In what would become a trend
amongst my close friends over a number of years many of them began moving from
the Central New York area to Seattle.
And it all started with Bob Swift.
He was the first to make the venture to the Pacific Northwest and it
gave me an excuse to go out there and visit him on multiple occasions. It turns out he made a good decision
because not only is it a spectacular section of the country, bountiful with
forests, close proximity to the ocean, favorable climate, progressive attitudes
(mostly), and also a killer music scene, but it worked out pretty good for ‘ol
Bob because once there he made friends with some great people (that in exchange
I got to be good friends with as well), found his wife, and also happened to
start an awesome crusty hardcore band called The Helm.
The Helm formed when some people
from different areas of the Seattle and Tacoma hardcore scenes paired up and
began making music that was incredibly loud, dirty as a coal mine at midnight,
and very intense. Bob kept me
posted on things as they happened and I was exceptionally surprised that he was
able to make this happen considering he had only done a couple localized bands
here in Syracuse that did not go on to do too much. Plus, I had no idea his voice had gotten as vicious as it
did.
It wasn’t all that long after the
band started playing out that they recorded a collection of songs and Bob asked
if I would be interested in putting it out as a seven inch. At first I was a bit unsure because I
didn’t even quite know what the band sounded like, but we were close and it was
yet another excuse to keep up with a good friend who had moved away. Plus I liked the idea of making some in
roads within the Northwest due to my interest in all the stuff that has emerged
from that region over the years.
Of particular interest to me as well- and it’s sort of a bonus- the
original lineup of The Helm consisted of Bob on vocals, Timm Trust on guitar,
Ben Colton (formerly of Champion) on bass, and Ryan Murphy, who played drums in
Undertow. Undertow was the first
hardcore band I ever saw. That may
sound strange, considering I grew up in Syracuse, NY and they were from
Seattle. But the first hardcore
show I ever attended Undertow was the band that was playing when I came in the
door and they made a hell of an impression upon me. After Undertow broke up they started Nineironspitfire and
they played the first show I ever booked back in 1997. And now, six or seven years later, my
paths with people from Undertow cross again in a significant way as one of
their members was now playing in a band with one of my tightest friends. So that was very significant to me.
Just off that 7” The Helm went on
to do quite a bit of touring, and not too long afterwards they did their first
LP (on Indecision Records) and toured the whole country. We would continue to work together
later on, but this first 7” is where things started off and who better to talk
to about it all would be Bob, since we now live about three hours apart instead
of three days. To use a colloquial
Northwest reference, we are ‘tight bros from way back when’ (all credit on that
to Bob). Here’s how The Helm got
going, those early days of the band, and the process of putting together their
first record.
Let’s start off with you leaving Syracuse and moving to
Seattle. What was your reasoning,
and how did you navigate your way around figuring things out once you got to
the Seattle area?
It was time. I
don’t know, I felt like I needed a change for a lot of reasons. I’m not always the most concise person,
but since you have a recorder on, let’s just say it was time.
So I came out here.
I knew a couple people because the internet is the internet, whatever
social media was available at the time I used. It was 2002. So
not much. But I still managed to
talk to a couple people. I had a
free place to stay in Tacoma, so I stayed there until I met more people. Then I stayed at another apartment in
Tacoma for a little while longer, and then I moved up to Seattle about a year
and a half after I got out here.
So I’ve been in Seattle itself since 2003. And I went to shows and that’s how I met people and found
the people that I ended up living in apartments with. That’s pretty much how I acclimated myself to being
around. One of the first people I
ran into was Dave-
-Dave Larson?
Right, Dave Larson (owner of Excursion Records). He’s the person who invited me to live
with him in 2003. And we lived
together for probably about 7 years before I met my wife.
Did you move there intending to start a band, or did the
idea for doing that come later on?
I didn’t have any expectations. I knew I wouldn’t book shows ever again. In Syracuse I knew who and where to
post shows and where I would put them on.
Out here there were so many more variables to deal with. Plus, there were a lot of shows
happening here so I didn’t feel like I needed to book any. The bands I would book in Syracuse
usually were bands that would play here as well so I certainly didn’t need to
do anything for them here. So I
was in a band called Set In Motion and another called Gunmen and Flightpaths,
and I didn’t think about being in a band here, but I always wanted to. It wasn’t like, ‘now that I’m out here
let’s start a band’. It was more
like, ‘if it happens it happens.’
So I was sort of on the look out for it, and then it just sort of fell
together.
Timm (Trust, guitarist) and I had talked about starting a
band for awhile. And Timm had also
been talking separately with Ryan Murphy (original Helm drummer) and Ben Colton
(original bassist) about starting a band, and then someone figured out we had
all been talking to each other separately about being in bands and we could
maybe get together, and start a band.
How did you come to find the other people who would comprise
the original lineup of the band?
It was all of you talking separately and then someone cuing you all in
to the fact you had all been talking about doing this?
