Russell Buddy Helm

Trance Grooves ala Fred Neil

Music was struggling to reinvent itself in the early sixties; wanting to break out of the staid song structures to run free over the hills and vales of improvisational tones and rhythms. Fred Neil was one of many instituting a wake up call to modern music, especially acoustical folk music, that there were new song formats that did not fit the Tin Pan Ally formula of song writing. Ragas are a form of music from India made popular by master musician Ravi Shankar, introduced to the West by Beatle George Harrison. This music investigates the subtle tones and rhythms that are really close to each other and create a pulsing dissonance that American ears found disconcerting when we first heard it, but Fred Neil used this ancient musical approach to invent a folk raga type of acoustical guitar music where the musicians would more or less stay on the same chords, usually in an open tuning using droning bass strings, for a long time and investigate the rhythmic and harmonic potential while cooking along in either a fairly brisk tempo or sometimes in a very slow meditative groove. Meditation was unheard of in mainstream America in the early sixties, but it was being discovered by beatniks and folk singers, poets and jazz musicians and devotees of caffeine emporiums in order to find a way into the new consciousness that humans were inexorably being drawn toward. The evolution of human consciousness was activating parts of our brains that could handle unique functions, such as long drawn out grooves. This was an ancient human musical trait in many cultures but in the US this was something tedious and did not sell toothpaste, so it had not been used by commercial music composers. The foraging into musical styles was accomplished by the musicians on the fringe, and as Marshal McLuhan stated, that fringe element eventually becomes the mainstream. With the advent of electric guitars, and drum sets, the possibilities for trance grooves expanded into territories unheard of in music. Not only groups like Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, and the Grateful Dead stayed on one groove for an eternity, witnessing changes in their psychology and sense of spirituality as the grooves droned on but every garage band in America, and England were trying to hit that special groove note where the universe would open up and the pimple faced player would feel part of a greater consciousness while the girls swayed to the steady beat. Now we take this style of music for granted but when it was being born there was resistance in our modern culture. The imperative had been to consume and progress, which did not imply staying on one note for a very long time. This was the beginning of the self help movement, health food, ecology, the yoga movement, meditation, zen, all being fueled by musicians working outside the parameters of conventional musical orthodoxy. They were not welcomed with open arms by the music industry. But thanks to fearless musical pioneers like Fred Neil we have this in our musical palette.
excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russel Buddy Helm ©2014

I was the first drummer to bring in a drumset within those hallowed mildewed walls of the oldest coffee house outside of Greenwich Village

Like tributaries coming together to feed the Big Muddy, the grooves in the fertile delta around New Orleans and as well as the rest of the US, blended, making a soul moving music that was a little bit of a lot of different cultures. Eric Hord was a moving target if anyone tried to pin him down to style of playing. He could play anything. Rock Grooves and Folk Grooves did not coexist pleasantly in the early sixties; Folk musicians were tempted to pick up the beat a little bit to get some excitement going, but if they got too aggressive there was always the  critical shout; “Sell Out!” This happened once with Tim Buckley in San Francisco at the Boarding House. Eric came from folk music and his stint with the Mamas and Papas was pivotal in introducing folk music to the wider audience of pop music. For the Folkies to play a folk song without a group was based on certain rhythmic grooves strummed or picked on folk guitar; four or three beat patterns that did not have too much syncopation, lilting three quarter waltz patterns that were part of every culture, slow six beat patterns that came to be called the Blues. These had worked for centuries in the traditional folk ballads from Europe and Africa, South America, Native American. But by changing the writing style from their traditional acoustical folk grooves, and using an electric guitar, the M and P’s invented Folk Rock along with a bunch of other pickers from the Folkie world.  The back up musicians had to make it work. Eric and the armies of backup players had to come up with Grooves, tempos, signature licks, hooks and intros for this new form of music that had not only great lyrics and melodies but also had a political impact. Good stuff, the anonymous players on the records in all the studios from LA to  New York and London were melding grooves from different ethnicities like tributaries in a great flow of consciousness bringing everyone into a state of heightened egalite.  Excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 All Rights Reserved

Distillation of the Groove

Distilling the groove to it’s basic essence is a form of profound drumming meditation. This is the alchemy of drumming. Turning base elements into gold. This is what hit records were all about before the drum machine. In the drumming meditation groups that I teach around the country and the world, the basic pattern gets set up. It is always different. This is the first departure from traditional African drumming or Afro Cuban where the drummers build off of a set piece where everyone knows their parts and the leader solos. Instead, what happens in the drumming meditation groups is that everyone listens to the mixture of drumming that starts to coalesce around the downbeat pulse. The temptation is to solo over this but what can happen is that everyone starts to play less….When I listen to what is being attempted by the drummers in the group I keep the steady downbeat that I have chosen then I subtract notes, little by little until the bare essence of the groove is propelling the group along. Many people do not realize that I am playing very little because they are entranced with their own creative ideas that are being stimulated by this foundation groove that is solid and predictable; perfect for soloing over. But eventually someone comes out of their imagined rock star dream and sees that I am not soloing like everyone else.
“Come on, Buddy! Show us something!” is the inevitable response from the erstwhile bangers. I will sound off and mess with their heads and what invariably happens is that the groove is lost. They can’t stay on the basic pattern because they never picked it up at the beginning of the group. So I can only “show off” for a few bars and then settle back into the basic groove so that everyone else can stay together. I don’t really mind doing this because it makes everyone a better drummer if they listen and share the downbeat and stay out of their ego. This subtraction approach to groove meditation drumming is not really part of most drummer’s mentality. The assumption is that they play as many notes as possible therefore they are great drummers. Just the opposite is the truth. The great drummers play very little in a group in order to hold the basic safe sacred space for the dance and the inspired improvisation that stimulates the groove instead of usurping it. The rhythm and blues drummers of the previous eras knew how to maintain a simple pattern, which enabled the vocalist to express the emotions of the lyrics in fresh ways every time the song was performed. This is what makes great R n B always alive. For instance Al Green’s famous drummer, Al Jackson maintained such a minimum groove that the rest of the arrangements of horns, B3 Hammond organ, etc. had plenty of room to support Mr Green’s angelic vocal interpretations of the lyric. By support, I mean that they accent and underpin the emotional expressions that the singer implies with the words or even just a yelp or even a full voiced scream like in James Brown’s incredible band. B.B. King has been a master off this minimal groove playing for half a century. I adopted this style of drumming while playing the drum set with greats like Charlie Dechant and Tim Buckley. I intuitively sensed that they needed a stable authoritative but not overbearing groove pattern that they could use as a platform for their improvisations as in Tim Buckley’s cosmological vocalizations or in Charlie’s inspired saxophone improvisations. When the soloist can trust the rhythm section to be steady and supportive and sensitive to their spontaneous creations, then the soloist soars to new heights of inspired music. This is what people put their money down to hear. In a drumming meditation workshop, I will play in the same manner only here the soloists are usually beginners and do not know that they are experiencing an impeccable rhythmic groove; they just feel the joy and bang away. This is okay for me, although I miss the great moments with great musicians, but their egos can get to be too much if they think that they are great solely on their own, even without a great rhythm section to back them up. So I encourage the beginners to develop their ears so that they can experience the deep profound effect of a meditation groove.
Excerpt” “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 all rights reserved