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The following article appeared in ICE (Indian Cinema Entertainment)
Autumn, 1997 Vol. 5, No. 4
SANCTITY
OF THE CIRCLE...
Jim Boyd
by
Wishelle Banks
INCHELIUM, WA-Addiction. Grief. Love and family. The pain
of prejudice. Pride and culture. Heritage and healing.
These are the recurring themes in Jim Boyd's life. And his
music, which is undeniably inseparable from the man. The realization
of his lifeblood-his destiny-was one that the Colville Confederated
Tribes recording artist eventually, almost reluctantly, embraced.
Like many Indian people, Boyd is drug- and alcohol-free, and
the liberating peace and vision that comes with sobriety has
been his homecoming.
"Music has been a big part of my healing," Boyd says in his
element, the REZRecording studio on the Colville Indian Reservation
in Inchelium, Washington. "As a recovering person, all this
stuff comes out and you realize you have to deal with it then.
Not that I deal with everything in song-I actually do-but
there's a lot of songs that nobody else will ever hear."
To Boyd, the silence is just as much an essential part of
his journey as the sound.
"If this other stuff didn't happen, I probably would never
have albums out now," he reflects "That's kind of the way
I look at it sometimes. I've been a musician forever, and
I've played music forever and ever. No matter what else happened,
it was the love of music that carried me through that."
Boyd's long-term drug and alcohol abuse nearly destroyed
the talented Indigenous artist, and came crashing to an end
late one night in 1990, when he wrapped his car around a tree.
Enough was enough.
"That was the last time I drank," he says about the wreck
and the symbolic toll it was taking on his life. It was a
heavy metaphor for the darkness before the dawn. Finally,
the sanctity of the circle took hold of Boyd, returning him
to song. The singer-songwriter went back to doing what he
was born to do.
"I went through a lot of these different circles and now
I'm putting a lot of them together. Life is good now-I love
it. There was a lot of times I didn't like life, and didn't
want to go on."
Boyd's scorn for his past addictions-and his respect for
the resulting personal growth-is evident in the lyrics of
the song Same Old Door, a tenacious track on First
Come, Last Served, the new CD from Thunderwolf Records,
Boyd's independent label. The song, he says, makes a formidable
statement about the seductive nature of drinking."
A lot of people think that's like a love story when I'm playin'
it-the cliché good-love-gone-bad' type of thing. Which is
exactly what alcohol was for me. It was real destructive."
Since leaving it all behind more than six, years ago, Boyd
has been unstoppable: writing, performing, recording and producing
several albums on Thunderwolf Records, plus contributing the
song Small World to the Honor the Earth CD (Daemon
Records), just one of many fruitful collaborations with acclaimed
author Sherman Alexie, whose own history with addition, recovery
and subsequent success parallels Boyd's.
"We first connected at a place called the Columbia Folk Festival
in Spokane," Boyd recalls. "We were both hired to perform.
I was doing my solo thing and he was doing a reading. At that
time, I think he was already working on the novel Reservation
Blues."
In the middle of a conspicuously Anglo-oriented event, the
two Indian artists naturally gravitated toward each other.
"We talked about trying to put music to some of his lyrics,"
says Boyd. "He'd whip stuff up and just send it to me. It
started off that way. The first thing he sent me was Father
and Farther [available on the Reservation Blues
CD]. Being around Sherman is real cool for me because I can
see this literate thing that I've never seen before."
In Alexie's estimation, Boyd is no slouch either.
"I think he's exceptional," Alexie comments. "It's one of
the reasons I keep working with him-he's simply so gifted.
But beyond that he's just an incredibly decent human being-one
of the nicest guys I know-and I think that's really important
in the Indian world."
Fast forward to 1996 when the pair appeared at a Malibu Honor
the Earth concert with other performers from the musical collection.
Among them, none-other-than Bonnie Raitt, an unforgettable
encounter for a couple of guys from the rez.
"That was incredible. Sherman just had this funny look on
his face, and finally he says, 'There's Bonnie Raitt…'" Boyd
recalls of their mutual awe at performing with the legendary
slide player who Boyd says "was my idol forever and ever."
When they perform, Boyd plays the guitar and sings. Alexie
is decidedly less reserved, mocking New-Agers with dream-catcher
earrings, lamenting and ad-libbing in perfect, trademark Sherman-style.
"Sherman is not shy about anything," Boyd says with a laugh.
"He knows his limitations. [Singing] is one thing he would
never try to do, I think. He does everything else though."
