music
Musical
Healing
RETHINKING MUSIC THERAPY,
FORMER EUGENE MUSICIAN
REDEFINES MUSIC THEORY
By Will Kennedy
“J
ust think about what you
want to talk about,” Joey
Helpish tells me via a Facebook
message. Helpish, perhaps
better known to Eugene music fans
as Unkle Nancy, lives in Portland
now, where he operates Dandyland
Studios, plays music, teaches and offers a new service he
calls Song Therapy.
I’m about to try Song Therapy out for myself.
In a Song Therapy session, conducted entirely on a
Facebook chat video call, Helpish listens while you unload
your feelings, or whatever might happen to be on your
mind. While he’s listening, Helpish writes lyrics inspired
by your words, with your words woven into them, or using
your words in their entirety.
“Some examples of things that I’ve turned into songs
are the story of meeting a significant other, losing a loved
one, a traumatic experience, goals you have, who you have
become as a person, feelings you have been processing
or just how your week has been going,” Helpish says.
By the end of the session Helpish sings a song back to
you accompanied on ukulele, a manifestation of your wor-
ries and concerns. The song is uploaded to Soundcloud,
and you get a link to take the song with you.
I wasn’t sure exactly what I would talk about when
Helpish’s call came through on my cell phone. Helpish’s
round, grinning face with a pink knit cap on top appeared
on the screen, looking a bit like a baby with a whiskery chin.
After explaining to me how the process works, we got
started. The words came easily.
I talked about how school recently started for my
daughter, how she didn’t like school, and my own am-
bivalent feelings about conforming to such a flawed
public-school system in the first place.
I also talked about myself. Earlier in the week I’d
discovered a song called “Not” by a band called Big Thief,
and how the song had absolutely knocked me sideways.
It was the kind of song that made me fall in love with
music all over again, that made me want to make music
myself, but also, in some small way, the song made me
Illustration by Chelsea Lovejoy
hate music. Hate it, because I know, deep down inside,
I’d never be able to make music with such simmering
intensity and dark visceral beauty.
I rambled. Helpish listened. He told me to continue.
We talked about him. Helpish grew up in Newport. He
got a guitar when he was 12 and has been writing songs in
one form or another his entire life. His family was poor.
A friend’s family could afford piano lessons for their son,
and Helpish asked his friend to come directly to his house
right after each lesson to teach Helpish everything he’d
just learned.
“I had a community of church musicians. I started
hanging out with a lot of blues guys,” Helpish says. The
first chance he got, he moved to Eugene, where he built
a following with the vaudevillian acoustic punk of Unkle
Nancy. Helpish still performs occasionally with the proj-
ect, most recently on the Ninkasi Stage at this year’s
Whiteaker Block Party.
Eugene will always be home, Helpish says. He’s just the
kind of person that needs to move around a lot.
About a decade ago, Helpish decided to take Unkle
Nancy on the road, touring for three years straight. Life
on tour took a toll on his health. “Septic arthritis, bad
anxiety,” Helpish says. He was also diagnosed with As-
perger’s syndrome. “It all came crashing down on me,”
Helpish says.
To recuperate, Helpish moved to Portland and spent
a year and a half barely leaving his room. Soon, his
grandmothert's health declined, and he moved back to
the coast to care for her.
“This kind of miraculous thing happened. I took care
of her and I got better,” Helpish says.
After about 10 minutes my rant was over.
It was time for the next step in my Song Therapy ses-
sion. Helpish asked me to pick three or four emotions
from a list of seven emotions he calls “root motives” —
love, longing, sorrow, hope, power, despair and transition.
Seven emotions corresponding to the seven notes in
Western music’s octave, skipping the eighth since it’s just
the first note in the scale repeated an octave higher. After
choosing, Helpish then works the mnemonic backward,
turning the root motives into chord changes that then
dictate the melody of my song.
Not only does Song Therapy redefine music therapy,
it’s an ingeniously simple rethinking of traditional Western
music theory, a new way to explain the extremely outdated
language we use to talk about music, Helpish says.
The concept of root motives came to Helpish when he
heard middle C referred to as the sound of “love.”
“That’s bullshit!” he thought, because music, like
emotion, is relative. But the notion of music having a
direct corollary to human emotion stayed with him. He
assigned emotions to each note in the scale, and each
musical mode.
“It matches up with the seven modes of a major scale.
In a natural major, or Ionian [mode], love is the first chord.
In a natural minor or Aolian mode, despair is the one, love
is the third, and so on,” Helpish says.
Testing his theory against popular music, Helpish
discovered Chris Isaak’s hit ballad about unrequited
love, “Wicked Game,” is in Dorian mode, or in Helpish’s
system, longing — and if you’ve ever heard the song you
know longing is what that song is all about.
It was then that Helpish knew he was on to something,
and he began using this root motive system in his music
lessons.
“I have kids that understand music theory but in an
emotional way,” Helpish says.
It was just a matter of moments before Helpish was ready
to play me my song. It began with a sweet and sad ukulele
arpeggio, Helpish’s gruff, barrel-chested voice delivering
the line “feeling powerless under the weight of decision.”
I’m not sure if I said those words in my rant. But he
heard those words in what I said, and articulating them
back at me showed he was really listening, and to be
heard on that level sent an undeniable ripple of emotion
up through my chest and behind my eyes.
Helpish has worked with about 130 paying Song Ther-
apy clients, and he’d like to expand the service. Some
come to him weekly, and he’s also provided the service
as a form of obituary. Mostly, Song Therapy is about just
about listening, casting in sharp relief how little time we
spend really listening to each other in our everyday life.
Helpish calls it extreme listening and validation.
“You assume that everything they say is true. When you
take the time to do that, fucking magical things happen,”
Helpish says. ■
To book a Song Therapy session, search Joey Helpish on Facebook or
Instagram. The cost is $50 for a one-off, paid up front; rates available
for longer-term therapy.
541-344-1706
Located at 580 Adams St. on The Corner of 6th and Adams
DINE-IN | DELIVER | TAKE-OUT
www.CPYTHAI.com
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