Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams have announced their long-awaited new album, Live At Levon’s!, will be released February 3, 2023 via Royal Potato Family. The jubilant 12-track collection was recorded at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, NY on September 20 and 21, 2019 in front of an adoring hometown crowd and features a selection of previously unreleased new songs, old favorites that allow the band to stretch out plus a handful of unexpected covers.
In 2019, after a year of touring, Campbell & Williams returned to their adopted hometown in Woodstock, NY to celebrate with a performance at Levon Helm Studios, a historic and dual-purposed recording studio and live music venue founded by the legendary Levon Helm. It’s a space with which the duo were intimately familiar and at ease in having played countless shows there with the Midnight Ramble Band, an outfit fronted by Helm with whom Campbell served as a bandleader for over a decade. Joining Campbell and Williams are some longtime friends and stellar musicians: Jesse Murphy—a gifted improviser who also provides a rock-solid foundation—appears on bass, tuba and harmony vocals. Justin Guip has held the drummer’s chair with Campbell and Williams since their earliest shows and has recorded and mixed all their albums since their self-titled debut. Special guest, Levon Helm alumnus, Brian Mitchell rounds out the group on keyboards, accordion and harmonica.
Larry, Teresa and their band have a reputation for a high level of musicality that’s in full display on Live at Levon’s! with warmth, joy and spontaneity jumping out of the album’s grooves. No matter which genre they’re swimming in, this band knows how to rock, swing and shred while always serving the song first. Campbell, a world class guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, has revealed himself as a songwriting force, while Williams’ vocal performances offer up her trademark fragility and ferocity, as she interprets each lyric with emotional nuance and raw honesty.
The recording captured that night and its subsequent album release to follow was intended to be the cornerstone for big plans that had been made for the following year. The pandemic of course changed everything, globally and close to home. After performing at New York City’s Beacon Theatre, Campbell woke up on March 16, 2020 in Woodstock coughing and feverish. Following a diagnosis of Covid, he was left to quarantine alone while Williams was stuck quarantined and worrying in New York City. A couple of harrowing weeks later, Larry’s fever broke.
Fast forward to Autumn 2022. Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams are once again performing ‘live and in person’ and the plans for 2020 have been re-imagined for 2023. They’ll tour extensively next year to support Live at Levon’s!, which serves as a welcome reminder of the duo’s powerful live shows.
The celebrated husband and wife duo share the album’s first single “Angel Of Darkness” a song co-written by Campbell and Hot Tuna’s Jorma Kaukonen.
