Musician Amy Helm broke her silence on the intra-family dispute over Levon Helm Studios, accusing her stepmother’s advisors of executing a coordinated financial shakedown.
“The hustlers who think they can manipulate her and further cash in on my father’s legacy will be exposed,” Helm, 55, said in a statement posted to social media Thursday. “Their business plan is a ‘settlement’ demand. It is extortion. I have it in writing.”
Helm didn’t name the people she described as hustlers and didn’t release the documents that she cited. She directed her accusations at Brian Parillo, who took control of the venue as chief executive officer and president at the end of May.
“The question that should be asked is: ‘Who is Brian Parillo and who is bankrolling him?,’” she wrote. “There is no ‘dispute;’ this is a shakedown.”
Helm, who hadn’t commented on the issue since a July 12 social media post and a statement to the Wall Street Journal denying allegations of financial mismanagement, said she won’t step back after she said she’d been physically locked out from the Barn property.
“Although they have told me that I am barred from the property and have changed the locks, nobody will be kicking me out of a home I co-own or separating me from my father’s legacy,” she wrote. “I carry this — my birthright, our family’s music, and his spirit in his only grandsons — everywhere I go.”
Parillo, 48, declined to discuss the mechanics of the takeover and hasn’t publicly addressed the lockout. “I’m not going to litigate the corporate process in the press, particularly while it’s part of an ongoing legal process,” he said in an email.
“The leadership change was made in accordance with the company’s governance requirements and is a matter of record. I stepped in for one reason: to keep the Barn alive,” he said. “My job now is to continue to protect Levon’s legacy, run this place with financial transparency that’s fair to our longtime staff, and keep the music going. Amy remains a 40% owner, and there’s a place for her in the Barn’s future if she wants it.”
He answered the question of who he is at length. Parillo said he met Levon Helm in 1995, became part of Levon Helm Studios at its founding in 2004, and has held an ownership stake since — before Amy Helm held any.
“I’ve been a constant presence here ever since, through the lean years, the historic Rambles, and everything in between, because I cared about this place and about Levon,” he said. “I never wanted anything from him, which is why he trusted me.”
Parillo has said separately that he is not drawing a salary until the company’s finances improve.
The turmoil at Levon Helm Studios and the questions it’s raised have generated tangible consequences. Ticket revenue has fallen. At least 13 performances have canceled or postponed shows at the venue, also known as The Barn, since Parillo was named president of LHS Inc. at the end of May.
At the same time, support for Amy Helm has been growing. At the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island this past weekend, performers sported “I’m with Amy” pins onstage while making statements backing her.
“I had well-founded suspicions that the business was not being run properly and that it may be being used for the sole benefit of Amy Helm,” Parillo said in an interview with The Overlook earlier this month. “The shareholders decided that we have to turn this business around, turn this place around, and conduct an investigation into any malfeasance.”
On July 25, the Wall Street Journal reported that “lawyers for Levon Helm Studios contend that Amy used money from the company to fund her lifestyle and personal music career.”
May 28 at the Barn
Woodstock police were dispatched to the studio at 2:12 p.m. on May 28, according to an incident report obtained by The Overlook. Parillo, the caller, said Amy Helm “began shoving him.” She told officers he had approached her aggressively and that she “placed her hands on him to stop him from moving closer.” Sandra Helm and Walter Turk, both present, “reported the same events took place,” the report says.
An audio recording Parillo played for officers “also supported the claim that Parillo may have been approaching Amy first,” according to the report, and he “admitted that he walked towards the others during the conversation” from about 30 feet away. A fourth man he named as a witness told police he was present but did not see it. No charges were filed.
The report also records what the fight was about. Amy Helm and Sandra Helm both told police “that Parillo is trying to take over the company and obtain ownership.”
The $5 Million Claim
Amy Helm described the same afternoon at greater length in a sworn affirmation filed June 4 in Ulster County Surrogate’s Court, supporting her own application to have a guardian ad litem appointed for her stepmother in Levon Helm’s estate proceedings. Parillo disputes her account of the day.
