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email: buddy@buddyhelm.com
Russell Buddy Helm has been a multi media artist his whole life and also a teacher. His mother was a public school teacher and started his classical musical training when he was eight under a well-known woman drum teacher in Elkhart, Indiana named Alleen Trafford. Painting was also an early interest. His elementary school paper mobiles were included in culture exchange programs with Japan. He excelled at percussion in both symphonic work and drum and bugle corps earning fifteen medals of excellance. His Drum and Baton Corps participated in NBTA National Competition with the drum section achieving first place honors when he was just thirteen years old. His family moved to Florida which at first appeared to be a cultural wasteland but became the richest source of music and art for Buddy. As a teenager he developed his musical styles in rhythm and blues, rock, country, folk and spiritual drumming like Afro Cuban and Gospel. He opened for the original Allman Brothers with his band Bethlehem Asylum all over the South. He recorded two albums for Capricorn/exit records. There was extensive recording in Miami including sessions with Jerry Wexler, the man who discovered and produced Aretha Franklin. There was also a soundtrack for an Everglades documentary on NBC. His understanding of spiritual drumming progressed as a result of his exposure to the Caribbean culture living in Coconut Grove in Miami.
Experimental film work coincided with his painting and folk art sculptures in Coconut Grove and several years of Art at the University of South Florida. He also played drums with Chuck Berry, Mike Bloomfield, Bo Diddey and many other great blues performers.
He moved to Los Angeles to continue his musical career and artistic training and to teach drumming using his experience in R& B, jazz and rock as his teaching resources. He played with Frank Zappa then toured and played with Tim Buckley for several years and toured in Europe and Canada as well as extensive U.S. touring. There was a live album recorded in 1973 but not released until 1997 called "Honeyman" featuring the legendary singer/poet Tim Buckley that shows Buddy's drumming abilities at the tender age of twenty one. When Tim Buckley was murdered in 1975, Buddy pulled away from the promising musical career that everyone saw as his destiny and focused instead on a more personal non-commercial form of spiritual healing musical and magical expression.
He also attended art and literature classes at San Jose State, Santa Monica College and UCLA. He recorded an album with Big Joe Turner and played drums and percussion with Peter Ivers on several Film Ex projects and his USA cable music show called "New Wave Theatre." There was a soundtrack for Ron Howard's first movie, "Grand Theft Auto" and an Art Film by Linda Benglis and Stanton Kay called, "Amazing Bow Wow." that is in the Whitney Museum. He participated in the down town L.A. "Young Turks" art scene focused around Al's Bar where he performed with various musical and performance art groups. He played drums with many seminal "New Wave" bands including the Resistors, Spider Mittleman, Diana Harris and the Tuff Tones. His paintings and video art showed at the Downtown Gallery and the Eilat Gordon Gallery in Beverly Hills and the Tortue Gallery in Santa Monica. He recorded a single that was played on KROQ by his friend DJ Rodney Bingenhiemer, titled "Dancing on the Titantic" performing keyboards and singing with a video which he shot, directed and edited. He also edited videos for 'Missing Persons, Sammy Hagar, Alabama(which won a video music award) He helped develope the first computer graphics system at Trans America Video in Hollywood. He worked in T.V. and film production including Second Assistant Director on the award winning Polaroid commercials with Jim Garner and Mariette Hartley.
As a video artist, Buddy also documented the nightlife of Hollywood at "At Sunset" next to the Whiskey A GoGo and at the Lingerie club for several years creating a live video style that set the pace and predated MTV with live video playback in the after hours industry private dance club. Some of that footage was included in the 1983 Festival of The Arts at the Kennedy Center using footage he shot of his musical partner Peter Ivers.
Russ (Buddy)Helm wrote the Star Wars comic strips for George Lucas that were circulated in over three hundred daily newspapers around the U.S. and he reviewed new script aquisitions like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for LucasFilm. Buddy ran a music rehearsal studio in North Hollywood for his friends like hit song writer, Moon Martin among others. He wrote music reviews for CREEM magazine, a screenplays; (Dragons-punk rock in Chinatown) with Ray Manzarek (Doors, X) and two screenplays for Stiv Bators (Dead boys, Lords of the New Church) and a children's show pilot for Wolfman Jack. Russell (Buddy) Helm worked as archivist and traffic manager and systems analyst at the Playboy Channel setting up their computer production management network and designed a unique computer network for legal, production, aquisitions and administration.
He was also Supervisor of Master Tape Services at Lorimar Telepicture which included all of the daily postproduction coordinating for Knotts Landing, FalconCrest, Dallas, Hunter and all Lorimar feature productions including satellite and syndication. He also taught private drum lessons but did not perform very much live music in front of an audience although the spiritual drumming continued and grew in importance as a way to stay true to what he knew to be important in himself.
After leaving the film industry he traveled back to Key West, Georgia and eventually Bali integrating artistic styles and musical experiences evolving into hand cut tin/steel mobile pieces. He also returned to being the drummer that he always has been.
