During my binge-watch of the entirety of The Office this past year — I am late to game sorry — I fell even more in love with the humor of Ed Helms whom I had seen on screen plenty of times but for some ridiculous reason hadn’t given too much of my attention too — rookie mistake.
Well, another thing we have all been sleeping on is the bonafide musical talents of Helms.
Sure we have seen him sing and play the banjo on The Office and sing and play both the piano and guitar in The Hangover series, but aside from those brief moments, I stumbled upon the fact that since college, Helms has been in a bluegrass band with a couple of friends.
The Lonesome Trio, composed of Helms, Ian Riggs and Jacob Tilove have been together since their days at Oberlin and they even released a debut album in 2015. And I am here for it!
The album is so good and you need to drop everything and go listen to immediately My only regret is that I wish I had known about this album and band sooner because it is such a pleasure to listen to — especially on the vinyl copy, I ended up buying.
Not only is this album everything you could want in an album and more, but there is something that gives it even more of a bonus. What is the bonus of this already incredible album you are probably asking yourself?
It was recorded in Asheville, N.C. Now as someone who currently loves and lives in N.C this fact really excited me. And yes, Wilmington and Asheville are on opposite ends of the state, but I still have statewide pride. It also breaks the pattern of most albums being recorded in LA, New York City or Nashville.
There is a great mix of your good ole’ boot-stomping typical bluegrass tunes like “Asheville City Skyline” and “Pigeon’s Foot” along with the slower tunes of “The House Song (Sung By a House) and “Mr.Fortune”.
My personal favorites, if you care to know, are “Rising Tide of Love” and “Asheville City Skyline” because one is a beautiful song about falling in love and the other is a song about Asheville, N.C.
Outside of the release of this — so far — solo album, Helms has performed on many stages like Bonaroo and The Bluegrass Situation (the LA bluegrass festival Helms headed up himself). Helms has even appeared in the Mumford and Sons music video for “Hopeless Wanderer” alongside Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte and Jason Bateman. All of these and more can be found through a quick Google or YouTube search — DO IT!
While bluegrass may not be a genre of music all people typically flock to — myself included — this album is worth the lesson and at the end of the day I think we can all agree Helms is a funny guy worth supporting musically.
[Header courtesy of Spotify.com]
[Gifs courtesy of Giphy.com]