One of the most promising local music happenings this month is the Helm Gallery’s Squeak and Squawk Music Festival, which will go on from Oct. 16 to 20 at the Helm, Wright Park and the recently opened New Frontier Lounge in the Dome District.

This is a great indie coup for Tacoma, featuring loads of imported bands (from Olympia's Calvin Johnson and Seattle's the Dead Science, to Oklahoma's Evangelicals) alongside homegrown talent from T-town (the Elephants, Paris Spleen, the Drug Purse. See the full lineup below.) And recently I caught up with Helm director Sean Alexander (no, not that guy) who e-mailed a few words about what went into putting this big, honkin' shindig together. A few excerpts:

How it came to be:

We [he and business partner, Peter Lynn] had been talking about trying to put together a music festival during the summer, but it we were so busy that it couldn't actually materialize (not to mention that would have been a terrible time for a Tacoma-based music festival.) We had already confirmed this great band from Oklahoma for Monday, October 20th, so we decided to plan the festival around that show. ... The lineup just kept getting better and better over the month that I spent booking (we used 95% door percentage based booking). All of the shows were put together carefully, including one local band. There is not a prominent sound that all of the bands in the festival share. In one night you could see a classically trained cello group, a rowdy post-punk band and a one-man blues project. It is all fairly sporadic. Great lineups though. We will definitely have trouble putting a better festival together next year (assuming it is a successful venture).

Sentiments:

The festival is 100% about music and community. The helm will be losing money in the process (hopefully less than $500 after everything). We see that Tacoma is becoming a place that more and more bands want to play as they pass through the Northwest. The local music scene is becoming stronger and stronger by the day. I guess now seemed like the perfect time to throw a festival that would highlight that growth and talent. Plus, there aren't very many cool underground festivals happening anymore. Olympia's legendary Yo Yo a Go Go is gone. Carousel is cool but seems to internalized. What the Heck Fest in Anacortes is great, but a bit far away. Bumbershoot and Sasquatch have become big McDonalds/Starbucks freakshows.

Hopefully this will be tacoma's festival.

Here's the lineup, copied from the Helm's site:

Imports:

Evangelicals (oklahoma)
The Dutchess and the Duke (seattle)
The Portland Cello Project (pdx)
The Dead Science (seattle)
Calvin Johnson (olympia)
T.V. Coahran (seattle)
New Faces (port townsend)
Your Heart Breaks (seattle)
Talbot Tagora (seattle)
Lake (olympia)
Photosynthesis (anacortes)
Quinn Deveaux (oakland)
The Mona Reels (olympia)
Why I Must Be Careful (pdx)
hanari Nannon (seattle)
The Kindness Kind (seattle)
Flexions (seattle)
Temple Vibe (seattle)
Charles Leo Gebhardt the IV (seattle)
Desolation Wilderness (olympia)
Powernap (pdx)
Birdwatchers United! (seattle)
and a few undertermined others.

Domestics: (at least one in every show)

The Elephants
Paris Spleen
The Drug Purse
Makeup Monsters
Don’t Tell Sophie
Mercy Pirates
Freeze and Fur Coat
Frisky
Trans Union
Colonies
more undetermined.

You know how things can get shuffled around at the last minute with these kinds of events. But I'm betting you'll be able to find the most up-to-date details on who's doing what when on the festival MySpace page. See you there.