During the many different hats worn there was always the time to teach and play drums; styles ranging from classical, jazz, ethnic, blues, reggae to good old Southern style rock and roll. But there was always the reticence to make drumming a vocation again. Even though many successful musicians asked, he wasn't willing to do the time in a money driven form of drumming. He loved music too much to get back into the Biz. Plus he had lost musical partners to violence, betrayal and greed and saw no need for more of that.
While making mobiles of hand cut steel/tin ranging in subject matter from trains to surfer portraits, UFO's, whales, dolphins, and mermaids at Cathy Javier's store called "Seasons" on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica and at the Atlanta Olympics, he began showing people how to play the handdrums imported from Bali. Drumming workshops evolved into a weekly neighborhood event where people who did not play drums came in and felt the confidence to participate and develope their own sense of rhythm as a drummer. It was a breakthrough process for many people who were already creative and richly productive, living in the artisticly savy Santa Monica. There were also a number of handicapped people that came to the drumming for a way out of their own situation. The drumming process became a self healing process not only for the many different kinds of people but also for Buddy. He was invited to speak and drum on KPFK "Up For Air" where they give away his drumming CDs and drumming book "Let the Goddess Dance" which became "Drumming the Spirit to Life." published by Llewellyn Worldwide. He took the drumming workshops back East to Florida and Georgia on a regular schedule selling his hand published books and his drumming CDs and helping people create a safe space for rhythmic healing.
The hand drumming workshops at Seasons evolved since 1989 into three times a week with an average of five people a session but sometimes up to a dozen. All this creative healing work was happening in a retail space of two hundred square feet; in Cathy Javier's unique gift store that was full of charms, crystals, carvings and spirit guardians from Bali and around the world as well as their own pieces.
Buddy Helm's music can be heard on several different CDs available today including many of the artists listed. His art work hangs in galleries around the country in Atlanta, San Francisco, Phildelphia, and at Tops in Malibu, The Cafe Gallery at Bergomot Station hangs a nine foot long tin/steel train balanced on one point that was commissioned by Underground Atlanta for the Olympics. This single point of balance of a large, colorful, happy piece of fantasy art is an appropriate analogy for all of the creative endeavors Russell S. (Buddy) Helm has had the great good fortune to have been involved with.
His weekly drumming workshops taking people on a rhythmic journey around the world and into their own souls continues and grows locally and across the country.
His two books published by Llewellyn Worldwide have struck a chord of understanding for many different kinds of people all across the world. The CDs included in the two books are not only rhythmic lessons, Zen Riddles and songs to sing and play along with.
The touring has increased from the word of mouth about the healing drum therapies that have evolved from Russell Buddy Helm's unique point of view on life, creativity and drumming.
There are several musical CDs available:
"Protection Drum Prayers" A collection of songs, each about 12 minutes in length, with old friend musician collaborator, Charlie Dechant(Hall and Oates), playing flute and Sax. Protection is an interactive CD where the person can play along with the songs and create a sense of protective energy around themselves. There is a great deal of listenable music on this CD with keyboards, guitar, drums, ballophon, flute and Sax.
"Mbira and Drum" an inspired improvisation with Shannon Terry, a gifted Mbira player. this music is light, evocative, haunting and classical yet with a tribal feel.
"Drum Dance" is the first CD and is a drumming improvisation CD for Yoga, body work and just being. It is also included in the first book published by Llewellyn, "Drumming the Spirit to Life"
"Mistress of Mysteries"
A CD of extended Grooves based on the lessons in the second book; "The Way of the Drum" on Llewellyn Worldwide.
"Lesson One- Hit the Drum"
A lesson CD with rhythm theory presented in an easy way. Lessons on relaxing and rhythmic challenges for the advanced drummers.
"DRUM WORKSHOP 1-10-98".
Perhaps the nicest tribute happened on that date when an unexpected group of very successful local musicans casually began to gather to jam on Saturday afternoons at Seasons. These are the level of players that Buddy had been used to working with. They are pros and work with all the famous names people equate with pop music. They know the strains and frustrations of being a paid artist in a culture driven by non spiritual demands. They too realized the incredibly unique opportunity to sit and play healing sacred music in a safe environment. And they also found a way to play with Buddy which can be a treat for anyone but very much appreciated by the players who can ride the subtlties that are inherent in this kind of drumming.
The workshops continue on Friday nights at 7:00 And there is also a Wednesday night drumming group in Malibu at Tops Gallery.
A local public access show including the drum workshop people from the store is taped every other month and airs on Adelphia Cable in L.A., channel 77 . Video tapes are available as well as several teaching videos and CDs
The
latest Handpainted
Bamboo Curtains
Cathy Javier
Goth Rings
Mermaid
beaded curtain
tie backs
Marcella Zinner my
Psychic Sister
SEASONS THE STORE
LILY Great Dane
Russell S. Buddy Helm
Buddy ART