Indigenous coming to KC blues-jazz festival
Band gets break from Indigo Girls
Thursday, July 20, 2000
This year's Kansas City Blues and Jazz Festival lineup is packed with some of the genres' hottest acts: Marcia Ball, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Little Milton, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and, of course, Duke Robillard's band pairing with Kansas City legend Jay McShann.
They're all on the festival's various stages in the cool (well, less than the usual 100 degrees) of the evening.
But be aware: The band that's likely to cause the biggest buzz goes on at 4:40 p.m. Saturday.
The band is Indigenous, the American Indian blues outfit out of South Dakota that's being accurately compared with the late Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble.
Indigenous' latest CD, "Circle," was produced by Vaughan confidant Doyle Bramhall, who wrote and plays on two of the nine songs.
Indigenous -- two brothers, a sister and a cousin -- played its first gig in a bingo parlor on the Yankton Indian Reservation.
Guitarist Mato Nanji, bassist Pte and drummer Wanbdi were introduced to music by their father, who had played with a blues-rock band called the Vanishing Americans in the '60s and early '70s.
"Our father taught us about work and discipline," Wanbdi said. "He also turned us on to the three Kings (B.B., Albert and Freddie), Santana and Jimi Hendrix."
But the band found its sound when their dad brought home an early Vaughan album.
"That's when we decided, 'This is what we're going to do,'" Wanbdi said.
Along with their percussionist cousin, Horse, the quartet hit the road in 1995, often living in their cars between gigs.
The band's big break came in 1996, when the Indigo Girls' Amy Ray invited them to record a song for "Honor: A Benefit For The Honor The Earth Campaign," a compilation CD she was putting together. The single led to an invitation to record the group's first full-length, major-label CD, "Things We Do," in 1998.
Since then, the band has been on "Austin City Limits," PBS' "33rd Street Sessions" and toured with Bob Dylan, B.B. King and Bonnie Raitt.
"They've been taking the nation by storm," said Greg Patterson, executive director of the Kansas City Blues and Jazz Festival.
"The Vaughan influence is certainly there, but the singer (Mato) sings like Darius Rucker, the guy in Hootie and The Blowfish, and they do some (Jimi) Hendrix. They're really a hard-working band."
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