© Anthony Mulcahy

Her voice, first. Amy Helm has a voice of a thousand ways, twists and turns, ascensions and intentions. It soars, flays, pleads, celebrates, guides, heals, teaches, and above all Amy Helm’s voice makes you feel. Her own emotion enables and encourages the lids and layers to come off your own, as you listen to her on a recording, or in performance. This alone would be enough; but Helm has been much more than a singer for a long time. After decades of practicing and perfecting her arts, Helm has shaped herself into a unique force, personality, and woman in the world of music—and the far wider world of all who love music.

Amy Helm’s early days in ensembles, and learning from many artists, engendered in her two vast strengths: her capabilities as a performer, and her power as a collaborator and teacher. The blended talents of her New York City-based band Ollabelle, formed in 2001, show just how broad and deep Helm’s musical knowledge and abilities go.

Amy’s first solo albums, Didn’t It Rain (2015) and This Too Shall Light (2018), are a diptych, showing two views of a remarkable woman and what she can do. Her most recent release, What The Flood Leaves Behind (2021) combines the strengths fostered in Helm in the Hudson Valley, and by musicians she has known and performed with for decades, with her own increasingly formidable writing and singing.

Catch her when you can, because Amy Helm is in constant motion these days. Writing and recording new songs, on the road again, organizing the annual Dirt Farmer music festival, and curating at Levon Helm Studios a monthly series of Midnight Rambles, she is a woman of seemingly boundless energy and passions. Asked what she wants from her career now, Helm replies, “I want what I think every artist wants at our core, continued creative expression as the ultimate freedom. To hold it because it’s our calling and our birthrigh