Grooveshark

The Helio Sequence is a Portland based band that takes pride in performing incredibly exuberant live shows. So imagine their disappointment when singer Brandon Summers so thoroughly obliterated his vocal chords that even speaking became an exceedingly painful endeavor. When Summers was ordered by his doctor to cease singing for 2 months he began to rethink his outlook on both his help and the band in general.

Summers and best friend/drummer Benjamin Weikel returned to the studio in 2007 to record what would be their 4th album Keep Your Eyes Ahead. With a newfound discipline and keener ear for pop melody, Keep Your Eyes Ahead symbolized a startling breakthrough for the band. The result of a prolonged stint in the studio, Keep Your Eyes Ahead finds The Helio Sequence delving into extraordinary new arenas of sound. Their signature layers of keyboards and massive guitars are still there, but the songs feature a restrained quality not yet seen in a Helio Sequence album.

We caught up with Brandon after The Helio Sequence performed a phenomenal set here in Gainesville. With their incredible cover of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” still ringing in our ears, we spoke to Brandon about Keep Your Eyes Ahead, the pain that came from shredding his vocal chords, and a litany of other subjects. The transcript comes after the drop…

Grooveshark: The highlight for me tonight, other than Tomorrow Never Knows was “Broken Afternoon”. That’s a very Dylan-esque song, and I know when you lost your voice you listened to a lot of Dylan. How much of an Influence was Dylan on the way you approached the songwriting for Keep Your Eyes Ahead?

Brandon: The Dylan influence for me was more about the way I looked at songs. Basically as I was building my voice back up again, the way that I was doing that was just playing with my acoustic guitar and singing. And it wasn’t just Bob Dylan, it was a lot of old folk stuff and a lot of oldtime music. Any song that I heard that I really liked I would just take and say “I’m going to get that under my fingers and I’m going to learn how to sing that.”

So I just went through singing tons of different songs and from that I just kind of learned to look at a song differently. I learned to look at the skeleton of things and the bare bones of things and fill things up from a really lyrical point instead of going in and jamming on something and having an instrumental and then laying vocals over the top of It. What it is for me, and I’m sure that just because I’ve listened to so many different things, Bob Dylan being one of them, that that’s just going to come out in the expression of a song that I write.

Grooveshark: Definitely. And I know you literally couldn’t speak during the day time because you wanted to save your voice. That has to really alter your perspective on how you view the world. How did that necessarily influence the way you viewed things as far as material for song writing?

Brandon: Well I mean the point at which I couldn’t speak was a really low time. I was really just questioning a lot of things. It was a really bad time. It was a really dark time. After I came out of that I could kind of see a little more clearly again and I was looking back at that time and thinking “Oh, what was going on?”. But there’s something to be said for not being able to speak, or sing especially. It allowed me to focus on things.

Grooveshark: I can imagine. You guys are in the midst of a pretty long tour. How have the audiences reacted to the Keep Your Eyes Ahead material as opposed to your older stuff? There’s some pretty marked differences in sound there.

Brandon: The shows have been awesome. I feel like a lot of people already know the new record and everything fits well so when we play live and it all makes sense, you know? I think… that’s what I want. You know that’s what both Ben and I should want is to have a show that’s really varied and goes through a lot of different places because it gets boring just to sit there and watch a band play a bunch of rock tunes for an hour and a half. So it’s good.

Grooveshark: The video for Keep Your Eyes Ahead is really interesting. What was the overarching concept you guys had for it with all the LED lights and being on the back of a flatbed truck throughout?

Brandon: The concept came from Whitey McConnaughy who directed the video. He’d been talking to us for years about wanting to direct a video and he just happened to get this idea. Such a part of Helio Sequence has to do with seeing us live in concert and he just didn’t want to shoot traditional live footage. He thought he’d make it more interesting. At the same time it was really an opportunity to showcase Portland as a city because it is a really cool place and it’s probably one of the few big cities where you can just go around and shoot like we did without a permit. We just set up in the middle of the road and it was all just done DIY. We just had a bunch of friends and people from other bands in Portland come by and help us out and different people welded the trailer together. You know it was just like a concert for anybody. It was kind of the overarching theme in our video.

Grooveshark: I know you guys just got done with a UK tour and also hit Scandinavia, right? How did they typically react to the band as opposed to US audiences?

Brandon: My limited experience of Europe, so far, has been that people are a little more reserved over there. But that probably has to do with the fact that we’re a little more unknown in the UK and Scandinavia. It was a little bit of a different kind of a tour because we were touring with Low and they have a very low key kind of aesthetic. We were playing in theaters and sit down venues and churches. So it was like a very formal affair and I think I’ll know a little bit more how Europe is when we go over there and actually play some more rock shows.

Grooveshark: When you’re on a really long tour, what steps do you take to ensure that you don’t damage your voice? Do you have a different routine than you’ve had in the past.

Brandon: Oh yeah. I’m pretty religious about warming up my voice now. I drink a lot of tea and just take care of myself. I don’t drink very much on tour anymore because it just catches up with you. It’s fun and I’m all for hanging out and drinking and stuff but when you’re on the road it can get to you. In this case we’re on a six week tour. There were two weeks before that, and then four weeks before that. So drinking every night…

Grooveshark: Probably not a good idea. To round it out, you guys were on The Jimmy Kimmel Show and it was the highest rated episode in the history of the show. Because of The Helio Sequence, no doubt?

Brandon: (laughs) I think it had more to do with that Matt Damon skit…

Grooveshark: Oh, you were on “I’m fucking Matt Damon”!

Brandon: Yeah. We were on that episode, luckily. So they re-ran it and everything.

Grooveshark: Oh yeah, I’ve watched that clip on youtube several times. That’s great luck.

Brandon: Yeah, 8 million other people. Or probably 80 million.

Grooveshark: That’s so cool. How was that experience for you both?

Brandon: It’s really good. It’s really stressful. Everything moves really quickly. There’s all these stages where they’re like:

“OK, now we’re sound checking. OK, now we’re light checking. Take 5. OK, now we’re coming back to do the second sound check. Take 10. Now we’re going back to do the tech check.”

Just all these endless sound checks and then when it really comes time to do the performance it’s all on the roll and they rush you into this room and they count you down 10 seconds and suddenly you’re just on and you go out and just do it.

• Posted in Interviews