The obvious affinity between them frequently doesn't need
to be expressed in words. For Boyd anyway. But Alexie won't
leave well enough alone.
"I've worked and collaborated with a lot of people," he says.
"Jim and I have this innate thing where I can just give him
a lyric and he can write the music-BAM, like that! I've never
had that sort of…" Alexie hesitates, then pulls out all the
stops. "If he was a woman, I would have married him!"
"I
don't need to apologize for the color of my skin and the look
in my eyes. I'm an Indian man and I love the fact I'm an Indian
man who won't apologize for that..."
Ayyyy. Fresh from the final work on his first feature film,
This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona, Alexie
relied on his friend for the movie's sound track.
"It's a good movie: Alexie says proudly. "Four of our songs
are on the soundtrack. Father and Farther is in a really prominent
place and it's really the theme song of the movie. I think
this song and this movie's really gonna launch him. He's the
guy with the talent. I write lyrics and we perform together,
but he's the one with all the talent."
Boyd is characteristically modest.
"Sherman wrote almost all the lyrics, and I would kind of
edit them and maybe add a chorus or something. On [First
Come, Last Served] he wrote the song A Million Miles
Away. He finally called after the edit and said, "Four
of them are in. And I just said, 'All right!' It's cool. We've
got three other songs in the soundtrack from Reservation
Blues, too."
While he's obviously jazzed about this new direction, Academy
Award nominations for his work on the sound track is something
the shy recording artist finds difficult to imagine.
"I'm from that old school of low self-esteem," Boyd admits,
"[that] I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it' kind of thing."
This coming from the consummate professional who writes,
sings, mixes and markets all his own music. The seasoned musician
who's no stranger to the stage, having been part of long-running
acts like XIT and Greywolf. The enterprising
entrepreneur with degrees in music and small business management.
On the threshold of greater notoriety, Boyd reminisces about
his humble beginnings.
"The first time I remember performing was in the first grade
at a talent show kind of thing right here in Inchelium. I
remember my cousin and I got up and my aunt was playin' the
piano and it was something like [launches into song], 'ran
through the briars and we ran through the brambles, ran through
the bushes where a rabbit wouldn't go!' My cousin was terrified
when we got up on-stage, so he took off running."
But Boyd stuck it out, performing the song solo.
"I ended up singing it," he laughs. "That was my big debut.
Even as terrified as I was, I could always sing. I always
had this real love of music. I can remember being four years
old and having little plastic musical instruments. Nobody
touched them. That was like my whole life!"
Today, the 41 year-old Boyd is pushing prolific. But all
of the images, lyrics and emotions of song writing weren't
influencing the singer in the early years.
"I didn't start writing until 30-something," Boyd says. "Before
I got into XIT, I tried to quit playing music, actually.
I think it was because of the culture: everyone tells you
can't be a musician, or you can't be creative and make a living,
so don't do it. That's what people tell us as creative people.
All the time. They kinda hammer this into our heads. And that's
usually non-creative people that'll tell us this because they
don't understand this. [They have the attitude], "get-a-real-job."
That's what feeds it."
Now Boyd makes a living making music. Another circle.
"Sometimes I haven't finished a song for a year, because
I feel like it's gonna be a really good song when it's done
and I don't want to rush it," he acknowledges. "I'm not one
of those writers who could just sit down and write. I wait
for them to come out-it's the feel. And sometimes they do
come right out in five minutes. I'm still waiting to finish
some." The final frontier for Boyd is the music-video genre
he has yet to give a whirl. Seeing himself on the screen,
he says, is almost more than he can bear. Even now, the accomplished
singer-songwriter is still coming into his own as an artist.
"A lot of times I'm regressing in the things that I'm writing,"
Boyd reveals. "I'm dealing with something I never dealt with
in the past."
One listen to Indian Man from Boyd's current album-with
its mainstream radio number-one-song sound, the kind of tune
you can't get out of your head- is powerful, unmistakable
statement about proud cultural identity, sung unapologetically
by a Native artist determined to stay firmly within the Circle,
embracing the music and all its healing powers.
 DISCOGRAPHY
Reservation Bound [1989, Canyon Records; released
on Thunderwolf Records]
Unity [1993, Thunderwolf Records]
Reservation Blues {with Sherman Alexie) [1995,
Thunderwolf Records]
Small World from Honor the Earth [1996,
Daemon Records]
First Come, Last Served [1997, Thunderwolf
Records]
Excerpt from Indian Man, from Jim Boyd's First
Come, Last Served CD, available from Thunderwolf Records.
Used with permission. To order call: 509-722-3165.
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