Yeah. Well,
Ryan had done an interview on Dave (Larson’s) podcast where he mentions that he
and Timm had practiced together in that configuration of the band, but it
didn’t become the band until all four of us were together and we had practiced
a few times. I think the first
song we wrote was “1461” and then we were coming up with names. I had a name that I thought was the
best thing ever, and in retrospect it was pretty terrible. It was a run-of-the-mill hardcore name
for the band, and I’m glad we didn’t go with it. I asked them and they all said ‘no’. I’m glad they did though because I
didn’t want to be a run-of-the-mill hardcore band. That’s not why we were in it.
Timm, though, has this amazing way of just coming up with
really cool ideas. It just comes
out. Maybe he’s working it out in
his head for a long time, but it never seems like that when he says something,
it seems very spontaneous. He
said, ‘what if we just call it The Helm?’
And I asked if there was any reason why and he just says, ‘it’s where
you steer the boat.’ And it
worked. Everyone in the band said
it was awesome. And even though I
was a little attached to the bane I thought of I eventually came around and
thought it was great. So we were
then The Helm, and we wrote those songs that became the demo, and went on to be
the seven inch.
I remember being really nervous about doing vocals because I
hadn’t done vocals in awhile. We
recorded somewhere in Tacoma. We
hadn’t played out much beforehand so I didn’t know how it would sound recorded. Once it was done I thought, ‘oh, I
sound like I fit this band well and things came out pretty good’. I just remember being really
psyched. We had a CD demo of it
and this guy in Syracuse put it out on 7”
So this came up in conversation with Tim Leo (Inkling, Minor
Times) that you were going to try out to be the singer of The Minor Times as
they were getting started.
I didn’t try out.
I wanted to. I think, two
things happened, I could be wrong.
The first was that right at the same time the post-Indecision band, Most
Precious Blood, was starting. This
was early 2000s, right before I left Syracuse. I may have sent those guys something like an audition. I could be wrong about that. However, the other thing was that I
definitely got in touch with the Minor Times folks. I really loved Inkling and I thought, ‘I’d be in a band with
any of these guys, doing anything.’
So I sent them the Gunmen and Flightpaths stuff we had recorded. But they went on to find someone who
fit that band much better, and I ended up moving, so that’s that.
Yeah, I just thought it was an odd footnote worth
mentioning.
For sure, it’s a total ‘what if’ scenario. I also sent Metallica something
(laughs), they never called back.
How long was it before you all started playing out and
recording?
I can’t vouch for what Ryan and Timm did before the four of
us were all playing together, but I believe in November of 2005 we did some
shows. And then in January of 2006
when you toured with No Idols we played some shows with you all. I believe that all came after we did a
West Coast tour. That’s when I
think was the beginning of when we were the most active. We toured the U.S. in 2007. And then we toured the U.S. again in
2008. We did the West Coast in
2009, and then around New Years 2009-2010 we did the Northeast tour that you
drove us around on. That was
pretty much it for us touring a lot after that.
We all had a lot of stuff going on. Ben left the band pretty soon after we
formed because he went back to school.
So the lineup on that 7” was only the first few months of the band. Joe came on to play bass after
that. In fact, Joe filled in for
Ben at a few shows before he was ever really in the band. Joe never recorded anything with us
though.
Was there a specific idea of what kind of band you all
wanted to be? Is that part of why
it took awhile to get the band off the ground?
I think my influences were maybe a little different then the
other guys. But we all agreed on
Tragedy. We all really love
Tragedy and that was an influence.
It all could have gone a number of ways, but Timm’s guitar work went
into that sort of murky way and I loved it. Ryan’s drumming was so forceful and intense that that’s how
it worked out. My vocals were not
really Tragedy style, I have a bit of a higher register. Lyrically, I just wrote about things
that moved me. Even though I will
never sound like Chris Colohan (Cursed, Left For Dead, The Swarm, Sect), my
lyrical references took a lot from basically any Swarm song that was about
checking out of your job. I hated
my job at the time, so any number of songs that I wrote, which were about
people checking out of their jobs, took from that.
We didn’t set out to sound like anything. We just played what came out. There’s a bit of variation to our
songs. Some are a bit more
straightforward, and some are a little different. When we recorded our full lengths, both of them have
instrumental jams too.
I can’t recall if you ended up touring on that 7” or did you
wait for the full length to come out before committing to bigger tours?
We toured a bit on the 7”. But I also came out to the East Coast, roadieing for another
band, and I brought The Helm demo with me. I gave it to a lot of people on that tour. So it got out a bit that way. I remember also touring on that 7” down
the West Coast and talking to Indecision Records, who ended up releasing our
first LP, and getting things going that way.
What was the scene in Seattle like around that time?
Well, shows could get really big. There were a number of other bigger bands at the time. Champion was kind of the biggest band
here at that time. A lot of the
bigger shows didn’t really feature bands that sounded like ours, but we played
a bunch of smaller shows with a bunch of bands that would come through. We did play some of those bigger sows
though. When Champion played their
last show we played that. We
played a few Rainfest pre-shows.
Rainfest was just starting out and getting bigger each year.
There were a lot of different shows, and we would play a
variety of things. We played with
I Object a bunch, we toured a little with No Idols, we played with Another
Breath. We would play with crusty
bands, we would play with more straightforward bands, we played with some thrashy
bands.
