Levon Helm remembers Sean Costello

Levon Helm was a hero and a friend to Sean Costello, the subject of last week’s CL cover story, Sean Costello, 1979-2008. During the making of the Sean Costello CD, which was released in 2005 by Artemis Records, Costello spent time some time entrenched in the singer/songwriter scene in New York where he performed with Helm’s daughter Amy in the band Ollabelle.

Costello also spent some time recording at Levon Helm Studio in Woodstock, New York. Some of that session work appeared on his self-tiled CD. The following phone interview with Helm was conducted on Friday, June 6 at 7:45 p.m.

Over the phone, Helm talks with a warm, grandfatherly rasp punctuated with a deep, Southern accent. The Memphis native’s slow, articulate tone stands out when he emphasizes every syllable in words like “thee ate er.” His personable and down home demeanor hardly come across like the air of a man who, after a 25 year hiatus, received a Grammy for his ‘07 release, Dirt Farmer.

How did you first get to know Sean Costello?

Sean had worked with my daughter Amy in the band, Ollabelle. Atlanta was Sean’s hometown, but he was also a hometown hero around Memphis. He won awards there and a lot of my friends thought he was the biggest and best thing since Stevie Ray and a lot of my friends really thought that he was going to inherit that crown. That’s the kind of music maker he was. Sean came here and did some recording with Olabelle. That’s how he and I got acquainted. He was good enough to come up here and help me do some recording of my own as well. I got to play with him on a couple of things and he even leant his voice for my recordings, when I was trying to get mine to a better singing position. He was a great singer.

Did you sing on some songs for Sean’s self-titled CD?

I tried to. It was during a time when I was trying to start singing again. We were trying to sing harmony parts for each other. Sean was a real good background singer. He was just a natural born music maker and never played a bad song yet. I haven’t had the heart to do it yet, but after a while I’m going to go downstairs and start to review some of the stuff that he did when he was up here.