Carry Me Home

Mavis Staples and Levon Helm have a new collaborative live album, "Carry Me Home", set to release on May 20th, 2022 The new record was recorded in Woodstock, New York, at Levon Helm Studios in the summer of 2011. The collaboration marks one of Helm’s final recordings before his death in April 2012.

“It never crossed my mind that it might be the last time we’d see each other”, said Staples of their time together during the recording. “He was so full of life and so happy that week. He was the same old Levon I’d always known, just a beautiful spirit inside and out”.

Staples is also set to perform with Amy Helm, Levon’s daughter, at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music on May 20th and at Upstate New York’s Dirt Farmer Festival on May 21st.

“My dad built The Midnight Rambles to restore his spirit, his voice, and his livelihood”, says Amy, who sang backup vocals with her father and Staples at their performance. “He’d risen back up from all that had laid him down, and to have Mavis come sing and sanctify that stage was the ultimate triumph for him”.

Opened to the public in 2004, Levon Helm Studios, which still hosts regular concerts and recording sessions, is a picturesque, rustic space with broad wooden beams and a soaring, vaulted ceiling. Helm and fellow The Band member Garth Hudson designed the room.

After the 2011 recording, Staples and Helm embraced. Remember Staples, “We hugged and hugged and hugged. I just held on to him. I didn’t know it’d be the last time, but in my heart and in my mind, Levon will always be with me because I take him everywhere I go. Yes, indeed. I can see him right now. And some sweet day, we’ll be together again”.