Saving One Man’s Movement – A Convo with Fellow Music Blogger William Ruben Helms

There is no person I’ve bumped into more at shows than William Ruben Helms.

In the above photo we’re flanking two members of the band Blushing at a New Colossus Festival show at Arlene’s Grocery in 2022.

A fellow music journalist, and blogger, he’s also a photographer, and is always equipped with his giant backpack filled with equipment.

Once his job is done for the night, a Guinness has been known to take the place of a camera in his hands.

Over the past 15 years we’ve gone from colleagues to friends, and I greatly respect the work he does. This is why when he announced his self-run music blog, The Joy of Violent Movement, had run into issues, and would be going on hiatus, I wanted to do something to help.

How does a writer help another writer? Through writing, of course!

I said – let’s hop on Zoom for an interview. We can talk about everything going on with JOVM, and have some of the discussions we have at shows in a more public venue to let people know what we do, and why your website is so important, and needs to come back.

Helms openly admits, “The last week has felt weird, because the site has been so much a part of me.”

While the site has been a major part of his adult life, music has been a part of his life practically from day one. “I’ve been obsessed, and I mean deeply obsessed, with music since I was a toddler. My mom has told me, and told friends, and girlfriends about how when I was like two I would be in a crib humming Miles Davis’ ‘You’re Under Arrest.’ This is my life.”

This conversation is what his life, and website are about, and is also a peek into our lives as (mostly) indie music bloggers.

Let’s start with the basics – let people know how long The Joy of Violent Movement has been around, and what happened to cause it to go down. 

I’ve been a freelance journalist off and on for the better part of 20 years. The Joy of Violent Movement’s been around for 15 (years), and some months.

When I started it 15 years ago, it was kind of a side thing while working full time. I was able to support it doing a couple of full time jobs working in publishing.

Simply put, I ran out of money, and people need to understand that there’s not a lot of money to be made off this.

Twenty years ago there were more publications, it was easy to kind of hustle and grind your way to make some extra money. Now it’s like, what, five major publications, or something like that, six publications. They have their stable of writers. It’s very hard to get a shot.

If I was a business person I would have quit this a long time ago.

It sounds like your initial spark to launch your site kind of mirrors my initial spark to launch mine. Adam’s World started as basically a writing exercise while I was freelancing for other places. 

Mine’s a little different. I had a dispute with an editor about covering an artist who we both know, Homeboy Sandman, and I started Joy of Violent Movement so I didn’t have to have stupid conversations and fights with editors about what I wanted to cover. It gave me the freedom to cover anything that caught my ear.

Increasingly, my taste got more and more eclectic, more global.

Tank and the Bangas at Brooklyn Bowl. Photo: William Ruben Helms

That’s a way in which we’re similar, we like to focus on the artists that we want to write about. I also feel like both of us tend to go for the more outside the box artists that aren’t necessarily getting coverage elsewhere. 

Yeah. There’s a great joy in that, and I love being able to be the “You heard it here first guy,” or amongst the wave of “You heard it here first” people. It’s much more rewarding.

I had somebody reach out to me when I made the announcement about Joy Violent Movement (going on hiatus), they were an industry person, and they were like, “You know, you don’t know how many lives you’ve changed just by what you do.”

There was one year with the Grammys, I was like, oh, I wrote about two of the nominees. They didn’t get that award, but I knew them, and I wrote about them. That was kind of like their ground floor.

What role do you think we fill in the music world in 2025? 

You know, I’m trying … I’m not going to be political about it.

I think, particularly if you’re an independent journalist, one of the things that comes up is that you look at the bigger sites, and they cover a lot of the same acts in the same perspective, and that gets kind of boring.

For a long time there was this thing about these sites, and these other journalists not putting their neck out there for things they believe in. I think someone like me, and like you, it’s real deep music discovery, particularly if you’re a music nerd, or really really passionate about finding cool things.

As a parallel to this, I also feel like the number of writers and photographers at shows has dwindled. 

That depends on who you’re going to see.

If you’re going to shows at Arlene’s Grocery, or places like that, it’s dwindled. If you’re going to like Brooklyn Steel, or a Music Hall of Williamsburg – and it's artist dependent – I’ve gone to shows where like half the room is photographers. It’s because a lot of times you’re getting people chasing after the same things. You know, hive mind, everybody’s running after idols. Everybody’s running after The National, but everybody’s running after them, covering them over and over again the same ways.

I think that our strength is … it’s our own thoughts, our own lives, our own perspectives in it, and it’s a lot of deep thought about what that song, that album, that artist means to us, how it relates to us in our lives, and in turn, how it may relate to our readers. I think that’s, sadly, long gone.

You and I both have a lot of great stories of being the first to write about, interview, or in your case photograph an artist. Who have been some of your major firsts that immediately come to mind? 

There’s a few I can think of. I had to look this up once, and I couldn’t believe it, I wrote about Billie Eilish very early on, and I was like, how did that happen?

As far as more indie leaning fare, a band that we’ve both covered, Blushing from Austin, Texas.

They’re in the header photo for this article! 

Yeah. I remember when they reached out to me personally.

Black Pumas, I remember seeing their first New York City show, and I remember turning to a fellow photographer, and I said to her, “You know, we’re never going to see them play a room this small ever again.” It was at The Knitting Factory space in Williamsburg.

Black Pumas at Brooklyn Steel. Photo: William Ruben Helms

I wrote about Blonde Maze. I actually was at her first show ever a decade ago, and she’s had a few songs go viral. Lovely lady, too.

There’s so many. Sometimes it’s like kind of asking people like us, “What have you seen in the last six months?” and you're like …

I freeze. When someone asks, “What are you listening to?” I totally freeze. 

