Ed Helms on Bluegrass, Keg Parties, and the Bill Monroe Movie We're Dying to See

The Vacation star lives a second life full of banjo, whiskey, and pastoral poetics.

Ed Helms, star of this July's Vacation remake, met Jacob Tilove and Ian Riggs back when he was an Oberlin undergrad. They bonded the way college lads do: over drinking, jokes, and jamming as a bluegrass ensemble. When fate brought them to New York City, Helms, Tilove, and Riggs formalized their extracurricular as The Lonesome Trio and became regulars at Manhattan's Parkside Lounge.

Occupations took them in different directions over the years—Helms went off to Hollywood to become a movie star—but the trio persisted. Whenever they got together, they picked up their banjo, mandolin, and bass (respectively) to unearth their sweet, melodious repertoire.

Twenty-two years later, The Lonesome Trio finally has an album (simply titled The Lonesome Trio). Speaking to Esquire by phone, Helms says there's no particular reason why it took so long, this is just how show business works. One day you're swamped, the next you're sitting at home waiting for the next project to get greenlit, then, all of a sudden, you're cutting an album with two college buddies, because why not? Here, Helms reflects on the early days, shares The Trio's whiskeys of choice, and explains where his bluegrass and acting lives meet.

The Trio has played together for years. What do you each bring to the table?

It's hard to say. We all write songs and we all sing lead on different songs, and we all sing backup harmonies on other songs and it really is a communal effort. It always has been. Everything is very democratic, and whenever a new song comes to the table we just all agree to love it and get to work on it.

If it's democratic, how do you squeeze a song into existence and avoid talking it to death?

We'll all pitch in and contribute arranging our songs. To give it the trio treatment, we'll just start playing it together and finding harmonies together. We play it over and over again and see what feels right. We argue about how to end it or how this harmony should go, or where the solo breaks go, all those little details.

According to the official Lonesome Trio bio, the proto-group played "basement keg parties all over Oberlin." Were they wild?

Yeah. It was a lot of people fighting over Kafka and what he really was trying to communicate with The Metamorphosis. That was as wild as keg parties got at Oberlin.

The bio also notes that the three of you came together over a love for whiskey. What does The Lonesome Trio drink?

Back then, it was whatever we could afford, which was Wild Turkey or some horrible Old Overholt. Bottom-of-the-barrel. Good rye whiskeys are usually what we'll have before a show. Bulleit Rye is a favorite.

There's a line in one of your songs that's pretty dark: "It's all gone to Hell." Are you drawing from your Hollywood experiences or the legacy of bluegrass?

I wrote that song. The chorus of it goes, "I know it's all gone to hell. Who's to blame? I can't even tell. For a while, it all seemed so well, but now it's all gone to hell." It's just a relationship comment. There are certain relationships in our lives that implode, and it can feel really inexplicable and terrifying. You don't know why, and sometimes relationships end for reasons that one person keeps from the other person, and it's just totally unclear, and it just goes south and it's heartbreaking. It's more a specific relationship context, rather than just like "it's all gone to hell."

Do you turn to your past for musical inspiration? Making movies doesn't seem to offer much in the way of bluegrass fodder.

I feel like I don't so much write about any Hollywood stuff, but it's not because it's Hollywood. I just feel like that's work! That's my day job. In the same way that I don't feel like an accountant who plays bluegrass at night wouldn't be writing songs about accounting, necessarily. They could, who knows? Maybe I could write some Hollywood work-related songs.

A Hangover concept album.

Right. The subject matter of acting in Hollywood doesn't lend itself to the idiom of bluegrass.

Have you considered making a bluegrass movie?

As a matter of fact, I have. I didn't mount it, but there was a project that was around for a little while based on Bill Monroe's life called Can't You Hear Me Calling and it just couldn't emerge from the grinding gears of Hollywood financing. That didn't come to light, or it hasn't yet, but that's a really, really cool movie and it would be neat to make.

You've performed the songs on this album for many years, but only now did you find time to record them. Movies work the same way—you've been attached to this summer's Vacation remake for years and now it's upon us. How many plates do you have to spin to keep working in show business?

That's sort of the nature. Things are just grinding and grinding, and you're trying to move the ball forward and trying to move the ball forward, and then suddenly, "Bam!" It goes, it happens. It may be grinding for years, or it may be grinding for a month. In this case, an album, or in the case of Vacation, any time it actually happens is a miracle. Everything leading up to it is just reality. That's just the daily grind of trying to produce creative output and get financing for it and all just the slog of effort that goes in behind it. But when it actually happens, it's a miracle. Or a matrix of miracles.

Speaking of long-gestating projects, you've been attached to a Naked Gun remake for a few years. Could it suddenly come to fruition?

The gears are turning. Or, I should say, churning. It's unclear. It doesn't have a start date or anything like that, but I sure hope it gets one. Definitely still in the hopper.

Sooner than another Lonesome Trio album?

Yeah. Hopefully it's not another twenty till the next one.

The Lonesome trio's self-titled album is out now.

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