Question:
Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (May 26, 1940 - April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the vocalists for The Band. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Helm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter, as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff, and as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter. In 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer, which caused him to lose his singing voice.
Born in Elaine, Arkansas, Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Nell and Diamond Helm, were cotton farmers and great lovers of music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided then to become a musician. Arkansas in the 1940s and 50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--that, when merged, later became known as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw traveling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time. Another early influence on Helm was the work of the harmonica player, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played blues and early rhythm and blues on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country music, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.
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What styles influenced Helm?

Answer:
a variety of musical styles--blues, country and R&B--

Question:
Sonata Arctica is a Finnish power metal band from the town of Kemi, Finland. Created as a hard rock band named Tricky Beans, they later changed to Tricky Means and finally to Sonata Arctica, when they shifted to power metal. The current line-up consists of singer, keyboardist and songwriter Tony Kakko, guitarist Elias Viljanen, bass guitarist Pasi Kauppinen, keyboardist and keytarist Henrik Klingenberg, and drummer Tommy Portimo. All the musicians of the band's history except Portimo also acted as backing vocalists.
The band was founded by Marko Paasikoski (guitar), Jani Liimatainen (guitar) and Tommy Portimo (drums) in Kemi at the end of 1995 (Tony Kakko (vocals) and Pentti Peura (bass) joined in early 1996). Originally named Tricky Beans, they played hard rock rather than the power metal with which they grew to fame. Kakko explained that when he was invited to join the band, Paasikoski said the band was going to play "a mixture of Megadeth and Spin Doctors". During their early career, they recorded three demos which were never sent to a recording label -- Friend 'til the End, Agre Pamppers and PeaceMaker. According to Kakko, the band's first name was based on one of their early songs, which was "about a lady who was tricky and I didn't really know what I was talking about (laughs)". Their first show was about to take place but they were still unnamed, so they had to come up with something. In 1997 the band changed their name to Tricky Means, and from that point until 1999 their style was thoroughly worked upon and ultimately was drastically changed, acquiring a strong emphasis on the keyboard melodies and relying on an easily distinguishable rhythm line maintained both by the bass and the guitar. Vocalist Tony Kakko developed a clean singing style which relies both on falsetto and tenor voices. Kakko has stated that the change of sound was influenced by fellow Finnish power metal band Stratovarius. At that time, Pentti Peura was fired and Marko Paasikoski left due to a lack of gigging. Two months later the band got signed to a three-album deal with Spinefarm, which left Marko displeased. The band finally changed their name to Sonata Arctica, because they thought they wouldn't be able to sell metal albums with the previous name and also because Spinefarm asked them to do so. "Sonata Arctica" was suggested by a friend of the band: "sonata" for the music and "arctica" for their home (Kemi, in Northern Finland). In 1997, they recorded a demo entitled FullMoon in Kemi's Tico Tico Studios, which was their first real metal recording. The line-up consisted of vocalist and keyboardist Tony Kakko, guitarist Jani Liimatainen, new bassist Janne Kivilahti (who started first as second guitarist) and drummer Tommy Portimo. The demo was sent to Spinefarm Records by a friend of the band and a recording deal soon followed.
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Did they know each other previously?

Answer:
Originally named Tricky Beans, they played hard rock rather than the power metal with which they grew to fame.