That also seems like an era where you could have basement
shows. The economy of the city
also changed.
One of the places we played the most was called Camp
Nowhere. The building that was in
got leveled and it’s now student apartments. We played a couple places like that that no longer
exist. Or, they were sold and now
someone else pays a ton of money to live there. That’s just Seattle.
When it came to doing the 7” did you have other people in
mind, maybe more local people, to help put it out?
It’s funny because there were a few. I mean, I lived with Dave and he put
out records for a long time for all sorts of local bands. I can’t remember what went through my
head when I thought to ask you to release our record. I don’t know what crazy thought made me believe that was a
good idea. When it happened it
just seemed like a good fit and I always liked the stuff you put out. That’s also how we ended up on
Indecision with our first full length.
Ryan (Murphy) was just friends with Dave Mandel (Indecision Records
owner) for along time. They put
out all sorts of stuff that was very different from one another- Bleeding
Through to Instead. They did a
Botch record. They did so many
different things. And that’s the
same thing for your label too- you can’t make a sound of Hex Records. It’s not lie some Krautrock label that
only puts out stuff that sounds like Neu!
You can’t pin one thing down on your label. So I thought it was a fir for us because we never did
anything with a label that was known for just one thing. That’s cool because we didn’t play
shows with just one kind of band, we played all sorts of stuff.
I was going to say, for a pretty crusty band you didn’t play
with a lot of crusty bands.
Oh, we played some stinky shows. I can remember any number of tours where I was racing
to call ‘sleeping in the van’ instead of sleeping in some crusty punk house we
were staying at. We played a lot
of different types of shows. We
got tight with that band Giant, who did that very atmospheric, Isis-type of
stuff. There was a lot of
variation.
But back to asking you to do the record.. I had already known you for so long it
was like, ‘why not ask if you wanted to do the record?’ I felt like it sounded awesome, I was
super proud of what it sounded like, and it seemed like a good idea.
I know the band went on to do quite a bit more after this,
and the lineup changed a bit, but overall, what was your favorite part of being
in The Helm and what was your least favorite?
Well, spoiler alert, “Home” (the second LP) is super
important to me. I’m exceedingly
proud of that record. But I just
love those dudes. The original
lineup is great. Maybe me and Joe
aren’t the tightest because he left the band in the middle of a tour, but he
was also a super young dude, so I don’t hold a grudge and I hope he’s doing
well.
I just wanted to be in a band, and I had a couple chances at
it, but to be in The Helm was great because it wasn’t just people doing cool
stuff. It was also a group of very
solid human beings. All of those
people are great. I still love all
of them- Ryan and Timm, and Jeffry, and Jared. All of them are great.
It was also about something.
All those songs are about things that move us deeply. It wasn’t just a band that was aggro
for the sake of being aggro, or have a mosh pit. It was a place to deal with things before you feel too
bottled up. I loved being in that
band. With the other bands I got
to be in I played some shows away from home, but never got to tour. That might be the best part.
I’m in a place now where I could never tour again, and I’m
not sure if I would want to do that again. I miss a week with my daughter and that’s missing a
substantial amount of time. Things
cane be drastically different between the start of that week and the end. It doesn’t feel like that while you’re
there, but when I’m away from her it feels like forever. I couldn’t go away from her for that
long.
But we played a lot of cool shows, in cool places. I have played 242 Main (Burlington, VT)
with every band I’ve been in. I’ve
played the Westcott Community Center (Syracuse, NY) with every band I’ve been
in. And that’s my favorite place
on Earth. Maybe I was young and
dumb and thought we could have played this show, or that show. But when I look back on it I got to be
in a band with a lot of great people.
I got to be in a van driving for hours with those people, played a bunch
of shows, and it was fucking cool.
That’s what I take from it the most- playing all over the place for
people, and that’s not something I got to do with my other bands. I was in a place to be able to do that.
The worst? It
sucks that we were on tour and Joe quit and we had to drive back. That was sort of a low point. But I don’t want to pin anything on him
because that’s petty. I think the
worst was that we played a lot of shows in Seattle where we would get bumped to
a headlining spot just because everyone wanted to get out of joint at a certain
time. We loved to play, but at 2AM
on a Tuesday wasn’t the best. But
if that’s really the only thing I can complain about than things weren’t that
bad, right? In the end we made
some great music and had some good times.
‘Worst’ is sort of tough to say.
‘Least favorite’ might be paying rent on a practice space, or playing at
2AM on a Tuesday. I don’t really
have bad things to say.
It's always great to catch up with Bob, as well as basically anyone from The Helm because they are all wonderful, handsome gents. They still occasionally play out and record (now as a three-piece) and you can find their music out there in the internet ether. However, if you want to hear that 7" you can check the Hex Records bandcamp. The physical copies have sold out, but you can get the digital tracks for just $3 this week! And I happen to have some oddball variant copies that are a creamy white-blue mix and I'll be giving one away to one random person who purchases the digital this week too! So get on it!
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