Roxy Gordon’s: Crazy Horse Never Died Is Alive
“Everything exists and everything will happen and everything is alive and everything is planned and everything is a mystery, and everything is dangerous, and everything is a mirage, and everything touches everything, and everything is everything, and everything is very, very strange.”
— Roxy Gordon, text inscribed on a painting (1988) Everything is very, very strange. All you have to do is listen.
Today is the day we begin restoring the catalog of 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, LeonardCohen, and Terry Allen.
Arrestingly singular and deeply moving, Crazy Horse Never Died, Gordon’s remarkable private-press album from1988, 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.
The gatefold package of this first-ever reissue—a decade in the making and the first in an archival series—includes new and restored artwork and a chapbook, featuring forty-eight pages of 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.)
Buy, listen, watch an unboxing video, read praise from The Wire and Uncut, and learn more below.
Buy the LP, CD, and Chapbook
$9.00 – $37.00
Stream the Album or Purchase It Elsewhere
“From the consistently excellent Paradise of Bachelors label (Terry Allen, Lavender Country) comes another alternative vision of country music from the American South … Much like the reissue of Lavender Country’s 1973 debut, Crazy Horse Never Died elevates the voice of the marginalised in country music, and matches its historical significance with music that is vicious and unusual in its own right.” – The Wire
“His spoken vocals are magisterial and are a dead ringer for Dylan’s ripe, idiosyncratic 21st-century shtick. It’s not only the nasal tonality but the phrasing, the timbre and just about everything else … This is rediscovered treasure of the most arresting kind.” – Uncut
“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
Raise a glass (or a pitcher) to Roxy and Judy — RIP
Crazy Horse Is Alive
Crazy Horse never died.
Crazy Horse never died.
He’s alive.
The whiteman came to Crazy Horse’s home
and wanted buried resources there to run
their whitemen’s world, but Crazy Horse said no.
Crazy Horse said, “What lies beneath this
Black Hills soil is our own.”
So the whitemen called Crazy Horse
and his people pagans, said they
practiced dangerous religions,
said they wore funny things on
their heads. The whitemen said,
“You can’t stop us; God is on our side;
it says so in the Bible. You are few
and you are ignorant. We are many and
we are civilized.”
So Crazy Horse’s people
took to terrorism.
They killed isolated whitemen;
they scalped and disemboweled them.
Other tribes said, “He’s a madman.”
The Crows helped to chase him.
And Crazy Horse took hostages.
The whitemen back in Washington said,
“Crazy Horse is crazy.” They said,
“Don’t he see we’re the real God’s chosen,
picked to be the future, picked to save
the world?”
They said, “In God’s name, we will show him.
We will teach that pagan devil.”
So they mounted up an expedition
to go and kill the pagan devil.
And at its head rode General Custer.
At its head rode General Custer.
They sent General Custer.
And Crazy Horse never died.
Crazy Horse never died.
He’s alive.