We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Helen Henderson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Helen below.

Alright, Helen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

It was Los Angeles 2005. The big recession was looming. The disastrous Fannie May mortgage crisis was in full swing. Independent contractors, holistic healers, musicians, artists, writers, most self employed people, were rapidly losing income. Corporations were letting go of independent contractors and hiring their own workers, with part time hours and no benefits. I was performing at night with my own rock band, we were pretty good. I fronted the band and sang my own original material. We had just returned from Austria where I opened for Rod Stewart.
We played small clubs in LA alongside other great bands. It was a very happening, alive music scene.
I was a single mum from New Zealand with a ten year old daughter. I worked on call as a yoga teacher and massage therapist, to earn a living and supplement my music career. Music careers cost money to get off the ground. I was paying the musicians, the rehearsal spaces, recording studios, PR, post production, distribution, CD. Production etc.
I am a serious long term artist, and passionate about my music, I was willing to work hard and make sacrifices.
Free lance massage work was drying up in the hotels. There was a team of us on call who made very good money for twenty years and we were skilled body workers. The hotels stopped calling independent contractors. They built their own spas and cut out the middleman. They hired inexperienced massage students, fresh from school, and paid them a third of what we had been earning . In one year we all lost two thirds of our income. Co workers of mine of went bankrupt. It was a catastrophe. We quickly ran out of food and gas money. I swallowed my pride and started working in a hotel spa for much less money and terrible hours. The hotel did not care if you were going to school or had children to pick up from school etc.
One day they called us into a meeting. They said they were letting us all go and only rehiring the workers who would agree to less wages and non negotiable hours.
At the time I had written what I thought might be the best songs of my music career. I had plans to record them at FAME STUDIOS the legendary studio in Muscle Shoals Alabama, known as the cradle of Rock and Roll. We had a recording date and had raised money for the project. HR at the hotel told me in the meeting that if I was not available to work the spa on those dates they would not rehire me. I felt almost disembodied. Sitting there on the spot, a child to feed. Do I choose to stay in LA working long hours for peanuts in the spa, or do I take the plunge and risk everything to go make the record as planned. I chose to make the record. Turns out songs off that record “Twisting Wind” ended up on major American TV shows like “True Blood” Criminal Minds” Chicago Fire” and are still bringing me income today. Plus the city of Florence Alabama was open to attracting new creative talent, and the Chamber of Commerce helped me buy a house with no money down. That was 2005. The market crashed the next year. I still have the house and rent it out when I’m in LA .
I have lots of friends in Muscle Shoals on the banks of the “ Singing River” the mighty Tennesse. That record defined my music career and in 2019 l was inducted into the Southland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New Zealand.
I bought a little house in Bluff near my home town in New Zealand and spend time there and Muscle Shoals and Los Angeles.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I always wanted to sing and loved to write. I traveled to London from New Zealand and got a record deal with Ensign Records when I was 25 years old. Nigel Grainge from Ensign Records, signed Bob Geldoff and The Boomtown Rats, The Waterboys and Sinead OConnor. The recordings from Ensign Records lead me to Geffen Records in Los Angeles. John Lennon had just been signed to the label and I was about to meet him. But two weeks after I arrived we lost him to an assassin outside his hotel in New York. His record had been tanking, but became a hit record overnight. I got lost in the rush.
When the dust settled, I carried on with music. It was very hard and I tried to quit my Rock and Roll career. But I was too miserable without it. So it kind of became my life’s offering, my life’s work, regardless of any outcomes, fame, money, even acknowledgment. And somehow it paid off. In the words of Sting ( I’m a fan) Quote ” Know your human rights , be what you came here for.”
For me that about sums it up,

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

All change and progress comes from art.
Poetry, music,literature, painting, dance. Healing arts.
It seems all artists have had to suffer greatly for their art. Think Vincent Van Gogh and Mozart. I wish it was not this way. I would like there to be more legistlation and grants supporting and encouraging the arts and artists. Money and material things are not all there is to this world.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

What is most rewarding is to be a positive influence in the world and to up lift people with one’s music or art.
Plus the feeling of being fulfilled. To have had the courage , the drive and the discipline to develop ones talent and pursue one’s dream,

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.helenhendersonmusic.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kiwisiren?mibextid=wwXIfr&mibextid=wwXIfr
• Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/4L6DLy2eofEbTQ3F7
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0BC1lbU5sKDPY7bz5eiXu9?si=LVg3QpjbTtqIX7CDDNtINg

Image Credits

Lily Donnell
Helen Henderson