There’s this band TEKE::TEKE from Montreal, I saw them at M for Montreal in 2019, and I was telling their American publicist, “Hey, you need to see them. They’re really great.”

Things like that that come up are really cool.

I remember one publicist, she reached out to me about an artist, and she was like, “I don’t know if I should sign them, and I’m trusting you for your advice.”

The song … I was kind of like, I wouldn’t normally write about it, but she’s going to blow up. She has the look. She has, you know, all of it. Sign her.

She wound up signing to a major label.

You know, it’s things like that that I’m very proud of.

So you talked about the ones that you knew about, but do you have a facepalm moment? An artist that you were pitched, but turned down, and later were like, oh, sh*t, I can’t believe I didn’t cover them! 

Yeah, I remember getting an email about Giorgio Moroder’s first DJ set in Brooklyn at Output, and lost it in the email shuffle.

I saw him DJ a handful of years later, but the idea that this was his first DJ set at Output, and I completely missed it.

Damn. 

Yeah, that was total FOMO.

George Clinton at Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage. Photo: William Ruben Helms

For me, I got an email about Lorde before her first single came out, and I was sent “Tennis Courts,” not “Royals.” I heard “Tennis Courts” and was like, eh. Then “Royals” came out and I was like, son of a bitch, I’m never going to be able to talk to her now! 

That’s also the risk of this business. Sometimes you have a better sense of the singles than their people do, and if you had heard the album you would have said to them, “No, this one, not that one,” but you have to take that risk, and you can’t cover everything. You’re not going to catch everything, and it’s OK. It's perfectly OK.

Now, maybe this is my own personal anxiety talking, but do you ever get the feeling that we’re in a constant state of having to pitch ourselves, and our sites, even though we've been doing this for a combined 45 years? 

Yes, and I think that’s the thing that’s kind of dispiriting.

Sometimes it’s the industry people, because it’s easy to get pigeonholed, and forgotten, and everybody’s running for the most bang for their buck, because it’s very limited money. But I’ve also found when it comes to people that aren’t in this industry, you kind of have to pitch yourself, and explain what it is you do. It’s kind of like, let me explain my entire existence to you in an elevator pitch.

On the flip side of that, what have been some of your favorite doors The Joy of Violent Movement has opened for you? 

I’ve been to Quebec three different times for music festivals, twice for M for Montreal, and last year for FME, and we were in Rouyn-Noranda, which is a mining town about eight hours north of Montreal.

These are trips that were free, and I never thought that I would travel internationally for this at all.

I also, last year, was invited to be a panelist for the inaugural Elsewhere Fest in Wichita, Kansas, and I was on a speaking bill with a guy you might’ve heard of by the name of Killer Mike. So I can put that on my headstone.

I’ve photographed Blondie, Buddy Guy, Patti LaBelle, Snoop Dogg a bunch of times, Branford Marsalis recently.

There’s a lot of people that I’m like, I can’t even believe I photographed them.

There’s also a lot of friends you end up meeting in this industry. Those are special opportunities, I think.

Friends who met in the industry, or perhaps on the outskirts of the industry

And as a photographer, you are available to hire. 

Absolutely!

Where can people see your work, and reach out to you? 

If you want to hire me you can hit me up on Instagram.

When The Joy of Violent Movement comes back, I’m not saying “if,” what will your goals be this time around? Will you run it any differently than you did before? 

No, I don’t think so.

Well, actually, you know what, maybe I’m lying to myself.

I think in a way, I might (run it differently). I hate doing this, because I want to pay people for work, but I might end up having contributors in some way, because I can’t be two places at once, but it kind of feel like it’s taking advantage, and I want to pay people for their work, and their time, which I can’t afford to do right now.

If that happened, I’d love to pay people.

Is there anything else you want to add about yourself, the site, what you do, what we do, or the industry? 

With Joy of Violent Movement going on hiatus, and hopefully it’s not long, I feel like, how do I put this … I feel like the death of an independent media outlet is a really bad thing, because we need more diversity, and there is sometimes a stunning lack of diversity in this business in terms of the journalists out there covering. I find that incredibly problematic.

Look at some of the mastheads, they have photos of the staffs. Look at what you see. It’s going to be 95% white, mostly dudes, and particularly in New York, you’re going to get a lot of – no disrespect to people that come to the New York area – but it’s a lot of transplants who don’t know what the cultural bedrock is.

I think that’s important.

I’m not saying you have to know everything, there’s no way to know everything, but having that diversity of viewpoint, especially now, especially in light of an administration that’s trying to deny the multicultural world that we’re in, it’s very much needed.

I don’t think there’s an easy solution.

The other thing is, there’s not a lot of money going around.

Going to Quebec for the festivals was eye-opening, and a little frustrating, because I was seeing a federal government, and a local government, supporting the arts with money, and an understanding that it was work.

When you mentioned transplants I was reminded of an interaction I had a long time ago at a hip-hop event. I was talking to some other writers, and one of them worked at Blender, and I asked, “Where are you from?” He said Houston, and I was like, “That must have been awesome, growing up in that hip-hop scene,” and he said, “Oh, I didn’t get into hip-hop until Biggie.” In my head I was like – Why are you writing about hip-hop? If you didn’t love it your whole life … you’re writing about just to make money. 

Yeah. I think the other thing I want to add is that, and it’s similar – you don’t get into this thing for the money and the woman, because that’s not really a thing. You get into it because it’s a life consuming passion, then you hope that you can make money off of it.

Update on 9/19: This story has a happy ending. Two weeks after our interview was published, William secured funding to bring The Joy of Violent Movement back!

For all the places where you can follow, and support William, check out his Linktree.