Walton Arts Center’s Alexander Gallery at the Porter Art Warehouse is honoring an Arkansas native and rock and roll legend with a new exhibition curated by the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame in Boston. This Wheel’s Still On Fire: The Legacy of Levon Helm is open in Fayetteville through September 6, and now, through a new collaboration with a local history organization, visitors can learn even more about the Arkansas native.
Alexander Gallery collaborated with The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History to create This Wheel’s Still On Fire: The Levon Helm Oral History Project featuring highlights from the Pryor Center’s extensive collection of interviews with those Arkansans who knew, worked with and admired Helm. Filmed by longtime Pryor Center associate director Scott Lunsford alongside Trey Marley and Will Gisler, these recordings include a film of the concert as well as interviews with members of the Levon Helm Band and several of Helm’s close family and friends. These recordings showcase Helm’s magnetism as a performer as well as his enduring connections to Arkansas through family, friends and the state’s unique musical tradition.
Interviews feature notable Arkansas musicians including Ronnie Hawkins, Earl and Ernie Cate, Terry Cagle, John Ware, Ron Eoff, among others. There are also interviews with people who knew Helm from his earliest days in Phillips County, Arkansas, including A.B. Thompson of Helm’s hometown of Turkey Scratch; Anna Lee Amsden, immortalized as “Miss Anna Lee” from “The Weight;” Bubba Sullivan, the longtime organizer of the King Biscuit Blues Festival; and Morse U. Gist, owner of the music store in Helena that Helm frequented as a young man.
The highlight of this collection is a series of videos from a 2005 concert of the Levon Helm Band at the Peabody Hotel in Little Rock. Helm had lost his singing voice after being diagnosed with throat cancer in the late 1990s, but by 2005 he had recovered it and begun a limited touring schedule with his namesake band, made up of musicians based in and around Levon’s adopted hometown of Woodstock, New York. This iteration of the band featured Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Erik Lawrence, Little Sammy Davis and Steven Bernstein.
Links to the new oral history project have incorporated into the exhibition on site and the exhibition homepage online. These additional interviews and performances allow patrons to continue learning about Helm even after they leave the exhibition.
The Alexander Gallery at the Porter Art Warehouse is located at 212 N. West Ave. It is open Monday through Saturday 11 am-2 pm and Thursday through Saturday 5-8 pm.
Media support for this exhibition is provided by Experience Fayetteville. Lead support provided by Barbara Tyson in memory of Randal Tyson & Don Tyson who were friends and great fans of Levon Helm.
Support for Walton Arts Center is provided, in part, by the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Walton Arts Center is Arkansas’ largest and busiest performing arts presenter. Each year more than 215,000 people from Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma and beyond attend more than 300 public events at Walton Arts Center, including performances, rehearsals, community gatherings, receptions, weddings and more. Approximately 32,000 students and teachers participate annually in arts learning programs at Walton Arts Center, and almost 250 volunteers donate 28,000 hours of time each year to its operations. Walton Arts Center presents entertainers and artists from around the world including Broadway musicals, renowned dance companies, international artists, up-and-coming jazz musicians and more. As a non-profit organization, Walton Arts Center enjoys the generous support of public sector funding, corporate sponsorship and private donors, allowing audience members to enjoy world-class performances at a great price. To learn more about Walton Arts Center, visit www.waltonartscenter.org.
