Mavis Staples Announces Album With Levon Helm, Shares New Video: Watch

Carry Me Home was recorded in Woodstock, New York in 2011

Levon Helm and Mavis Staples
Levon Helm and Mavis Staples, photo by Greg McKean

Mavis Staples has announced Carry Me Home, a new album of live music recorded with the Band’s Levon Helm in Woodstock, New York in 2011. It’s due out May 20 via Anti-. Check out a performance of “You Got to Move” below.

Carry Me Home was recorded at Helm’s studio and it’s among Helm’s final recordings. The album captures the pair’s last-ever performance together, too, as Helm died in April 2012 at the age of 71.

In a statement, Staples said:

It never crossed my mind that it might be the last time we’d see each other. 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.

Last year Staples, featured prominently in Questlove’s Summer of Soul documentary, which focused on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival; Staples performed a rousing duet with her idol Mahalia Jackson. In 2020, she collaborated with Jeff Tweedy on a new song called “All in It Together” to benefit Chicago senior citizens fighting COVID-19.

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Carry Me Home:

01 This Is My Country
02 Trouble in My Mind
03 Farther Along
04 Hand Writing on the Wall
05 I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free
06 Move Along Train
07 This May Be the Last Time
08 When I Go Away
09 Wide River to Cross
10 You Got to Move
11 You Got to Serve Somebody
12 The Weight

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