Grateful Web recently had a humbling opportunity to speak with Amy Helm, mandolinist, singer/songwriter, and bandleader of The Handsome Strangers. She also cofounded Midnight Ramble Band, whose roots began with her father the late and great Levon Helm, an Arkansan who met a gifted group of Canadian musicians and inevitably formed The Band in 1964.

The United States hosted its first Winter Olympics in 1932. Lake Placid was the site for this first of only four visits the winter games have made to the states. Two of them have been in this cozy little village in the Northeast corner of New York. At the 1932 games, the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team battled a far superior Canadian team for a hard earned silver medal under the extended indoor arch known as the Jack Shea Arena, the first indoor hockey facility used in the Olympics since 1920.