Also this issue: Aimless by Design Indie elders Yo La Tengo finally get their day in the Sun. -Sam Adams Prcss of Elimination Estranged rock band converges on Philly and drops the vowels. -Maura Johnston Klasik Sundayz -Ainé Ardron-Doley The Postal Service -Paul Burress Dave Holland Quintet -Kyle Parker Assemblage 23 -Helen Thompson Kevin Burke -Mary Armstrong Evgeny Kissin -Peter Burwasser

April 17-23, 2003

musicpicks

Levon Helm & The Barn Burners

More than 40 years after a teenage Levon Helm got his musical start backing up rockabilly musician (and fellow Arkansas native) Ronnie Hawkins, the 60-year-old founding member of The Band has a new band to plug: The Barn Burners. While The Band's sound was steeped in mystique and Americana (interesting, since Helm was the only American) and ran counter to the so-called counterculture, The Barn Burners are blatantly up front about their musical passion -- Delta blues -- and influences: Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Ray Charles.

Don't expect The Burn Burners to try any of The Band's still-potent gems; Helm has said he finds them a bit too much of a downer these days. And don't expect him to sing, either. Since battling throat cancer a few years back, he's turned over those duties to harmonica player Chris O'Leary and sometime member Amy Helm, his keyboardist daughter.

Helm, whose modest success in films includes his performance as Loretta Lynn's dad in Coal Miner's Daughter, has had his share of loss in recent years, including the death of Band bassist/singer Rick Danko, but he has indeed gotten his rewards, most recently as part of the all-star "Salute to the Blues" at Radio City Music Hall. --Nicole Pensiero

Fri., April 18, 9 p.m., $18-$20, with The Luck Brothers, The North Star, 27th and Poplar sts., 215-684-0808.

—Nicole Pensiero