Larry Campbell is a Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, producer, and film and television composer. He is a cherished and prolific sideman whose dozens of credits include being the music director for the Levon Helm Band and Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour from 1997 to 2004. He has appeared live and in the studio playing guitar, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, pedal steel, dobro -- and many other stringed instruments -- with artists ranging from Mavis Staples and Elvis Costello, to Cyndi Lauper, the Black Crowes, and Emmylou Harris. His primary career focus is a duo with spouse Teresa Williams. Their acclaimed self-titled debut appeared in 2015 and was followed by Contraband Love in 2017. The couple's personal and professional lives together made them perfect subjects for Mark Moskowitz's 2020 documentary television series It Was the Music. Campbell Williams issued Live at Levon's! in 2023.

Campbell was born in New York in 1955 and benefited from his parents' eclectic record collection. He claims that seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 was a life-changing experience. While playing baseball in 1966, he saw another young man walk on to the field with a guitar to play Beatles songs. He went home, grabbed his father's old guitar, and his vocational choice was made. Campbell began learning songs not only by the Fab Four and the Rolling Stones, but also by American folk, blues, and country masters such as Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, the Rev. Gary Davis, and Doc Watson. He also began to teach himself to play other stringed instruments.

Campbell played with a country-rock band in high school called Cottonmouth, and after graduating at 16, he moved to Los Angeles. After two years playing one-off club and talent nights with his band, he secured a gig with obscure country singer Ben Marney, who had a deal with Playboy Records. Campbell had learned fiddle and pedal steel by this time, and played mandolin and banjo well. The group secured a long club engagement in Mississippi, where Campbell remained for more than a year before returning to New York. While visiting Woodstock, he encountered folk musicians Happy Artie Traum, who would become friends as well as mentors; he played with their Woodstock Mountain Revue.

Campbell moved back to New York City when the first commercial country wave -- in the wake of the 1980 film Urban Cowboy -- began to take hold. Because of his diverse skills, he got a steady gig in the house band at the Lone Star Cafe, backing musicians such as Kinky Friedman, Doug Sahm, Buddy Miller, Willie Nelson, and more. In 1986, he first crossed paths with future spouse and musical partner Teresa Williams, a country and R&B singer and stage actress who was playing a gig at The Bottom Line. After hearing him play pedal steel, she hired him for her backing band. The pair married two years later. For years they appeared together and separately with other artists. In fact, it would be almost three decades before they headlined their first recording together. Campbell also began doing session work on television soundtracks and TV commercials. His career in this regard took off, and he began his long run of sideman gigs, playing on records by everyone from Shawn Colvin and the Backstreet Boys to Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky. He even played in the pit band for The Will Rogers Follies on Broadway.

After being recommended by bassist Tony Garnier, Campbell joined Bob Dylan's band in 1997, playing on the songwriter's celebrated Time Out of Mind album. After touring with Dylan for nearly eight years as music director, Campbell left the band and recorded his first solo album, Rooftops, in 2005 -- the same year he contributed to the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack. He toured with Phil Lesh Friends, Hot Tuna, and many others. After the couple relocated from New York City to their adopted home in Woodstock, New York, he and Williams began working with Levon Helm.

In 2007, Campbell recorded a series of Rev. Gary Davis covers with 82-year-old vocalist Marie Knight titled Let Us Get Together. He also produced, co-arranged, and with Williams played on Helm's Dirt Farmer and its follow-up Electric Dirt (both won Grammys), as well as the live Ramble at the Ryman. In addition, Campbell won the Americana Music Association's Lifetime Achievement Award that year. In 2008 and 2009, he contributed to the PBS series Lomax: The Hound of Music.

Campbell continued to direct Helm's band at the famed Midnight Ramble sessions in Woodstock until the drummer's death in 2012. He toured with Little Feat later in the year. In 2015, Campbell contributed to Amy Helm's debut album, Didn't It Rain, even as he and Williams issued their self-titled debut on Minnesota's Red House Records. The couple toured in support of the recording, and their performances won rave reviews internationally. Two years later, they returned with their second collaboration, Contraband Love. Included on the latter was a cover of rockabilly great Carl Perkins' "Turn Around" that featured Levon Helm in one of his final sessions. The road beckoned the duo, and they hit it hard playing the festival circuit across the U.S. and Europe.

In 2018, documentary filmmaker and devoted music fan Mark Moskowitz saw the couple perform in a small club. He was impressed, not only by their performance but by their repertoire, which consists of originals and iconic covers of vintage country, folk, pop, and rock tunes from the 1950s through the early '70s. He approached the duo about creating a documentary series on their creative life and process. It aired in ten episodes in 2020 as It Was the Music. In addition, the Italian label Route 61 Music released a 2018 concert at the Chiari Rock and Blues Festival as Live from the Archives, Vol. 1, the same year.

In 2019, after months of touring in support of Contraband Love for Royal Potato Family, Campbell Williams returned to Woodstock, New York, to celebrate with two sold-out performances on September 20 and 21 at Levon Helm Studios. The shows were multi-tracked and released as Live at Levon's! in February 2023. The kinetic 12-track set found the couple backed by a crack band offering fan favorites, previously unreleased songs, and covers. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi