In 2014, Light in the Attic released a beautiful cloth-bound Book/Double-CD release titled Native North America – Volume 1: Aboriginal Folk, Rock and Country 1966-1985. The collection of songs featured were incredibly obscure, put together by DJ and music journalist Kevin Howes borne out of his love with the history and culture of Canadian music. We are talking crate-digging extreme here as many of the songs featured were recorded for regional play and some for CBC broadcasts. The release represented 15 years of hard work scouring the country to find these recordings as well as re-connecting with the artists which wasn’t without its own challenges. Kevin worked out of Vancouver so had to think on his feet as the potential costs in travelling to the remote territories would soon have cut a hole in his pocket. He was able to connect to more remotely based artists by phone as well as relying on municipal contacts to reach out to more remote communities. The music was diverse, ranging from Arctic garage rock from the Nunavik region of northern Quebec, melancholy Yup’ik folk from Alaska, and hushed country blues from the Wagmatcook First Nation reserve in Nova Scotia.
Opening the album was a track that has stayed with me since, delivered by Willie Dunn – I Pity the Country:
Light in the Attic have now announced the next chapter in this incredible project:
Light In The Attic Records is humbled to announce the next chapter in their ongoing Native North America series, Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology, which highlights the songs, poetry, and stories of an artist as every bit essential as Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young, but without the industry backing required to become a mainstream pop culture household name. Though artistically and creatively a peer, Dunn was also a grassroots activist and direct-action radical with no interest in the showbiz game, yet whose art, poetry and awareness has continued to inspire, influence, and inform generations without widespread commercial acclaim.
Available to pre-order beginning today (2/10), Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology will be released on 2-LP gatefold vinyl and across all digital platforms on March 19th. This definitive set honors the trailblazing life and music of the late, great Willie Dunn. Remastered by GRAMMY®-nominated engineer, John Baldwin, the vinyl version is complemented by a 24-page newspaper insert, titled WILLIE DUNN NOTES, featuring extensively researched liner notes by GRAMMY®-nominated, Willie Dunn Anthology producer Kevin Howes (Voluntary In Nature), and includes insightful interviews with Dunn, his family, collaborators, and a long list of peers including Bob Robb, Jerry Saddleback Sr., Jeannette Corbiere Lavell (OC), and Métis rights leader Tony Belcourt (OC). Also included in the package are letters from the Dunn family, a poem by Alanis Obomsawin (OC), poetry transcriptions, rarely seen archival images, art contributions from Christi Belcourt and Alanna Edwards, and graphic design/typography by Chris Gergley (NNA series). Musically, The Willie Dunn Anthology contains songs previously commercially unavailable from the vaults of the National Film Board of Canada(NFB) and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), including the quintessential 1968 NFB recording of “The Ballad of Crowfoot,” plus a career spanning overview of Willie’s songbook. All songs and compositions are officially licensed and approved by the Dunn estate.
The 2-LP version of The Willie Dunn Anthology is available in three editions: Standard Edition (pressed on black wax), Online Color Edition (pressed on opaque red wax and available exclusively at LightInTheAttic.net), and Indie Retail Color Edition (pressed on translucent red wax and available exclusively at record stores).
More about Willie Dunn:
Along with Buffy Sainte-Marie, A. Paul Ortega, and Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Willie Dunn is the most important singer-songwriter to emerge from the Indigenous communities of Turtle Island in the turbulent 1960s. With a full, strong, and beautiful voice, Dunn honored personal heroes such as Crowfoot, Crazy Horse, and Louis Riel through song, as well as William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, and T.S. Eliot, expressing the multiplicity of his deep-seated passions, interests, and understandings. Born in Montreal in 1941 to Mi’gmaq and English/Cornish parents, Dunn was his own man, connected to both the city and the land, a poet, troubadour, filmmaker, artist, environmentalist, and grassroots activist/direct action radical who strived to connect with his people and did just that, affecting generations of Indigenous artists and musicians to the present day and anyone else lucky enough to have heard him. Dunn’s first film, The Ballad of Crowfoot, produced for the National Film Board of Canada in 1968, utilized a selection of hand-picked photographs from the National Archives of Canada paired with a powerful song, colonialism from the Indigenous perspective, not to mention a celluloid “music video” offering well before their prominence in the 1980s, revolution from within the system. Crowfoot, emulated by the likes of notable US filmmaker Ken Burns and still screened in classrooms across Canada is simply unforgettable.
In “Charlie,” Willie Dunn set the harrowing story of residential school genocide victim Chanie Wenjack to music, almost 50 years prior to The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie and his much-acclaimed Secret Path, but with little-to-no radio play or media support. This must change. Willie Dunn Anthology associate producer and son Lawrence Dunn said this to The Guardian newspaper about his father in 2017: “The longer he’s gone the louder his words get…” Anyone who has heard “I Pity the Country” will understand, a song as profound as any in existence. “It’s like the reason you are supposed to make music,” enthused Kurt Vile about the tune to MOJO magazine. Sideman, friend, and guitar picker Bob Robb puts his old pal into focus: “If you want to know who Willie Dunn was, listen to his songs.” And don’t forget to share. Unfortunately, Dunn passed on to the spirit world a year before the release of the GRAMMY®-nominated Native North America (Vol. 1), but his open support, encouragement, and blessing, made both of these projects possible. All we can do now is to help keep his music alive, a great responsibility that we don’t hold lightly.
Thank you, Willie.
Tracklist – Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology:
Side One
1. The Ballad of Crowfoot
2. Peruvian Dream (Part 1)
3. Charlie
4. Broker
5. I Pity the Country
Side Two
1. Crazy Horse
2. Louis Riel
3. School Days
4. The Carver
5. O Canada!
6. Down by the Stream (Starlight Maiden)
7. Rattling Along the Freight Train (To the Spirit Land)
Side Three
1. Pontiac
2. The Pacific
3. Nova Scotia
4. The Dreamer
5. Sonnet 33 and 55/Friendship Dance
Side Four
1. Wounded Lake
2. Métis Red River Song
3. Son of the Sun
4. The Lovenant Chain
5. Bear and Fish
Here is the late Willie Dunn (August 14, 1941 – August 5, 2013) performing live at the Cree Native Arts & Crafts Association Achievement Awards – CNACA Festival 2013 (Visit the CNACA website to learn more about their work here).