Helix - Old School

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	Coming Back With Bigger Guns	03:50
	2	Whiskey Bent and Hellbound	04:02
	3	If Tears Could Talk	03:46
	4	Your Turn To Cry	02:49
	5	Tie Me Down	03:04

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Closer to You	03:48
	2	Games Mother Never Taught You
	3	Southern Comfort
	4	Hound Dog Howlin' Blues
	5	Cheers

Photos

Videos

No Video

Information/Write-up

The Old School album came about quite by accident. In 2018, I was cleaning out the basement closet at Planet Helix. What I found were various tapes I had almost forgotten about, 2”, 1/4” and a huge box of cassette tapes. I was going to throw out the 2” tapes until I got a call from my old friend Greg Godovitz who recognized the value of those tapes. Greg made me take a serious look at what I had and I realized there was at least a whole album of unreleased material, and so the idea of “Old School” was born. Incidentally, none of these tracks were ever released, although some might have been on our website as “rare tracks” in the past.

We were able to extract three of the songs from the 2” tape which were recorded for the “Back For Another Taste” sessions in 1989: “Games Mother Never Taught You”, “Tie Me Down” and “Your Turn To Cry.” Paul Hackman is playing guitar and singing on these tracks. To extract these recordings from the 2” tapes we had to take the tapes to Beach Studios outside of Goderich, Ontario and get Siegfried Meier to thermally bake them. Upon doing so, the tracks were immediately transfered to digital. Later they were mixed by Siegfried, some with minor overdubs by Daryl Gray. One other track, “Cheers” was taken from a cassette tape and cleaned up by Siegfried as well. The song is a live recording off the floor in the studio.

The other tracks on the album, “If Tears Could Talk”, “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound”, “Southern Comfort”, “Closer”, “Coming Back With Bigger Guns” and “Hound Dog Howlin’ Blues” were recorded by ‘tracing’ the songs from the cassette tapes. This was done because the songs were either unfinished or the cassettes were in bad shape. The re-recording was done by Daryl at the Dawghause Studios in St. Chatherines. Daryl is also the producer of the album. Over the fall and spring of 2018/2019 Kaleb, Fritz, Chris and myself traveled to the studio to add parts and advise Daryl on how we heard the songs. By April 2019 we were ready to take the tracks to Siegfried to mix with the help of Daryl and myself. The result is now before you.

This album is DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF PAUL HACKMAN, who played on three of the tracks and was co-writer on eight of the tracks. He was/is a Canadian music icon.
-Brian Vollmer

The album was produced by Helix's longtime bass player Daryl Gray and mixed by Juno award winning Siegfried Meier. Mastered by Harry Hess of Harem Scarem. Three of the tracks were recorded for the Back for Another Taste album but never released and have Paul Hackman playing guitar on them.

Brian Vollmer: lead vocals
Paul Hackman: guitar
Kaleb Duck: guitar
Daryl Gray: bass
Greg Hinz: drums

Written by Paul Hackman
Produced by Daryl Gray
Executive producers: Brian Vollmer and Bill Bafford

Album design and layout by Scott Waters

Comments