at least had living proof, but truthfully, even with his passing we’ve not lost him. Because here legends get their roots in deep, and grow strong and tall until their leaves are as much a part of the sky as the stars. In other words, they live.
So in losing one of its last living connections, it may seem like Woodstock will drift back into anonymity, but I find that doubtful. Their job is to draw so firmly on the past that it comes back to life again, at least in the minds of tourists. It helps when that past lives in the present with them, but a legend will do in a pinch. And in a place where legends compose so much of our identity and being, that’s not such a bad thing.
He’s far away from us now, but he’ll never truly be gone. RIP Levon.