Jackie Bird
Jackie Bird
with Milt Lee
Arlie Neskahi :
Native music today is a full spectrum of tunes from ancient traditional songs, chants and hymns to rock, jazz and hip-hop. This time, on Contemporary Rhytms, Milt Lee travels to Dakota country to meet Jackie Bird, a talented contemporary musician and composer.
Milt Lee:
Jackie Bird lives in a small town in eastern South Dakota. It is practically a village, and has become somewhat of an artist’s community. Jackie is Dakota, enrolled with the Sisseston-wahpeton Sioux tribe. Her house is actually part of a small complex that includes two houses and a state of the art recording studio. The sound of birds greets me as I get out of the car and I smile to myself. The place is a real ‘bird sanctuary’.
Jackie Bird :
It’s an old, old farmhouse (m-yeah) really old.
Lee:
But you guys totally redid it. They must have torn a part of a wall out here.
Bird:
Uhum. Yeah, this used to be a bedroom, but we tore that out.
Lee:
Beautiful framed paintings, natural wood and tiled floors, large sunny windows. Jackie wears a baseball cap. Tells me she hasn’t done her hair yet. In her arms is a gorgeous guitar with a hand painted face. Jackie did the painting and the guitar looks as much a part of her as her hair or eye color.
Bird :
(sings) I have never flown so high until I found you. show me a strength and I never want to let it go. Even if there comes a time that I may travel on, I know it’s a journey with a side of life for my soul. I will fly through the stars at night.
I was born in 1966 and I travel all over the world singing contemporary and traditional and sometimes contemporary and traditional combined. And I also am a hoop dancer. I do some puppetry also. And I work with youth a lot. My mother is an artist. My dad is a musician, and so that’s all I’ve ever grown up with. And that’s why I do the things I do, as I’m really inspired a lot by the creator.
Lee:
I once saw Jackie perform at Little Wound School on the Pine Ridge Reservation. She was opening for the Indigo Girls. Dressed in white buckskin, only one word comes to mind for her stage presence. electric.
Jackie Bird
Bird:
(song) Honey, honey, hug me, hold me close to you. Just ‘ cause you’re my one and only, I still love you. When you take me in your arms, when you keep me in your heart. Honey, love me. Honey. Hold me close to you.
I started out with a single called “Love Sick Blues” and then I did another single with “Honey, Love Me” on there and then I did another single “Just Because”, and then we combined everything together and we did a family CD called Featherstone in concert.
Lee:
So when you record these now, do you have other musicians?
Bird::
Just my dad and myself. That’s it.
Lee:
Gordon Bird, her father, has been a musician since the early seventies and has his own record label called Featherstone. He played on and produced all of her CD’s. Jackie’s early music combines a bluesy rock sound spiced with traditional Dakota melodies. Her first big hit was called “Love Sick Blues.”
Bird::
Right after graduation I got married and then I had my two daughters and then in 1990 is when we released our single of “Love Sick Blues” to KILI radio and then that’s when they said they were playing it every half hour, there was so many requests.
Lee:
You want to sing that for me?
Bird:
Sings. Heya, heya, heya. Whenever I’m away from you, I always get these love sick blues. Never ever leave me and I will never leave you. Heya hah.
Lee:
Where did that come from for you?
Bird::
Flandreau Indian School. I was a part of Indian club and then I was also a part of rock band. There is a class called rock band, and I was the drummer. And one day when our teacher wasn’t there, it was supposed to be just study time, and I picked up the guitar and I was just learning how to play guitar. And so then I like to sing Indian too. So just one day I was singing. I was working it out like this and then I just combined the two.
Lee:
In her baseball cap Jackie looks like a girl. It’s hard to believe that she’s a mother and a grandmother. When I compare her earlier sound to this new movement, that strength comes through.
Bird::
I really have a lot that I want to share, Taku Wakan Ishcashca-the sacred movement of Creator.
My dad always would tell me when you’re making songs for the heart you have to make them from the heart. So that’s why whenever I make songs, I always make sure there is an element around, like by the water or by fire or under the stars, the clouds, outside, wherever, sometimes traveling down the interstate.
Lee:
Outside in the yard is a large camper bus. Jackie says the bus is her mom and dad’s. she prefers her convertible.
Bird:
I travel in my little convertible. Cause I like to have the clouds or the stars.
Lee:
For Wisdom of the Elders, This is Milt Lee in Bushnell, South Dakota.
Neskahi:
Contemporary Rhythms is written and produced by Milt Lee of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe and his wife, Jamie Lee, who live and work in Rapid City, South Dakota. Check out their website, realrez dot com for more of their work.