Russell Buddy Helm

Brain Hemisphere Balancing and drumming go together like peas and carrots. Coconut Grove 1970. Bananas’ carport was part of her rental that was originally a sprawling hacienda type stucco with lush plants, infinite shades of green surrounding the low houses. The whole property was shaded by a huge old family of Florida Live Oaks. We could hear the tinkling of the rigging of Sailboat Bay a few blocks away. A vintage 1956 Volvo Station wagon painted dark British Racing Green pulled into the shade of the carport. The tiny station wagon was immaculate. The interior was perfect leather in two tones of light brown. Roy and Joy got out and hugged Bananas. They were fresh from Guatelmala, working in the Peace Corps. Thirty years later and three thousand miles northwest, the same Volvo is waiting at the light as I cross to the Duck Blind liquor store for a cigarette lighter that costs four times as much there than it would anywhere else but it was necessary to get a lighter immediately. I glanced at the usual types of cars; Lambourgini, BMW, Porsche, Benz, then my memory jolted back to Coconut Grove. The car was identical to what it had been. 1956 Volvo Station Wagon, now painted grey. Roy had a little grey too but was almost the same; big, tall and handsome, but he never took it seriously. He was a genuine person. I stood in front of the Volvo wagon and waved at him from the time warp I was suddenly in. He looked at me, unrecognizing. “Bananas!” I yelled at him through the windscreen as the light changed. The destiny of our reconnecting and my mystical connection to Coconut Grove continued to evolve as our new friendships grew. His current wife, Joy, mentioned once when they came into the store about brain hemisphere balancing research being done at UCLA. “They are discovering that a patient can pass a ball back and forth from one hand to the other hand and get into a therapeutic mode quite easily. They call it Mirrored Hand Activity.” Her hands moved back and forth as if she were warming up for a game of basketball. The Lakers could use her. “I thought of you.” she said, “..and the drumming therapy you are doing.” Her hands moved back and forth, now up and down. The bulb that went off in my head was brighter than that old Key West lighthouse that warned the clipper ships away from the reefs. This was big news. It all made sense. Entry into our belief system via the body was what was happening with the drumming therapy. As long as the person was keeping the back and forth activity of hitting the deep downbeat, they would stay in a safe place and be able to talk about issues, keeping the beat sort of steady. When they could keep a slow funky groove going while they talked, they got better. It had to be laid back though. That was the secret ingredient. They got better from the relaxation introduced into the mental processes through slowing tempo. That was insight from my first drum teacher, Ailleen Trafford. As a ten year old drummer, I had to speed up then slow down the drumming rudiments. Now, fifty years later, I was slowing people’s belief systems down by showing them how to lay back the groove. Things I learned how to do back when Bethlehem Asylum was playing in Coconut Grove in nineteen seventy. Harmonic resonance between people can’t be explained using logic. But the brain doesn’t really understand rhythm. It doesn’t have the feet to dance. The body has it’s own wisdom that is accessed through the grooves. excerpt: “History of the Groove, book three” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 all right reserved

Trickster is in every culture. It is an evolved element in the ongoing experiment of genetic coding we call evolution. The coyote/trickster creates new vistas in the usually dull daily existence of humans. It can frustrate the status quo which needs the stimulation. With out this outside element of surprise, there is only entropy. Death of a species. So when the unintended idea arises, it might be wiser to allow it to bloom. The drum is the trickster tool. It can weave in and out of temporal space leaving an impact both good and not so good. Be careful with the trickster grooves. They are like driving along Mulhalland, looking down at the lights while you whiz away around blind turns and steep rocky cliffs, a wild coyote might appear and we go over the side. Don’t take it personally. Its the trickster.