In the affirmation, Amy wrote that Sandy told her, “she was very upset because Brian’s lawyers were telling her that I had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from LHS, and she did not know what to believe.”
“All she really knows is the ‘numbers’ that the lawyers had told her,” Amy said, adding that she reminded Sandy they had jointly paid a trusted accountant to do the company’s tax returns and that Sandy’s lawyers had had the books for more than a year.
After the police left, Amy wrote, she stayed four more hours, and Sandy cried and asked her to help “undo what [she] had done.” According to the affirmation, Sandy said:
“Brian asked me to give him my 40% of Levon Helm Studios. He said he had a plan to force you to buy the company back from him for $5 million dollars, and I’d be set for life. I asked him how you’d be able to afford that, and he said that [my stepfather] would pay the money,” Amy described in the filing.
Amy’s stepfather is Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen. Parillo has denied making the proposal. Representatives for Fagen declined to comment.
Sandy, according to the filing, also said, “I thought, ‘they’ve conned me.’ I’m so gullible, they’re taking advantage of me. How do I undo this?”
In an interview with The Overlook earlier this month, Sandy Helm denied that anyone had coerced her. She did not respond to a new request for comment this week.
In the days that followed, according to the filing, Sandy told Parillo’s counsel she wanted to rescind her vote for him as president and fired her attorney, Joseph Kelly. Lawyers for both women—Jennifer Hillman for Amy and John Florsch for Sandy—scheduled a June 5 meeting to finalize the long-negotiated settlement.
According to the filing, it never happened. On June 1, Amy wrote, she learned that Sandy had instead signed an agreement assigning her LHS shares to Parillo, giving him control of 60% of the voting shares.
Two Ownership Structures
The change of control at LHS Inc. didn’t affect a second entity that owns the land and the building. The nearly 18-acre property and the performance space are held by Levon’s Barn LLC, in which Amy and Sandy each own 50%, according to the June 4 filing.
Neither the documents that transferred Barbara O’Brien’s and Sandy Helm’s voting power, nor any record of how Amy Helm was removed, has been made public.
The company pays a monthly rental fee to Levon’s Barn LLC that uses the income to cover property taxes and the mortgage on the Barn, where Sandy lives. Because the two entities are conjoined, the cancellations reduce what LHS Inc. can pay in rent—the income the LLC relies on to service the mortgage on Sandy’s home.
“The issues have so much to do with identity and your place in the world. They quickly escalate and people become positional, and they resort to strategies that are more likely to be based on power,” said Doug Baumoel, founding partner of Continuity Family Business Consulting, a Massachusetts firm specializing in conflict within family enterprises.
Sandy Helm’s Finances
While the venue’s ticketing and event revenues reached a post-Levon high of more than $1.6 million between 2022 and 2024, according to the Wall Street Journal, Sandy Helm, Levon’s wife of 31 years, said she was living on “a couple grand a month” in social security.
Yet the strain Sandy described shouldn’t be dismissed, Baumoel said.
“If she’s living hand to mouth, that’s a problem,” he said. “That’s a problem for Amy. One of the things a family needs to do for each other is care for each other.”
In an interview with The Overlook earlier this month, Sandy explained that she first grew concerned about financial malfeasance in the summer of 2023 when she noticed the venue had surpassed $1 million in revenue, yet LHS’s ledger remained deep in the red.
“I didn’t see where that money went back into the studio,” Sandy said.
Amy Helm has denied all allegations of financial misconduct. In her June 4 court-filed affirmation, Amy called the accusations a “false narrative” pushed by Parillo’s lawyers to confuse her stepmother. Parillo has denied this characterization.
Levon Helm died in April 2012 without signing a will. His 80% stake in LHS Inc. was divided equally between his widow and his daughter, leaving Sandy and Amy Helm with 40% each alongside two 10% blocks held by Parillo, a co-founder, and Barbara O’Brien, Levon’s longtime manager.
That leaves O’Brien’s 10% as the block that decides control—a position Baumoel said carries more weight than she may realize.
“Barbara could throw this whole thing into a 50-50 fight,” he said. “She actually has a lot of power.”
Reached by phone, O’Brien said, “This is private, personal, and should never have gone public.”
