HELIX mainman Brian Vollmer has issued the following update:

"Finished off 'It’s A Long Way To The Top If You Wanna Rock And Roll' last week at the "A" Room with the original Helix line-up from the No Rest For The Wicked CD (Brent Doerner/Mike Uzilac/Fritz Hinz) and THE MUDMEN (who played bagpipes). The song rocks and has already been mastered at Sterling Sound in NYC and sent to Perris Records in Houston for a compilation AC/DC album and to Germany and AOR Records for the upcoming Helix studio disc which is to be released in Europe and Russia. The song will appear as a "bonus" track on the CD. Now that the first song is done, we have a month off while engineer Aaron Murray travels to Switzerland to work on another project. By "month off" I really mean that we have a month to tighten up the next batch of songs we plan to record. We have several songs that are 90% finished and a couple of ideas for cover songs as well. The Buffs Bar Blues by Alex Harvey. I played with the guys from that band when we toured with Ian Gillan of DEEP PURPLE in '89 across Europe. They sure liked to drink!

Brent Doerner is back in the band and there's a buzz out about that. We had a little get-together to jam about a week ago and it was great to be playing with him again. Great vibe. Brent has agreed to being back in the band until 2010, but who knows-he might stay longer if everything works out O-K. And why shouldn't it? The year already looks rosy when everything else in the economy right now is going down the toilet. Already we've made licensing deals with both Perris and AOR Records. The advance $ we will be receiving from AOR will enable us to record the next disc much faster than Power. Back then I had to rely on money from live gigs to finance recording, while at the same time trying to pay all the other bills that are accrued each day here at Planet Helix. This gives me a lot of breathing space until things pick up with the summer festivals. Rumor has it we'll be at Rocklahoma this year and we already have signed contracts for the Rock Gone Wild Festival in Des Moines, Iowa in August (with GREAT WHITE among others) and Lewisporte, Newfoundland (also in August) with Canadian rock legends APRIL WINE and HARLEQUIN. We are also going to find out in a couple of weeks if we'll be going to Germany in 2010.

The Trailer Park Boys are coming back to town for the third time on this tour. They've put me on the guest list twice (plus several of my friends and neighbours) and allowed me to visit with them twice, although I'm not allowed to come in the tour bus 'cos last time I started a riot. After I left fans started to gather, then fight, so police were called to disperse the crowd. I'm been trying to get them to come over to Planet Helix while they're in town to sign my "Wall of Shame" downstairs, but they haven't made it yet. The first time they were hung-over. The second time there was a snowstorm and they got into town late. Maybe 3 times is a charm? Still haven't heard what their new movie is going to be called. It's supposed to be released in September. The guys didn't seem to know too much about it-either that or they weren't talking. Can hardly wait to see it! When I was out in Halifax last October to be filmed for my part in the movie I went to Bubble's Mansion, which is one of Mike Smith's bars. He told me he was opening up a 2,000 seat club and that he wanted us to play there the next time we were out east, so we'll be looking into that. We're in Newfie in August and Feldman (our agent) has already told me that they hope to put another week or two of dates to go along with that one. I would imagine we'd be playing Moncton, Fredericton, and Bridgewater again for sure."