One of Elvis’ favorite past times was to sit in his backyard at Graceland and shoot light bulbs floating in the olympic sized swimming pool. Some of his large handgun collection was laid out next to him; long barrelled Colt 45 revolver like in the old wild west, 38 snub nose police special, 357 and a 44 magnum, a silver plated 45 automatic with pearl inlaid handle grip that was an exact reproduction of General Patton’s famous side arm, also a 9 millimeter Berreta and a Walther PPK like James Bond. One of his favorites was a 22 magnum snub nose with the accompanying photo of Elvis and President Nixon in the oval office where Elvis asked for and eventually received a special agent’s badge made especially for him. The gun was given to him by J.Edgar Hoover at the behest of President Nixon after Elvis notified the President that the King of Rock n Roll also wanted to be a Gman. Elvis would recline in his custom made chaise lounge that was made while filming one of his movies out in Hollywood; the one where he was standing around singing in a cabana pool lounge scene with a lot of smiling, wholesome girls posing around a Hollywood pool, all of them wearing one piece bathing suits. Back at Graceland, he would recline on this lounger, with a banana and peanut butter toasted sandwich next to him and squeeze off rounds, watching the light bulbs explode with a satisfying “pop!” He would eventually get really loaded on Delaudid combined with whatever else his Memphis doctor would have delivered to him in the ubiquitous brown paper grocery bags full of prescription samples that arrived like clockwork every Wednesday night after the drug store closed. His drug intake would increase and the King would start to slump down lower and lower in his lounge chair. The more loaded he got, the arc of trajectory of the bullets would get flatter, almost parallel to the surface of the water. The shots would get lower and lower and some would ricochet off the water and fly across the backyard of Graceland. They would imbed themselves in the trees, or bury themselves in the manicured lawn that went on forever. The members of the Memphis Mafia and house staff knew better than to be around that part of the grounds. Rarely, some rounds even hit the back wall that protected Graceland from the hordes of fans that came on a daily basis to get a glimpse of the most famous entertainer in the world. The City of Memphis was in the process of improving the roads around the King’s mansion because of the influx of so many fans wanting to get a glimpse of the King. They had bulldozed that road and left a pile of dirt to be trucked away later. A fan managed to drive his car up onto the pile of dirt to get a glimpse over the high wall. He was standing on the roof of his Edsel when one of Elvis’ rounds bounced off the water, gained some altitude, cleared the wall and hit this guy’s car, “Thunk!” Right where the roof joins the rear side panel just behind the back window, about four inches below the fan’s cowboy boot as he stood on his roof. The lime green Edsel paint job was chipped off, showing the grey undercoating and a neat hole about the size of a bass player’s right thumb. He got so excited, he jumped down off the roof of his car, drove it around the front of Graceland to tell his wife and started bragging to the hundreds of people from all over the world looking through the fence, that Elvis was shooting at him. He showed them the slug hole from the 357. His wife got perturbed. They had driven all the way from Murphreesboro and didn’t take kindly to getting shot at, even if it was by the King. She spoke to the guard in the little guard house at the closed gate adorned with musical notes at the entrance to Graceland. She kept asking for the sheriff. The guard called the sheriff’s office but couldn’t reach him. The sheriff was where he usually was at that time of day; sipping the traditional hospitality drink of Graceland, a mint julep, sitting right next to Elvis, by the pool. The  guard called up to the house. The Memphis Mafia came down and give the fan a new El Dorado Cadillac and some free tickets to shut him up. It was a private affair around Elvis’ pool at Graceland and they wanted to keep it that way. Sometimes the sheriff and the Memphis Chief of Police both would hang out with Elvis and have a mint julep while the King target practiced on the light bulbs floating in his swimming pool. But they were not allowed to shoot at the light bulbs themselves. If anyone was a better shot than Elvis, he didn’t want to know about it.

