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Native American

Nevada City's freak-folk voice

Mariee Sioux

Mariee Sioux grew up in Nevada City, California, the same small Sierra foothills town that produced Joanna Newsom. She taught herself guitar at seventeen while volunteering with Mapuche children in Argentine Patagonia. Her mother's family is of Spanish, Paiute and Indigenous Mexican descent, and her father's is Polish and Hungarian. Because she isn't Sioux, she has since dropped the x and now performs as Mariee Siou, so as not to misrepresent herself. Her fingerpicked, high-voiced folk runs from 2007's Faces in the Rocks through 2012's Gift for the End and 2019's Grief in Exile, and along the way she made a joint EP, Bonnie & Mariee, with Bonnie "Prince" Billy.

Albuquerque garage band, 1966

Lincoln St. Exit

Lincoln St. Exit formed at Albuquerque's Valley High School in June 1966. The garage band cut a string of singles for small labels and, in 1970, a single album, Drive It, recorded at Norman Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico. Its core was singer and guitarist A. Michael Martinez, bassist Mac Suazo of Taos Pueblo, drummer Lee Herrera and guitarist R.C. Gariss. With producer Tom Bee they then remade themselves as XIT, often described as the first commercially successful all-Native rock band, and signed to Motown's Rare Earth label for 1972's Plight of the Redman and 1973's Silent Warrior. Martinez later said the band's politics kept it off American radio, even as it toured Europe three times. It broke up by 1976, and Suazo died in 2022.

The Collection