INTERVIEW: Surf’s up with Guitarmy of One’s Scott Helland
Photo: Scott Helland’s new Guitarmy of One album is called The Wave Files. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Shameless Promotion with permission.
It’s hard to overstate the influence and impact of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter when it comes to bringing indie visions to life. These platforms, which offer fans the chance to directly fund their favorite projects, has given a lifeline to many musicians, authors and artists. Numerous projects wouldn’t happen without this vital fan input. Case in point: Scott Helland recorded his new Guitarmy of One album thanks to crowdfunding, and now his listeners have a chance to hear some twangy tunes on The Wave Files, out now from EA Recordings.
“I started a campaign I think in May,” Helland said in a recent interview. “It went from May to June to fund the recording. I had a bunch of stuff already done, and I have a great engineer who’s like, ‘Sure, pay me later.’ So the Kickstarter thing worked out great, and it raised all the funds that we needed to do the record, to do the recording, to do any PR and a couple videos. So that’s where Kickstarter is amazing for independent artists to just make things happen, and fans are amazing. The support is pretty cool.”
One of the singles off the new record is called “Soylent Seafoam Green,” a funky, eco-inspired tune that feels like a surf rock party in a sci-fi film. For Helland, the guitar riff came first for the song. “It’s kind of a dark, surfy riff, and for some reason the movie [Soylent Green] kind of popped in my head,” he said. “And I came up with the title ‘Soylent Seafoam Green.’ It just kind of all fit together, but this thing really happens organically. I’m always playing guitar. … So I just come up with riffs and ideas. I record them into my phone — whether I’m on the road, in a hotel, at home — and it just kind of blossoms.”
Hollywood Soapbox caught Helland on the road in Europe. He was touring with Samantha Stephenson; together they make up the post-punk duo Frenchy and the Punk. Helland is a man of many projects. There’s Guitarmy of One, Frenchy and the Punk, and all of the previous bands he’s been in. His early days in the industry were actually spent in the punk rock and thrash metal scenes. Nowadays he may have slowed his style a bit, but that punk attitude is still present and accounted for, harkening back to his days in Outpatients, Deep Wound, School of Violence and Darkside NYC.
“All those different styles I’ve played in is going over a long time, 30-something years or so,” Helland said. “When I started out, I was totally into the hardcore punk thing and punk rock and thrash metal, and then after a while being in those bands, I wanted to expand my horizons musically. So again I feel like that’s an organic thing. I wanted to experiment with more acoustic-based music. … I still feel like there’s a common thread through it all: It’s guitar-based. There is some grit and some oomph and maybe not aggression, but even the surf stuff has some power and that riffage that has stayed with me through the punk stuff, too. I don’t think there’s any conscious thing. I wrote The Spy Detective Collective, which is my previous record, and that had kind of a spy-surfy kind of sound. This new record, The Wave Files, definitely has more of a surf sound. I wrote the songs, but I definitely wanted the record to have more of that surf twang to it.”
Helland, who is not a surfer, loves surf rock nonetheless. He counts himself a fan of the Ventures, perhaps the most famous surf rock band of all time, but again he’s not solely in love with one genre. Other bands and influences take him in various (and wonderful) musical directions.
“Once I heard the Ramones in 1980, I’m like, oh, this is what I want to do, nothing else,” he said. “I’ll tell you though, the first song I fell in love with as a kid was the Hawaii Five-0 theme, the Ventures version and the TV show version, and I just thought that was really cool. And I think that’s what started my interest in instrumental music because those shows like The Prisoner and The Avengers and all that stuff had really cool themes. Even The Rockford Files from the late-’70s / early-’80s I saw as a little kid. They had interesting theme songs. … I think the Hawaii Five-0 theme really kicked it off for me, and then when I got into punk, there were bands like Agent Orange from Southern California. They did a cover of ‘Pipeline,’ which is a great surfy kind of tune. It was always in the back of my head.”
With so much guitar playing to his name, one would think Helland has played the electric or acoustic guitar his entire life, but actually he first came to music playing another instrument. “My first instrument was actually bass guitar, and it was totally from hearing the Ramones,” Helland said. “I heard the Ramones on the radio, flipping through the dial as a kid. I listened to the radio … and I heard ‘Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio?’ by the Ramones. Wow, what is this? So I bought a record. I dove head first into it. My older brother was a guitar player, so I thought, all right, I’m going to be a bass player. So my first instrument was bass, and I didn’t switch to guitar until 1995 when I wanted to write songs and have more of a melodic instrument for writing songs and that kind of thing.”
Helland, who will play this weekend at Dragon Con in Atlanta, summed up his love of guitar music this way: “I just pick up a guitar and just play, and riffs come out. Luckily, it just kind of flows. I do write riffs every day. It’s something I don’t want to turn off. I’ve got to have some downtime sometimes, but I’m not the person that can go to the beach and just hang out. I have to have a guitar close by.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Scott Helland’s new Guitarmy of One album is The Wave Files, now available from EA Recordings. Click here for more information.
