Hear Roxy Gordon’s “An Open Letter to Illegal Aliens” Ahead of “Crazy Horse Never Died” Reissue

Today we’re delighted to share the second single from our forthcoming reissue of Roxy Gordon’s Crazy Horse Never Died: “An Open Letter to Illegal Aliens.” Here, Gordon enumerates a litany of diseases–namely, capitalism, communism, materialism and money–the “baggage” imported by European immigrants to “these American continents,” which had been doing “pretty well” for some forty thousand years before their arrival. This acid retort to conservative white America’s hysteria about immigration is, in the end, a rather compassionate and tolerant transposition. It’s the ideological baggage that is not welcome on these American continents,” not those foreign human beings who bear it. 

Listen to “An Open Letter to Illegal Aliens” and read more on the record below.

Stream “An Open Letter to Illegal Aliens”

Roxy Gordon (First Coyote Boy): Crazy Horse Never Died

Arrestingly singular and deeply moving, this 1988 album by Choctaw, Assiniboine, and Texan poet, journalist, artist, activist, and musician Roxy Gordon (First Coyote Boy) (1945–2000)—whose long out-of-print work has been acclaimed by friends such as Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen, and Terry Allen—sets his cold-blooded, bone-lean reflections on the complexities and contradictions of American Indian (and American) history and identity to atmospheric, synth-damaged country-rock that skirts ambient textures and postpunk deconstructions. 

Pre-Order the LP, CD, and Chapbook

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“Roxy Gordon is a brother of mine. I don’t like the word ‘poet’; it is usually used too lightly. Roxy, however, is a real one. God bless him and the buffalo he rode in on.” – Townes Van Zandt

“His work is strong. The word goes out. Can a change come on dove’s feet?” – Leonard Cohen

“Roxy Gordon is one of the great outlaw artist American misfits. He writes like an angel and sings like livin’ hell. His voice is as stone, true as the history of blood and dirt.” – Terry Allen

“Someday maybe Steinbeck will be my favorite writer again but, right now, it’s Roxy Gordon.” – John Stewart

• The first-ever reissue, a decade in the making and the first in an archival series, of Roxy Gordon’s scarce and long out-of-print 1988 album, his first widely distributed set of recordings.
• Deluxe LP edition features 140g virgin vinyl; a gatefold jacket with restored, new, and alternate art and photos; and a 48pp. chapbook (PoB-069) with lyrics, essays, photographs, and First Coyote Boy’s extraordinary drawings for each song. (The chapbook is included in the LP edition only and also available for purchase separately.)
• Deluxe CD edition features a gatefold jacket with restored, new, and alternate art and photos, and insert (CD edition does not include the chapbook).
• RIYL: Terry Allen, Leonard Cohen, Jesse Ed Davis, Willie Dunn, Butch Hancock, Willie French Lowery, John Trudell, Keith Secola, Buffy St. Marie, Townes Van Zandt, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Link Wray, Light in the Attic’s Native North America
• Artist page/links/catalog
• Smart link