Lt. Russell S. Helm

There have been great responses to the drumming affirmations all over the world. I love CD Baby because I can see where and what people want to hear for their own healing and enjoyment based on what tracks they stream and download from my ever expanding catalogue. “Ultimate Affirmations” is compiled from sessions with many friends and clients using unique hand drumming patterns to reprogram positive beliefs and attitudes. We have been doing the HelmTone Healing Drum Protocols for over twenty five years at our store, Seasons, in Santa Monica and across the U.S, Australia, Japan and Europe. I offer a training program for therapists who want to use the hand drum for healing. I have been a drummer since I was eight years old and am classically trained and have played with many great musicians, but specifically the wisdom from the Rhythm and Blues that I was lucky enough to have played in the Deep South back in the Sixties and Seventies is the foundation for these soulful healing grooves. They are survival grooves and they have proven to work for many generations and on many different kinds of people. I am on staff at an exclusive Palisades recovery organization where I drum with clients on a weekly schedule, learning from them what grooves and what spoken affirmations and releases work for their situations. There is no judging. We are all in this healing together. I began to teach the drumming meditations over twenty years ago and took it on the road to start drumming healing workshops around the country where there were no drumming groups at all. Now it is a worldwide phenomenon and I am glad to see that it has taken hold. Most of the drummers out there don’t know that I came through their town, often before they were born to introduce the concept of drumming as a healing tool. I don’t really expect to be called the Johnny Appleseed of the Downbeat, but that is what I feel like. It has been my life purpose since I left a very successful career in the movie business to come back to the drum as a healing took for myself and many others and our culture. I wrote “Let the Goddess Dance” published by Llewellyn in 1999, later renamed “Drumming the Spirit to LIfe” to introduce the concept of creating a safe space in our culture for women to dance safely in ecstatic trance. When I started this teaching there was no safe place for the trance dance to bless and heal our culture. Now it has taken hold and I feel that we are destined for a better future. I still tour, performing at festivals and energy healing centers creating drumming affirmations that fit the needs of the people I am meeting. I use the grooves of my life long love of playing music in the R n B styles. Rock n Roll, Blues, Jazz, Folk, Emo, experimental, performance art. The late great Tim Buckley was one of my last musical partnerships in the Seventies and I was spoiled working with such a genius. So now the Sacred music is coming through everyone who drums with us. My extensive experience as a drummer, producer, musician, arranger in the music, film and TV biz plus my interest in healing modalities has set the bar for drumming as therapy. The HelmTone Healing Drum Protocols was the first method available for people wanting to implement a psychological healing tool that was a self empowering process using gorgeous djembes from Ghana. I am very proud of this current CD, “Ultimate Affirmations”. it is a distillation of over twenty five years of actual drumming therapy research and is also a very fun, swinging, groove based method to drum and heal. I used my experience with the classic Rhythm and Blues grooves which are powerful eternal rhythm patterns that have always been a method of survival and inspiration. This will connect you to your soulful self and remind you that life is for loving and living and dancing and singing. Share the Groove!

Dolphin Drumming Full Moon Cruise and drumming meditation workshops June 13, 14 15 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Friday and Sunday; Drumming Meditation at Longhouse on 49th St. in Gulfport, St. Pete. Starting at 7:30, cost is $25.

The Longhouse on 49th Street, Inc.
~A Healing Arts Centre~
727.322.5766 • info@longhouse.info

Saturday June 14. Dolphin Drumming full moon cruise at Dolphin Landings on St. Pete Beach. $75. kids half price. Be a the dock at 6 pm. 727.360.7411. You must be confirmed a day in advance!

The heart beats in six. That’s the general consensus… if you are counting. The six beat groove is very powerful, persuasive, momentum building, sweet, loving, swinging, deeply entrancing. Also six beat patterns can be aggressive. Its all in the way that you play it. The way that you feel it. The heartbeat would drop on the ONE beat then the THREE beat and the FOUR beat, then on the SIX beat then the ONE beat again. It is a loping kind of swing. Harmonic resonance creates a sympathetic and persuasive energy field in the Six Beat time signature that is very influential on our bodies and minds. We entrain to this groove differently.  Old School Jazz improvised a lot in the Six time signature, implying ragas, and long nights in the jungle. Max Roach always inspired me in his visual style of playing the drums. His rhythms were vivid. He could chew up a Six beat groove in ways that are still incomprehensible. But the heart can also beat in four. That is when it is working hard. Or feeling intensely. Al Green had those love grooves. They were played by the master drummer Al Jackson. His grooves are still magical. They are still loving. That is an eternal part of rhythm. Love is a groove that lives forever.

excerpt: “History of the Groove, Book Three” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 all rights reserved

The Universal Casino federated offered a competition with prize bonus for any race in any part of the universe to compete and design a winning race on a new planet using a genetic template. They could use a local hominid for the initial inception. The winner would be the surviving dominant race. The bonus prize is the planet itself where the competition took place. The next drumming CD will be instrumental with the theme of “Other World”.