The good Cornellians can do: Tom Helf ’83
For the past four years, Redstock has brought Cornell musicians and bands together for an epic concert at Reunion. This annual event is spearheaded drummer and attorney Tom Helf '83.
Tom wanted to celebrate his 40th Reunion in 2023 by getting his college band back together to play. Thinking that other alumni musicians might also want to perform at Reunion, he hatched the idea of Redstock. He pitched the concept to Reunion organizers, who gave Tom the green light.
“I reached out (via the respective class Reunion chairpersons) to all of the alumni in the 3/8 Reunion cluster to solicit other musicians to perform at Redstock,” Tom says. “The three surviving members of The Hedge (Class of ’68), a band with a Jefferson Airplane vibe that had some prominence on campus, and whose members still played/sang professionally into their late 70s, responded. Thus, the inaugural Redstock lineup was set—The Hedge played the first half of the show, and The Bourgeois Blues Band (Tom’s band) played the second.”
Redstock was so much fun that Tom volunteered to do it again in 2024. This time more alumni musicians joined in, and Tom was able to put together a lineup of six bands. The concert stretched late into the night.
He found that four bands was just the right number—and the 2025 and 2026 concerts have featured four bands each. Redstock is now an official Reunion event, bringing together alumni from different locations and generations to play for an appreciative audience.
“I am the impresario!” Tom says. “Every year in January, Reunion chairs send out an email to their class members seeking musicians to participate in Redstock. I’m looking either for bands that played together at Cornell and want to reunite, or individual musicians who just want to play.”
Tom invites alumni musicians who wish to participate in future Redstocks to reach out to him directly at tom@shaner-helf.com.
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