Thursday at Opolis the crafters of one of the 10 best albums of the year (hype machine, i know) Helio Sequence will play. Tickets will be around 12 bucks.
I interviewed the drummer of the Oregon band, and he had some cool things to say about the band's music, advertising and indie rock, an Elliot Smith homage as well as fielded my fan-ny Modest Mouse inquiries.
The feature form story ran in today's Gazette, but much more was covered in the conversation than I had room to include.
http://www.okgazette.com/p/12853/a/2153/Default.aspx?ReturnUrl=LwBEAGUAZgBhAHUAbAB0AC4AYQBzAHAAeAAslashAHAAPQAxADIANwA0ADgAThough I would encourage you to pick up a real copy, because there's more to that one than the online version.
Interview with Benjamin Wiekel of Helio Sequence
For Oklahoma Gazette
May 15, 2007
You and Brandon have known each other since middle school. How did you meet, what did you bond over and how the hell have you been able to play music together for so many years?
We've met through my younger brother, he was friends with my younger brother and we really started hanging out because he would crash at our family's house back in the day and we'd stay up late watching 120 Minutes and Bohemia After Dark and other alternative video programs. We started to trade local bands CDs; eventually we'd mess around with instrument, just playing around the house. I don't know, we are just really good friends and we've had ups and downs and that's part of knowing anyone that long. I can't imagine playing with anyone else.
Where is Matt Pinfeld (host of 120 Minutes) these days?
It's always cool, there's different moments in time where there's actually different filters for music. And I'm sure some people today are super stoked about Pitchfork and different media filters. But there's definitely something cool about Bohemia. I really loved the Bohemia After Dark Show I found so many bands on that. Videos I think are really cool.
You made a recent video with Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live?It was a lot of fun to make it he's a really great guy and he was really serious about it. He was showing us these really obscure videos he wanted to kind of mimic. He just called one day and said, ' hey I heard your song and he told me all these ideas and I said sure.
I love the character he does on the Wilco dvd. That's amazing.
From the opening ambience of "Lately" to "Keep Your Eyes Ahead" and "Hallelujah" this album feels big and joyous. If there was a possibility the band wouldn't be able to go on with Brandon's vocal cord injury I wondered what the mindset going into recording was? Was this a celebration album?I mean it really kind of was in a weird way. Not just from the vocal stand point. But also when I was playing with Modest Mouse I ended being a really weird time for our band. It really was. It was like, everything is behind us, let's make up. It felt really good. The whole process was really natural and super enjoyable.
When you drummed with Modest Mouse they had a hit record, and you toured on that. That must have been a confusing time.
Yeah. It wasn' t necessarily confusing. My plan was never to stick with it. It was certainly tempting, that's for sure. On one hand you can be in this huge band with all this success, on the other hand your best friend that you've been making music with since you were a kid. Well, it ended up not being a hard choice.
There are a lot of lyrics about youths being misguided, pacified by strip malls? I feel as if you are singing about me and my friends. What kind of differences in the young people who go to rock shows today compared to kids you may bump into in Oregon in the early 90s.
Well I mean I don't know if things are as innocent as they were in the early 90s. There was definitely something so pure about that era. But you know, maybe that' s just part of being young. Maybe they feel innocent . I'm not a kid anymore so it's tough to say. It just seemed like the early nineties were a pure, innocent point for music and it's interesting now what started in the late 80s, the early indie labels and that whole concept of alternative means of putting out music, has become almost mainstream.
And it's definitely grown but it's also partially because people are losing interest in bigger labels and that kind of sound and people just downloading music for free. It's a combination of different things. It's interesting at this point in time that indie bands can make a living without selling many records. There are so many great things happening every month. It's almost like a crazy saturation point. How much good music can you listen to?
I was just having a conversation with my brother about Lou Reed. He's downloading all the new songs every day, and I'm telling him, you have to work backward.
For any true music lover. I feel like at least a lot of my friends in Portland are having a hard time getting into newer things. Maybe that's a musician thing.
You mentioned bands making a living without selling many records. Some of the songs on your new record could attract the attention of commercial makers, or television shows. Have you or will you give your songs to something like that?I mean you can't really say no when something offers . That's definitely a way a band can make a living these days. A license like that can float you. You can live off it for almost a year. When things like that come along I feel like it's kind of a blessing. I don't know that a whole lot of bands think about that when they are making music. Artists have found it's a way to make a living. It's kind of hard to turn it down. It depends on the company, what its ideals are.
Commercial is so bizarre. It's odd to me that people pay so much to produce and advertise and everything is advertising; it s interesting to me that it even works. They spend that much money, you know how expensive it is to advertise a CD sometimes, I wonder how people even afford that. And even ,like, it's a weird time too, on Myspace it seems like people are advertising themselves. It's a world of advertising. Me personally, I'm poor enough where I wouldn't feel weird doing it.
I just finished school at The University of Oklahoma journalism school. And it felt like half of our education was on how to advertise ourselves as journalists, not about some crooked city manager.
It's the same thing with music almost. You could come up with a cool sound and it may not matter. They'll ask you 'How are you going to sell this,' and most artists are like, 'I don't know. Isn't that what you are supposed to do?'
