As a band/entity, HEELS has always stuck to its guns – until now.
Founded as an all-acoustic duo in 2015, guitarist/vocalist Brennan Whalen and drummer Josh McLane defiantly chose to eschew the convention of having a bass player from the very beginning.
“Being a two-piece is really nice,” said Whalen, in a 2015 Memphis Flyer interview. “Practice is easy to schedule, there’s less equipment, and we can really do whatever we want creatively. I definitely see utilizing electric instruments on future recordings and live shows, but I don’t see us adding another member. We’ve just really got something between the two of us that I wouldn’t want to risk.”
For roughly a decade, the band stayed true to those words. HEELS did in fact go electric two years later, and even went so far as to record bass parts and other flourishes in the studio, but they never added a new bandmate.
“Most people suck,” says McLane. “Brennan and I have been in a bunch of bands that end up being more of a committee meeting. He and I can kind of read each other’s mind and have a good thing going.”
“But we needed a change.”
That change came in the form of the new third member of HEELS, bass player Buddy Forbess.
“Buddy is Jack Torrence in the picture at the end of The Shining,” says Whalen. “He’s always been in HEELS, he just didn’t know it. We had talked about wanting him to join years ago, but the time wasn’t right for everybody. It all just gelled perfectly when the time was right.”
The moment presented itself earlier this year, as the duo was preparing for sessions at High/Low Recording with producer Toby Vest.
“When the time came to see who would play (bass), he was available so we struck,” says Whalen. “We asked him during the first practice we played with him.”
“They didn’t ask me, ” says Forbess. “They told me!”
Now, it could be said that Forbess, despite being a talented musician and veteran of bands such as Nights Like These, Special Agent Cooper, and most recently, Pressed, was a surprising choice for HEELS – mainly because, previous to now, he wasn’t a bass player.
“Nope, I hadn’t played bass in any other bands,” says Forbess, who is known as a skilled guitarist and drummer. “It completely caught me off guard, but I welcomed it wholeheartedly.”
And, as it turns out, Forbess can play the bass just fine. He clicked with HEELS almost instantly, and his steady rumble is the perfect compliment to HEELS’ pop ferocity on the new album We Look Happy Here.
“Buddy is an incredible musician who gets directly in the pocket and knows when to add and when to lay back, as well as offering low end that, fine, I will admit, we’ve been missing,” says Whalen.
In addition to being HEELS’ first offering as a trio, We Look Happy Here is also the band’s debut release on vinyl – which, according to the band, was a long-awaited achievement unto itself.
“Josh asked me if this was my first time on vinyl when we were planning it, and I had to remind him that until I met up with him I had never had a band with a t-shirt,” says Whalen. “ I’m so excited to have the vinyl out. I used to be an avid collector and have been feeling the itch again lately.”
“We’ve always wanted to release on vinyl but this time we made it a mandate,” adds McLane. “This is all of our first and that makes it doubly special.”
Most importantly – the album’s content is classic HEELS: brutal-but-catchy punk with its heart on its sleeve.
“We’ve never been happier,” says McLane. “The record rips and it’s exactly what we wanted when we started.”
by J.D. Reager.
A version of this article originally appeared in the Shangri-La Records email newsletter.
Purchase the new HEELS LP here.
