Keith Secola's Live Shows INNOCENT MAN Live at the Olympics 2002 NDN KARS Live at the Olympics 2002 WAILING BLUES Live at GrassRoots Festival 2002 (with guest Jeb Puryear) WILD JAVELINAS Live at GrassRoots Festival 2002 (with guest Otono Lujan) New Single from KOKOPELLI BLUES EP 4R ANCESTORS Live at Indian Summer Festival 2002 (with guests Wade Fernandez, Leon Thompson) ZOGIPOON Live at Indian Summer Festival 2002 (with guest Wade Fernandez) Sung in Ojibwe Keith Secola at GrassRoots 2001 photo by John Godfrey www.grassrootsfest.org Watch Keith Secola FRYBREAD 2002 GrassRoots Video Live Shows Real Audio/Video streams provided by LeExec/FJB for Secola.com, all rights reserved. CONCERT REVIEW Keith Secola and the Wild Band of Indians at GrassRoots Festival - written by Laurie Davis, July 30, 2002 I waited two years, crossed a border, drove seven hours, and lived out of tent for the first time in twenty years, to see Keith Secola perform at the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance in Trumansburg NY. It was worth it. The GrassRoots Festival may have been the perfect venue to fully appreciate the ever- evolving, always glistening, web of musical connections that is Keith Secola and the Wild Band of Indians. In three performances over three days Keith Secola did what I suspect he does all the time --- reinvent each song each time it’s played with a changing cast of musical characters. The band members and musical guests somehow never fail to find and work with the inspirational thread that Keith spins with an artistry that is only partly obscured by an uncanny mixture of humility and mischief. Friday night’s performance of Frybread saw him bring Brooklyn’s Little Egypt on stage with him as the ‘Frybread Messiahs’, and this tune was brilliantly reshaped and served up as edgy, happening hip hop that rode the back of the late night crowd’s energy. Compared to Friday's rock performance, Sunday afternoon’s version of NDN Kars was a traditional round dance lead by Moontee Sinquah --- and a study of Keith’s gift for engaging and playing with the audience. Urging the crowd to create an ever-widening circle (“If you’re not part of the problem, become part of the problem”) the round dancers eventually encircled the field and a handful die-hards still resolutely determined to be passive spectators. And when, at the end of the song, the hundreds of dancers all stood still, panting, exultant, hands holding arms aloft Keith declared war against the uninvolved with “Charge!” And, finally, if somewhat hurriedly, they moved. He’s a powerful performer. He can rock a crowd awake to a dancing frenzy with one song and lure them into respectful attentiveness for another, just moments later. He’s a singer, songwriter, master guitarist and flute player who leads his band and audience along with him as he prospects for silver in all the musical genres he calls home --- rock, blues, ballads, and the music of the First Nations. Keith Secola’s music braids these diverse sources of inspiration into a sound that is uniquely his and may be best described by the title he’s given to the CD he is now working on - Native Americana. Free of finger-wagging, blaming and the righteousness of identity politics, Keith’s music involves and engages everyone. Before Sunday afternoon’s performance, I overheard a woman talking with Keith. She told him that a few years ago, during an earlier festival, she had been woken by his music from a dead sleep. (Trumansburg is a sleepy little village when the festival is not in town). Unable to go back to sleep, she had gone to watch the performance and now, every year, attends with the hope that he will be there. There really is something quite remarkable about Keith Secola’s music that should not, and cannot, be missed. # Laurie Davis is a freelance writer from Ontario, Canada; exclusive article for Secola.com.

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