‘Just an Indian kid’

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This article was published 23/08/2012 (5130 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The band was brand new then; it still is now. In the last year, Indian City has played a handful of live shows, including a 30-minute showcase for APTN’s Aboriginal Day Live. It has already whipped up a pile of Aboriginal People’s Choice Music Award nominations.

Now Indian City has a debut album, Supernation, which it’ll drop at a release party at the West End Cultural Centre today. There won’t be too much room onstage: there are 10 people in the live version of the collective, from rising singer-songwriter Don Amero to dancer Buffy Handel and traditional singer Ray (Coco) Stevenson.

But there’s only one name on the album with a writing credit on each of its 10 songs: Vince Fontaine.

If you’ve been around music in Manitoba, you know Fontaine. For 16 years, the Ojibway man was the driving creative force behind Eagle and Hawk, which effortlessly blended traditional native music and dance with expansive rock ‘n’ roll. That band steamrolled awards shows, toured Europe and released 10 albums.

But last summer, when it seemed to Fontaine that Eagle and Hawk had peaked, the time seemed right to try something new.

"So I did the Carlos Santana thing," Fontaine says with a laugh, sipping cranberry juice on a sunny recent Saturday. "I surrounded myself with young new talent."

For Fontaine, the project marks something else: even after all these years, he admits, it isn’t until now that he’s really started to believe he can make a whole career out of this music thing.

It seems hard to believe that he should only just now be realizing this, but consider how it all started. Fontaine grew up in North Kildonan, the son of a single mother. As a kid, his compass spun in all directions. He dropped out of high school to work construction, then he went back and earned his psychology degree from the University of Winnipeg.

While working toward the degree, Fontaine played gigs whenever he could find them, and drove a taxi when he couldn’t. That work behind the wheel would one day inform a song and an Eagle and Hawk album, 1999’s Indian City.

But we digress. The most important part of this story is: growing up in low-income housing, Fontaine taught himself how to play the guitar and jammed out Led Zeppelin and Neil Young. Then one day, a more experienced guy heard him playing, and he said: Hey, Vince, you could be a pro.

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"I thought, ‘No way,’" Fontaine says now, all these decades into his professional career. "I’m just an Indian kid."

By 1994, Fontaine had honed his chops jamming in Top 40 bands around the Winnipeg bar circuit, and longed to try something new. So that year, he teamed up with fellow musician and retired Blue Bomber kicker Troy Westwood, and Eagle and Hawk was born.

"Troy had all these wacky ideas to write songs about native things," Fontaine says, with a hint of a wink.

When Eagle and Hawk formed, it joined a new wave of aboriginal leaders and artists. That same year, the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards honoured Inuk singer Susan Aglukark at its very first awards ceremony; only a few years later, Fontaine’s cousin Phil Fontaine would be elected National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

The timing was right, Fontaine acknowledges now. The music took off — even clear across the ocean.

Touring Europe with Eagle and Hawk changed Vince Fontaine. In conversation, he goes back to it time and time again: the Toad in the Hole on Osborne, he muses, reminds him of this tiny mountain pub in Switzerland he played at once.

And then there was that time in Germany, when fans showed up to the gig in feather headdresses and facepaint: Hollywood Indians; many Germans know North America’s original Nations only through stories told by white guys. A few fans even whispered disappointment that the band on stage wasn’t "Indian enough," Fontaine recalls.

There’s a mountain of misunderstanding there. But it’s also an opportunity, a chance to share the modern voices of North America’s oldest traditions with a global audience.

"For so long (other people) have made money off of an image," Fontaine says. "I want them to know that there’s something real behind those images… and I think indigenous people have a lot to say about today’s issues."

That’s the space that Fontaine hopes Indian City’s debut album can push open and fill with sound. Supernation is lush and shaped by keyboard, guitars and lilting melodies. The songs are rich with references to indigenous experiences, but the lyrics are rarely so specific that they could refer to nothing else.

"I saw the world on fire," Don Amero sings on Stand, a tune he co-wrote with Fontaine. "And no one seemed to care."

One gets the sense this bridging of worlds is part of the design. "I think Indian City has a chance to be an exporting beacon," Fontaine says, noting that the band already has distribution locked up in Asia, and is planning a push into the urban United States.

"We always talk about the seventh generation. Well, if I can say, this is the eighth generation now," he says, nodding at photos of Indian City’s up-and-coming stars, such as William Prince and Pamela Davis. "This is it. It’s not about fame and fortune. It’s about good music, and fun, and stories to share."

 

Indian City releases its debut album, Supernation, tonight at the West End Cultural Centre. The show starts at 8 p.m. and features opening performances by Camerata Nova, William Prince and Buddy Big Mountain. Tickets are $20 at the door.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca