Dollar Country Newsletter, October 2024
WATHÉČA RECORDS, Justis Brokenrope, The Dispossessed, Fire On The Mountain
Number 007, October 2024
News From Dollar Country
You may have noticed there wasn't a September issue of the newsletter, that wasn't exactly the plan but it worked out. The last few months have been difficult for me in regards to parenting. It's been hard in general, but I was having a particularly rough time and when I was talking to my wife about it she said that it didn't seem like I was having fun when I was with Wyatt. She was completely right, I had been so stressed and had put so much pressure on myself over various things that actually enjoying my time with Wyatt hadn't really occurred to me. Like all difficult situations, this led me to a place of better understanding and I feel like I'm squarely on the other side. As the Kansas motto states: Ad Astra Per Aspera, “to the stars through difficulties.”
I had planned on taking some time off from the radio show, so I just stretched it to be both the show and the newsletter. Because of that, this newsletter will be double long. I've included a great interview with my friend and fellow collector Justis Brokenrope in the middle. I've also laid back from reviews this month because I just wasn't feeling it. Sometimes I put on records with the idea that I'll write about them and nothing is sparked in my brain, after listening to a small stack I realized that I'd rather not force it just for the sake of meeting a quota, so I've written more and reviewed less. This first year with the newsletter is all about trying new things and seeing what you readers enjoy and what I enjoy writing about. Feedback is always welcome, so drop me a line about any of that. I will be resuming the radio shows this month as well.
Before the break I was scared that everyone who supports me would stop, but now I realize that's just not true. Because my job is funded by individuals I sometimes put pressure on myself to keep chugging out work. Going forward I hope to be more mindful of how work is affecting me and I plan on making sure I take occasional breaks for my own mental health.
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►Collection Notes
Incoming: Cajun Singles from Daniel Rosen
Daniel drove to Louisiana and said he was gonna buy some cajun stuff if I wanted to send him money. Well, I did and he did! I got a ton of really awesome singles I’m excited to sort through.
**If you have records you think I’d like you can send me a message at host@dollarcountry.org**
►Curiosity And Privacy
In college I took a few linguistic anthropology classes, anthropology had always felt scholarly to me. Other cultures and people were interesting, but as I’ve learned more and more about other people and their experiences I’ve started to see anthropology as a way of Othering* people. By studying other cultures the way we study other animals it creates a distance between us, when we are more alike than different. In linguistic anthropology they talked a lot about Papua New Guinea because of the huge range of languages present there. There were tribes of people who had possibly never been contacted by western culture and the feeling in anthropology was that they should be found and studied. My curiosity wanted that to happen but in the back of my head I fought the notion that people have a right to not be studied. Even contacting a remote group of people to ascertain consent to be studied is an invasion of their privacy.
Have you ever come across old recordings of native Americans? Folkways did a lot of them. If you read the liner notes it sounds like they are talking about studying a herd of music making mammals, not humans. I used to love these recordings but even though I like the music I can’t listen to them with a clear conscience. Even if the recordings were made with consent (most of them were not), the idea that the people making the music are some completely different species and not just a different culture makes me feel gross. After many years the conclusion I have come to is that my curiosity to learn about others isn’t as important as their right to be treated as humans or their privacy.
*the act of treating someone as though they are not part of a group and are different in some way
┌Book Corner
Books That Changed The Way I Think
This list could really include every book I’ve ever read, but I’m gonna just focus on two that made a big impact on me.
Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin
I grew up thinking that everyone had a fair chance, that we were all created equal. In a vacuum that may be true, but it’s not true in the real world. This book tells the story of three people and how they got to one 24 hour period. It was eye opening to me because it was hard for me to really put myself in someone else’s place when I didn’t understand what they went through.It taught me that each person’s experience is different and that we often don’t know what someone else has gone through. There is not just one truth to the world.
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
I hung out with some anarchists when I was younger but it never made sense to me, they basically just seemed like super liberal people. I agreed with them on many things but never could grasp the idea of what anarchy would look like in practice. This book is the first time I saw a believable example of how anarchy, or anything besides capitalism, could really work as a government. I’ve always found that Le Guin told stories that were science fiction because they had to do with other worlds but they have always made me understand humans much better. By presenting ideas about ownership, laws, and order from the outside this book allowed me to think about many things differently.
Interview with Justis Brokenrope of
WATHÉČA RECORDS
This interview is the product of the best thing about collecting records: friendships you make with other music nerds. Justis and I met through mutual interest in each others projects and have gotten to know each other through texting, phone calls, and zoom meetings. I’ve been wanting to feature him in the newsletter for months so I asked if I could send him some questions and here we are.
Bio from interviewee:
Justis is a musician and educator based in Minneapolis, MN and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Lakota Tribal Nation. He grew up in Aurora, NE, a very small town surrounded by sprawling acres of Runza crops in the central part of the State. His is 31 years old and will be 32 after his upcoming birthday.
What is Watheca records and how did it start?
Wathéča Records is an archival project focused on documenting North American Indigenous artists who were often overlooked in the canons of rock, country and folk music.
It started when I realized I could help bring this music back to the families and communities they come from. I had been collecting native records for about a decade, and often grew frustrated when I couldn’t afford certain records that had been made inaccessible to native folks like myself. These records felt gatekept by white record collectors who seemingly fetishized native art, and I was frustrated that they were getting purchased for egregious amounts of money, then filed away in someone’s collection of obscure garage rock and country records.
With the records I had, I wanted them to be heard by native folks again - their families and communities who maybe hadn’t heard them for fifty plus years in some cases, and other native musicians and artists like myself who love this sort of thing but just didn’t know it existed to the extent that it did. Aside from the Native North American compilation by Light In The Attic (a major influence for me in itself) and a couple bootleg mixtapes off messageboards, no one else had done this work that I was aware of, and the few that had done those were not native.
I always say that I do this for native folks. I am happy that everyone gets to hear this and folks from all over the world enjoy it, but what matters most to me is that the music gets heard again by the folks who made it and who it was made for, the indigenous folks of Turtle Island.
What is the scope of your collection? What formats, genres, and years?
When I started it was primarily vinyl from the late 50s to mid 80s. There is so much native music out there on vinyl, mostly ceremonial and powwow records. I love those, but my primary goal is to document native artists who were playing contemporary music, which falls under rock, folk, and country in this. As time went on, I would look at certain artists’ discographies and found that they may have only released an 8track in 1978 sandwiched between to vinyl releases, so eventually I started picking up and digitizing 8tracks and cassettes as well.
Eventually, my goal sometime within the next couple decades is to house these releases in a public archive where native folks like myself can check them out and listen to them. Fortunately I live in a place where there are a lot of Native organizations that could make this a possibility, as opposed to a city or university library.
Have you gotten the chance to talk to any artists you've collected?
Not directly, but the most rewarding aspect of this comes out in the YouTube comments. Many of the artists I’ve posted have journey’d on to the spirit world, so their sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren will often show up in the comment section and reflect on their relatives’ work and music through stories. Some of them are heartbreaking and some of them uplifting, but they’re always inspiring, and I think that’s what’s so beautiful about music in general. We find a way to connect to our ancestors, and through this music, they continue to live with us and remind us of their life and resilience in this world as a native person.
You spoke at the ARSC conference and will be going to NYC to present at the MET about this stuff, why do you think people are becoming interested in this stuff now, or has there always been interest? Are you a part of helping that interest grow?
I wonder a lot about this myself. I think in a post Black Lives Matter/Standing Rock America, larger institutions were forced to diversify and approach more BIPOC artists and curators. While this is great and necessary in many ways, I am always slightly on edge because I know that I, like every native artist, am prone to being tokenized somewhere. My curatorial work with this and my last name make me a nice box to check on “BIPOC or Native artists we’ve worked with this year” list. And I’ve literally seen those lists from places I’ve DJ’d or worked for.
That being said, its complicated because my dad, grandparents, and every ancestor pre-colonization had to fight so much harder for space in this world than I have had to, and I still have to fight myself. My dad always told me to take whatever opportunities were presented to me, and I roll with that mentality, because that wasn’t the case during his lifetime, and ultimately, if I get to platform these native artists to a larger audience, then hopefully they make their way back to their communities and families through the work I have the privilege of doing.
Do you ever have dreams about finding records?
Its funny because the day you sent me this interview, I had one the previous night. I don’t remember which record I found, but it was a native one. I’ve only had a dream like that once or twice before.
What are 3 records you'd suggest to someone new to what you collect to check out and why?
My favorite native rock band of all time is Sugluk. Some of their songs were available on that LITA comp, but I was able to upload their whole discography this summer. For country, I’d say the Navajo Sundowners. They were around for so long and put out so many records. Navajo country music is a movement in itself and they are one of the OGs. Peter Frank’s “Souriquois Visions” LP is another favorite of mine. I feel like that one gets looked over a lot but it’s a beautiful Mi’kmaq singer/songwriter country tinged folk LP.
What are 3 of your personal favorites in the collection and why?
I would say the last question mentions a couple of my favorites, but I always have to talk about Buddy Red Bow if I can. He is a country legend from my Lakota communities. His records sit at this interesting time where they have that overt 80s production, but then incorporated a lot of sounds from synths, native flutes, and powwow music, and its quite the experience listening to them. He speaks Lakota on some of the songs and has other relatives join him as well. His music is so important to me.
Where can people find and follow you?
@Watheca.Records on Instagram, and Wathéča Records on Youtube. Folks can contact me at watheca.records@gmail.com
What's your favorite regional food from nebraska?
Runza. Runza. Runza. What the hell is a bierock*? And chili should always be accompanied by a cinnamon roll.
What got you into music?
My dad was a rocker. His favorite band was KISS. If there was a native dude on That 70’s Show, it would’ve been my dad. So growing up, the classic rock station was always on, and I was fortunate to see a couple bands like that growing up.
When I started to form my own musical identity in middle school, filesharing/napster had become a thing, so for better or worse, I was able to download individual songs and explore a lot of different sounds. I got really into punk and American hardcore music as a teen in rural Nebraska, but being obsessed with Nirvana (I still am) led me to other things like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. I began not only listening to music all the time, but reading about it as well. Exploring record label rosters, seeing who played in what bands before their popular one, reading liner notes to see what other bands were thanked, etc. I remember putting Deep Wound’s “Video Prick” as my myspace profile song because even as a 13 year old I knew it was objectively cool, ha! But that’s a testament to how important the internet was for an alienated native punk kid in central Nebraska. I didn’t have a record store in my town and I only knew a couple other kids that were into this weird shit like me. At some point I started picking up records at shows in Omaha and Lincoln from local hardcore punk bands, and then it carries on from there.
What did/do your parents listen to?
My dad was late boomer, early gen x. So he grew up on 70s classic rock, but he was also still young when all the Seattle/grunge stuff started happening, so I remember hearing a lot of Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins growing up in addition to KISS, Boston, Cheap Trick, etc…there’s a cool memory from my childhood where Iron Man by Sabbath came on the radio one morning before school and he goes “J you know who this is? Check it out its this band BLACK SABBATH and he’s singing about IRON MAN.” I love that so much. I’m really grateful my dad knew how to fuckin rock.
My mom is only a couple years younger than my dad, but I have to credit her for my love of country music. I didn’t care for it much when I was younger, but now I love it and am so grateful she played it all the time growing up. Shania Twain, Garth Brooks, Dixie Chicks, Martina McBride, Brad Paisley - If my mom was driving, that’s what we were hearing. Whenever we’re in the car together these days, I put on the oldies country station and am always impressed with how much knowledge she has even though we never talked about music growing up. But then I remember that CMT is always playing in the background on her TV as well. My mom knows what’s up.
What sort of stuff is in your personal collection?
Aside from the native music, I’d say its a mixture of punk/hardcore, 80s death and thrash metal, classic 60s/70s rock, country, 90s indie and shoegaze, and then a handful of jazz and ambient stuff thrown in. I think I have like 1500 records these days, but I’m always trying to downsize. I had a phase where I got really into psych/acid archives stuff for instance, but I’ve sold most of that. I’m tired of moving a lot of this shit around that hasn’t been listened to in a decade or more.
What are some of your favorite bands you’ve gotten to see live?
I saw Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark in 2021 or 22, and I had decided that that was the greatest show I’ve ever seen. For a “reunion tour” type show, they genuinely seemed to love each other and had amazing chemistry on stage as a band and as friends. You can read that from older artists/bands like that, and they certainly weren’t phoning it in.
Dwight Yoakam was great a few years back, it was funny to see him tease a bunch of rednecks in rural Minnesota. Chaos in Tejas 2013 - Getting to see Infest, Mind Eraser, Los Crudos, and Tragedy all on the same bill. Milk Music, Destruction Unit, Total Control multiple times in a weekend during their peaks. I deeply regret not watching The Damned, Bolt Thrower, or Framtid, but that’s just how it goes. That was a good ass time.
*A Bierock (sometimes called a runza) is a regional food brought to the great plains by the Volga Germans in the late 1800s. There is a fierce rivalry between Kansans and Nebraskans over if they are called Runzas (Nebraska) or Bierocks (Kansas). Tensions grew until they culminated in the short period known as the “Bloody Bierock Wars” of the 1940s, which only ended when the USA joined World War 2.
Hear some great records from Justis’s collection below.
Thanks for reading this, I put a lot of work into it and I hope you enjoyed it.