The Estate Case
In June 2025, Surrogate’s Court Judge Sara W. McGinty suspended Sandy’s status as administrator of Levon’s estate. Amy’s attorneys had alleged in a filing that Sandy deposited at least $50,000 in estate assets into her personal bank account through more than 100 small checks, and that roughly $100,000 in additional transfers from the estate account to her personal account remain unexplained.
This month, acting on an application Amy filed, the court named attorney Jason Kovacs as guardian ad litem, designating Sandy an “incapacitated person” for the scope of the estate lawsuit.
“She has not been declared incapacitated by a court of law,” Kovacs said. “My role is strictly to protect her interests in this specific estate proceeding.”
“It hasn’t determined anything,” said Patricia Annino, an estate planning attorney and partner at the law firm Rimon. “A guardian ad litem is not a guardian.”
Baumoel noted a limit to what the appointment establishes. A finding tied to Sandy’s role as administrator “doesn’t necessarily translate to her being incompetent to make decisions about her ownership and her voting rights,” he said.
A “Letter of Intent to Settle,” signed by both women on Sept. 15, 2025, collapsed. It relied on appointing a corporate trustee to manage the estate’s royalties, which Annino called implausible.
“A corporate fiduciary makes money off assets under management,” she said. “This is not an asset under management case. This is stewardship of an artist’s legacy and an ongoing business that is a completely different animal. You’ve got years of jumbled finances. What corporate trustee is going to walk into this? Nobody.”
That both women had already resolved every legal question, Annino said, is evidence the case isn’t fundamentally a legal one.
“Once you hammered out all of the legal points, you should be two weeks later signing an agreement,” she said. “Somebody doesn’t want to conclude this case.”
Fourteen years is far outside the norm. Aretha Franklin also died without a formal will; her estate took roughly five years to resolve. Still, even a routine estate cannot close in under two years, Annino said, because federal estate tax returns are due nine months after death and creditors have a full year to file claims. This one involves royalties, an operating business, and a legacy to steward.
“I have personally seen cases that are not famous where people have come to me with a duration like this, and I won’t go near the case,” she said. “If you can’t solve it that many years later and competent people have been involved, then you know it’s not a legal case.”
“You can’t litigate love,” she added. “So why are you trying?”
The conflict, she said, “has morphed from an estate administration fight to a governance fight. They might not even know that.”
Annino said Levon Helm, the person absent from the fight, is the one paying for it.”To have his reputation tarnished in this way by a fight which seems to be stupid is tragic,” she said. “Why are they so caught up in their own drama that they have forgotten what this man did?”
What Could Come Next
New York law lets shareholders sue for corporate dissolution, which could force the property into liquidation.
In the worst case, “the venue suffers and eventually goes out of business,” Baumoel said.
Trying to manage the conflict dispute by dispute, he said, is like playing Whack-a-Mole. And a negotiated settlement, he said, would not be enough on its own.
“This is deeper than a dispute. This is identity-based conflict,” Baumoel said. “You need to repair these relationships. You can’t just negotiate them out of it.”
He said three structural changes could provide a positive path forward.
Transition to a 501(c)(3) public-benefit foundation: LHS Inc. is a for-profit C-corp. Turning it into a nonprofit would merge royalty streams, venue operations, and the physical Barn under a single tax-exempt umbrella. Baumoel said the venue may be “more sustainable as a not-for-profit than a for-profit enterprise.”
Establish an independent governance board: The nonprofit would be governed by a neutral board. Sandy and Amy would hold permanent seats, but independent music industry professionals and community members would hold tie-breaking votes. “Sandra’s going to eventually age out. Amy’s going to age out. Brian’s going to age out,” Baumoel said. “If you want this to last to the next generation, you’ve got to put in governance anyway.”
Guarantee Sandy’s financial security: The foundation would underwrite her long-term income and housing.
None of it works, Baumoel said, without the two women in the same room. “They don’t have to love each other, but they have to have a functional relationship,” he said. “Because that’s his legacy.”
Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.
John W. Barry is a reporter for The Overlook. Reach him at john@theoverlooknews.com.
