Longtime readers know my affinity for The Band. I recently picked up the latest album from The Band's drummer/singer Levon Helm, Dirt Farmer. It won the 2008 Grammy for Traditional Folk Album. And that's an apt description. It's folkier and countrier than most of The Band's work, but a lot of the group's tunes, like "Ophelia" or "Up On Cripple Creek," for example, would fit right in. Actually, if the genre were not already taken, you could call this "easy listening," because it's darn easy on the ears.

Helm's voice has always been ragged and twangy. The Arkansas gravel in his voice lent a flinty emotion to such classics as "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," and later to acting gigs like the narrator/crewman in The Right Stuff. But a battle with throat cancer robbed Levon of his voice for a few years. When it came back, it was thinner and even more raspy. Even when he couldn't talk, Helm played drums in "midnight rambles" on his Woodstock farm. But he seems to have emerged from his silence to produce some of his best singing in years.

The video for my favorite song on the album, "Poor Old Dirt Farmer," is below, and that's where I got the title of this post. It's about the Job-like travails of a farmer, and it offers a few smiles from scenes where things are so bad all you can do is laugh. Here is a live performance of "Got Me a Woman," a song (like "Rag Mama Rag," for example) about a woman who is worth all the exasperation she causes. Here is "The Mountain," a Steve Earle number Helm makes his own. The wail of the violin is a nice complement to Levon's haunting vocal. Other favorites for me are "The Girl I Left Behind" and "Wide River to Cross." You can hear snippets of those, and the rest of the songs on Dirt Farmer, here.

I'm always a little wary of new albums from old favorite bands. The results seems to be either awful attempts to chart a new course, or a wan attempt to re-capture old glories. But Levon delivers a knockout with Dirt Farmer. It's the best album by anyone involved with The Band since the original lineup's farewell, The Last Waltz. It's not the equal of Music From Big Pink or The Band (precious few albums are), but it's a worthy companion. Bottom line: If you like The Band, you'll like Dirt Farmer.

I was in a restaurant tonight, and the drink dispenser had a sign on it reading "Out the service."

That's kind of how I'm feeling, too. My computer is in the hottest room in my house, and with this heat wave, I'm thinking that sweating and blogging don't work well together. I'll check in when it drops from "boil" to "simmer."

In the meantime, enjoy this.