It’s been a busy few years for Canada’s Scott Helman. He moved to LA, got engaged, released 4 singles, and is embarking on his first headline tour since 2019. We caught up with Helman at his mom’s house between rehearsals for the "Back Together" tour that kicks off in Calgary November 29^th and Edmonton November 30^th.

"It's been a really long time. I mean, I'm honestly shocked and people are coming because it's been so long. So, it's just going to be awesome to get out and play songs and meet everyone again and all that. So yeah, can't wait. It was really just about getting back on stage, and I just wanted it to be really intimate, but still feel super fun in full band. I played some little acoustic shows in LA just to dust off the rust. And I did six shows and by the sixth show, I didn't even have a plan. I was kind of just vibing, but I think I just want to try to connect as deeply as I can with these people that have stuck with me, or if they're new, I just really want to connect with everybody. So, I'm just going to focus on doing that and the best way to do that. And it'll be a process, but I can't wait."

When Helman last spoke to GayCalgary.com, the then 20-year-old was just starting to make waves with the song Bungalow. Two full length albums, 2 Eps and multiple singles later, we wondered what the 27-year-old would tell his younger self.

"I would maybe tell him to just try to enjoy it. I just think when you're young, it's so easy to get caught up in the future, and I still struggle with that today. But I think the biggest thing is I look back on those times so fondly and maybe at the time I was experiencing stress or anxiety or worrying about where I was going to end up, but I feel like I've hit all the highs and all the lows since then. I've experienced so many changes and so many kinds of successes and failures that it's like the successes when they happen, they're great, but it's really not what it's about. And the failures, they don't hurt as much as you think they will. I think ultimately when you're in the moment, you're like, oh wow, this is what I was so afraid of, or I was so excited for. It's not quite what you think. And so, I think just to enjoy the road and the process is really something that I believe in now, but I don't really believe in regrets. I'm glad. I feel like if it wasn't for my mindset back then I wouldn't have learned what I learned."

Spending your 20’s in the spotlight can be challenging for anyone. Helman has avoided a lot of the pitfalls of the music industry.

"I would be lying if I said I had any of that figured out. I don't really know. I think I figured out some stuff. I definitely think that for me, it's really important to stay connected to my friends and family and be part of the world. And I guess I say that a lot to myself. I don't really know what that means, but I think it means something. Like for me, it's very easy for me to disassociate and not feel connected to the world around me, especially because I have ADD and I've been told by friends is sometimes I'm not present. I think just reconnecting to the world around me and grounding myself in the spaces I'm in or in the groups of people that I'm in and really trying to be present is super important. And I think the other thing too is just trying to take a second now. I used to be very reactionary. Stimulus would come in and I would express immediately, and I'm trying to learn how to really be patient with my feelings because it's just too much for me. I think that a lot of artists, it's like you think because your job as an artist, when I'm in a writing session, that's what it's like for me. It's like music is coming at me and I'm just regurgitating my art as quickly as I can. But the problem is that I thought that in order to be an artist that needed to spill over into every aspect of your life, and I think that that's actually the most dangerous thing about being an artist. People think they need to be an artist all the time, and I think that that's really bad. I actually think that not doing that and reserving that expression for the time that you make art is better for your art because you hold back that reactionary attitude, that impulse to just react to the world around you hold that dam back and then when you start making art, you all of a sudden you break it and it's like boom. And it just happens so much easier and so much more honestly. So those are two things I've learned."

Helman will be releasing Collarbone his fifth single this year, shortly. It’s breaking the traditional model of recording an album and releasing singles.

"Part of it was I have so much music that I feel ready to drop an album at any point, but I really wanted to. just because Covid happened, and it felt I was starting a beginning. It was like, okay, here's a new chapter. And that's the way that I did it. The first time I did it, I just started putting out songs and then I kind of aggregated them into sort of a record. But it was exciting to me to just kind of see what people see, what they maybe didn't resonate with as much. Put out one song that I love, put out one song that I know my label really likes, just kind of mess around with the platforms just to express freely. Also, there's all kinds of things behind the scenes going on when you're making records, there's record deals and there's legal, there's a whole other part of being an artist that consumers don't usually see."

Helman cringes when it’s joked that he abandoned Canada to move to Los Angeles.