Hallelujah sounds like a song about faith, a kind of secular but strong faith in people. Did writing the lyrics and writing the music go hand in hand with this song?Actually that one was definitely one of the songs we musically have been kicking around for a while. It has a few different incarnations. We were really unsure about it. We liked the music but without the right vocals we could never seem to pull it together. I was going through all of these songs on [Brandon's Summers, vocalist] hard drive.
Brandon visited the family over Christmas break in 2006, so I had his hard drive and he had all these diff songs. And I pulled that one up and was kind of blown away. It was funny because the demos were so you could tell he's kind of making things up on the spot. You could tell he did it really quickly. There wasn't any more than a verse that he recorde[on Hallelujah]. I kind of cut things up, kind of making it sound like it was a real take. He came back and said, 'oh wow I think this is actually really cool.
It was finally a song. That was a weird one. It took a while for that one to come together.
This may be a hard question to answer "Hallelujah" in particular the drums rain down on the track. And I feel like I can say, those are Ben Weikel drums. It's a unique drum style with high energy. I was wondering if there was a point where you settled into a particular style and found a way of playing that worked for The Helio Sequence.
I mean I guess so. I definitely. I don't if it's necessarily only dependent on Helio Sequence. [I interrupt with some crap about Modest Mouse]
It was different with Modest Mouse.
[He politely resumes] There is something about the way Brandon and I work together. Im sort of in rhythmic freedom. I feel like it's kind of like orchestrating. You could just have a regular fast beat ' 1, 2, 3, 4 and be kind of keeping time. There's something about the way we work together. I feel like I can put a lot more accents and more flowery rhythmic things there. I really enjoy playing with the Helio Sequence.
It's tough to say if there's a distinct point where I found something particular. I feel like I've been drumming all this time and our band evolved. As that evolved my playing is better, the lyrics and playing they kind of all evolved.
I read once that before recording Good News for People Who Love Bad News that Brock and the band played Dance Hall over and over for 12 hours or so? Is that true?[Laughs] That might have been true with … I honestly think that Jeremiah was probably the person drumming when they did Dance Hall for hours and hours and hours. By the time I got into that project I literally had 6 days of practice before we went into the studio. They played me Dance Hall and I just did whatever I did to it. I do remember hearing the demo for it. I think when they were jamming I think it was a lot cooler, more how it was supposed to be. Also, there's something about that record that was kind of more of a polished thing. Dance hall is really supposed to be more of a crazy thing it didn't quite fit in with the other stuff we were working with.
Did touring with Mouse, then going out with Helio Sequence build endurance. Make you like a super drummer?[Laughs] When I was playing 3 shows a night I think I got to be a better drummer. I'm in better shape now than I've ever been. I think about different things playing wise. I just try to be the best drummer I can. I definitely feel more [comfortable] now doing Helio Sequence.
You guys combine different musical eras very well. And Modest Mouse does this and I know you toured with the Ugly Casonva gang.
I'm going to go back to The Harmonica Song. The Harmonica is played in an old, old bluesy style on that song which is also very digital. On the new record No Regrets is straight up stomping and old in a record with a lot of futuristic ambient sound. Would you say that is a constant concern for the band, to pay homage to an old style of American music while making that music in the digital age, with ambience, keyboard, melody loops? What kind of impact has more traditional American music on you?I think that you know we don't necessarily feel like we have to do anything like that. It's more over the years. When we made this record, we've always been into listening to all types of music. I think when Brandon lost his voice it wasn't just that either one of us was listening to that kind of music; he actually learned all these traditional American folk songs. It kind of became this, there's almost like there was this side thing going on with Brandon where we have these modern songs and then we had all these acoustic songs too that none of us really thought were going to fit together.
And in it seemed like this is what we were into and this what we've gone through. Lyrically, it makes sense. We try to not be afraid to take chances. Yeah there's definitely other types of music we are both very fond of. We are definitely conscious, too, of not trying to do anything where it's easy to hear rudimentary influences. We really try to express all these different things we love about music in each song.
You guys travel light. Guitar, drums, keys a computer. Has this made touring easier? What have you been bringing on this tour.We actually don't travel that light. We probably have the equipment that four guys would have. It's actually a lot of work. Brandon has two huge guitar amps. I have two huge keyboard speakers, an amp our computer wrap. We definitely bring a lot of stuff and it's a lot of work.
You covered "Satellite" on a recent Portland group tribute to Elliot Smith. Did you know, share ideas with Smith back in the day in Portland? What brought you to "Satellite" and how did you go about putting your own stamp on the song while paying respect.I mean. We really didn't get a chance. We were a little too young. We used to go and watch Heatmesier. We were definitely around and seeing what was going on and influenced by that era of Portland music. I never got a chance to meet him. By the time we hooked up with [Smith's early label] I think he already moved on to L.A. He was doing his thing down there.
As far as 'Satellite,' one of the reasons we chose it was we felt we could be truthful to the song and to what Elliot Smith did and also add some things that felt more like Helio Sequence, and something that seemed like a balance. We didn't want to take one of his songs and totally slaughter it and change it too much. Even changing the vocal sound. We really wanted to be respectful of the song and I was really happy with how it turned out.