"Oh, the word abandoned hurts. I would never abandon Canada and I won't. It’s so funny because when I was living in Toronto, I was like, I feel like I need to go to LA a certain amount of times in a year just to be a part of the music scene and be in the mix. And now that I live in LA I'm like, I need to come back to Toronto at least a couple times a year for my sanity. And also, because it's been my home, I don't think I'll ever call LA my home. I love Toronto so deeply and Canada actually, if I'm being honest. But yeah, it is crazy. I mean, it's so funny because on one hand the ceiling of talent and fame and success and all that stuff is so high, but also there's so many people making art that you do also feel at home if you find the right community of people. I think it's really just about perspective. And obviously a lot of people move to LA and lose perspective. That is not my intention, and I really don't feel that. I mean, of course there's an element of moving to LA where you're like, you're 15 minutes away from meeting someone that could change your life or do something amazing for you. I've never really resonated with those ideas because I think they lead to a sad life. I don't want to spend my life waiting for that person to come along. I want to work hard. I want to make art that I love as long as I can. There's just so many talented people there. Not that they're more talented, but there's just more of them because it's a bigger city and it's the center of American culture. The only reason I moved there was just because there's just more stuff going on. It's not better. In fact, I would argue that Canadian art and culture is better. I think that we have incredible artists here and amazing culture."

Helman has also done some incredible covers, including Hozier’s Take me to Church, The Tragically Hip’s Bobcaygen, and a duet of The Cure’s Love Song with Jann Arden.

"If I wasn't making music for myself, I'd be making music for others. And if I wasn't doing that, I'd probably be some kind of, I don't know. I just love music. I've always really connected to music history, and I just think it's baffling that we've really only been listening to and creating recorded music for a hundred years or so. And if you think about the grand scheme of art, if art originated 10,000 years, whenever the art of recording music is such a new thing. And I think that that's so strange and interesting, and I really, because there's so much of it and there's, in just that short period of time, we've created some of the most, in my opinion, beautiful works forever. So, it's just such a fun way to connect to music I love, and it also just illuminates how malleable artists and music is. You can take a song and you can change one chord, or you can sing it a different way and it changes the entire thing. So yeah, it's just a blast and it's really just what I'm doing anyways in my bedroom."

Helman loves tattoos, and started offering poke and machine tattoos out of shops in Toronto and LA.

"I started tattooing myself and then I started tattooing friends, and then when I moved to LA, I started kind of meeting people through tattoos because people I'd meet, I'd be like, I love your tattoos. And then they find out I do them. And then slowly I just started tattooing people that I would meet, and then I made an Instagram page for it because I would meet people and they'd be like, can I see your work? So, I'd be, it'd easier to just have an Instagram. Then I had a couple beers one night and I was like, I'll just post it on my artist page, whatever. Then the next day there were 500 people that wanted tattoos in Toronto. So, I was like, oh wow, okay, I guess I'm going to go tattoo my fans in Toronto, which I did. Before I tattooed anybody that I didn't know, I got my blood work certification. I've always just been a musician, but it's such a nice way to have such a nice outlet and I get to meet fans, which is so nice and such a pleasure for me. I get to find out who people are and what they're into and what's going on in their lives. But also, I'm aware of the fact that if I got tattooed by an artist I love, that would be so wild. It would be such a cool thing. And I feel so privileged people to give people that experience. It's such a cool gift to give someone that time with me is really cool."

Helman’s music has become a soundtrack for many people’s lives in he past 8 years. That soundtrack will be live in person and Helman is looking forward to a night of recognizable singles with some new songs mixed in.

"I think that we're playing some new music that isn't released and a couple of songs I'm really, really excited about. I'm putting Collarbone out in a couple weeks, and I think that song's really special." Which songs will be his next hits? "I've stopped trying to predict it. I have was a B-side off my first album called Sweet Tooth, and it's my highest streamed song on Spotify now, and I have no idea why. I've spent three years trying to figure it out."

Helman jokes that his life resembles a romantic comedy, which has been seen in his songwriting. He and his longtime girlfriend broke up, which can be heard in songs like Everything Sucks and Everytime (Drive By). They reconciled and Helman recently got permission from the owners of his old house to return to the roof where he and his girlfriend would sit and talk in their youth to propose. That’s the sort of person Scott Helman is, which is part of why people have connected with him as fans.

"I'm an extremely dramatic human being. So that's all pretty much just because of that. But I think also, it's funny, so much of making music and art in general is reflective or predictive. Very rarely do I write about something I'm currently going through because it's too confusing. I don't know how to process the present unless it's a purely emotional thing. Every time was a song, I wrote about a previous breakup with the person I was currently with. And when I set out to release it, I was like, I don't really know how to make a music video this authentically because I'm not heartbroken right now. I mean, I'm engaged. I'm actually deeply in love, in a super happy relationship. So how do I express this heartbreak without pretending to be heartbroken? And that's where the idea of just telling the whole story came from because I thought it was so cool to be able to contextualize that for people and give it even more meaning. And so, in that way, I feel like it is influencing my art in a really special way. It just kind of forces me to ask myself how I made this song about the past or about the future, but I'm in the present, so how do I make that make sense for people? And I like that challenge."

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