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Dead Pioneers team up with The Interrupters for new single, Never Alone
“Collaborating with friends is the best thing ever…” Hear Dead Pioneers and The Interrupters join forces for new single Never Alone.
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“It starts with a simple thing like censorship and then it becomes knees in backs and pepper spray”: How Dead Pioneers are making punk rock for a very modern America
Gregg Deal worries about life in America right now. As a man with Native American roots, he understands division and oppression. On Dead Pioneers' new album Wagon Burner, he says there's great responsibility in saying what needs to be said about where things are at. “There's a lot to be fixed on its best day. But we're going backwards...”
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Gregg Deal first experienced prejudice when he was just six years old. His family had just moved into a new town, midway through kindergarten, and the other kids quickly sensed their new classmate was different, having a white father and a Native American mother (from the The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe). Evidently those kids went home and told their parents about this new boy with darker skin, as the next day they started calling Gregg a “prairie n*****”.
“I didn’t know what that meant,” Gregg recalls now. “But I understood the inflection of it, that I was being made fun of. And I remember being upset about that. I went home and told my parents, but they weren’t very well equipped for it, because of the time they grew up in.
“Native people in that period were either very proud or they were very ashamed, and sorry to say, my mum was the latter, even though she had to deal with the same when she was a kid.”
Talking to Gregg is unlike a conversation with most musicians. The Dead Pioneers mainman certainly looks like a punk rocker, with the sides of his head shaved close to give him a mohawk hairstyle and his long silvery beard protruding like bristles on a broom. But he has an entirely different air. He’s articulate and considered, but seemingly devoid of ego, despite being an expert in his field.
For evidence of Gregg’s expertise, check out his Ted Talks on YouTube. One of them, from June 2018 and entitled ‘Indigenous In Plain Sight’, finds Gregg challenging stereotypes about indigenous people through his art. First and foremost, he is an artist-activist who’s produced everything from paintings to performance art to mural work that deal with Indigenous identity and pop culture.
In fact, Gregg didn’t release his first record with Dead Pioneers until 2023, a self-titled debut that introduced their bruising arrangements peppered with Gregg’s spoken word righteousness. At that point, he was in his late forties; today he’s 51 and possesses a novice’s excitement for what he’s doing, countered by an older man’s wisdom and worldview.
“I like to say we did it for the art of it, not because we were five guys who might be viewed as in the twilight of a career trying to find relevance in music,” he jokes of how the Denver-based band – completed by guitarists Josh Rivera and Abe Brennan, bassist Lee Tesche, and drummer Shane Zweygardt – originally convened.
They did so for inclusion in Gregg’s artpiece, The Punk Pan-Indian Romantic Comedy, an autobiographical account of his relationship with music throughout the years and how it soundtracked the emotional beats of his life, from pain to catharsis.
For Gregg, forming a band was simply a case of creation in another medium. His wife, however, an otherwise supportive angel of a woman, was bewildered by why her husband would become a rocker at an age when most people are prioritising seated gig tickets and knee supports. “When we put the first record together, my wife literally said, ‘Bro, what are you doing?’”
The answer to that question was simple. “I wrote the record I wish I could have heard when I was young,” explains Gregg.
While Dead Pioneers’ second album, last year’s PO$T AMERICAN served as an “act two” to their debut, this latest effort, Wagon Burner is its own thing entirely. For starters, it’s a more collaborative record. The supremely catchy track Never Alone features Los Angeles ska punks The Interrupters and doubles as a song about his teenage self and his fears for his own 17-year-old’s struggles in an America that would deny their existence for multiple reasons.
“It’s a solid representation of the American experience of an indigenous person – a story a lot of people haven’t heard. “These are real stories that need to be articulated.”
Meanwhile, on the goth-tinged The Worst Among Us, the drive for authenticity led Dead Pioneers to a collaborator from across the Atlantic – Jason Williamson from Sleaford Mods. Gregg was first introduced to their music by DP bassist Lee Tesche and quickly became obsessed, particularly with Jason’s songwriting and unique cadence, as well as the band’s place as proponents of a UK-centric evolution in punk rock.
“We have our own brand of punk rock, but it seems to have a hard time progressing forward in a lot of ways, which is fine, as music is music and does different things. But there’s something I really admire about UK punk rock is that it has progression attached to it.”
As a kid of the ‘80s and ‘90s, hip-hop articulated relatable experiences of a working-class upbringing and being broke, as well as the prejudices that come along with it. Chief among those influences were Public Enemy, led by Gregg’s dream collaborator, Chuck D. Their music also introduced an interest in Black civil rights leaders, including Malcolm X – whose autobiography became the first book Gregg read cover to cover – and on to learning about the American Indian Movement and Native civil rights.
Music wasn’t alien to Gregg back then. His father had been a talented guitarist who, despite being deaf in one ear, could hear a piece of music once and recreate it flawlessly. His mother, meanwhile, possessed more of a pop disposition, playing the likes of David Bowie and Prince on the stereo. Sadly, the sound of familial discord filled the house too, and Gregg’s parents kicked him out when he was 17, resulting in him leaving high school and having to grow up fast.
It’s a period that has left a mark. On the shelves behind Gregg today are rows of records, which his wife has encouraged him to collect. It’s the source of an existential crisis, however, born from the trauma of being ejected from his home as a kid, when he was forced to leave his record collection behind. Buying records, for Gregg, is akin to laying down roots – so what if he suddenly had to leave his home again… what would happen to them?
Such worries are hopefully somewhat mitigated by the fact Gregg has a copy of one of his favourite records in his formative years, Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables by Dead Kennedys, whose firebrand former frontman, Jella Biafra, is now a close pal.
These days, Gregg lives in Colorado, an hour south of Denver, with his wife and five children. His oldest child, 17, is non-binary and queer, while his youngest, a girl, is 10, with three boys in between. While their upbringing has been markedly different to that of their father, Gregg worries about the country they’re growing up in. Dead Pioneers is therefore his way of articulating his rage (their latest opus features songs entitled Dead Presidents, Nazi Teeth and Seeing Red) while informing people at the same time.
“I take very seriously the responsibility to say the thing out loud that needs to be said,” explains Gregg. “Right now we have a rise of fascism, the removal of rights, misogyny is on the rise, and racism is here to stay. We have to speak against this administration and their policies. We have to talk about the people who are in marginalised and disenfranchised spaces. It does have to be about queer people and trans people. It does have to be about black folks, about women and young people.
“It has to be about all of these things, the working class, freedom of speech, and just like all of these things that are supposed to be the tenets which this country is built on. At its core, these are the so-called founding documents of this country that we live under, and there needs to be a lot fixed on its best day. But we’re going backwards.”
There may be a need for musical evolution in America as worrying developments continue to escalate there. Not too long ago, Gregg did a talk at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. and was asked to censor some of the content in his presentation. The Worst Among Us examines how things can soon escalate if they’re tolerated.
“It starts with a simple thing, like censorship, and then it becomes knees in backs and tear gas and pepper spray,” explains Gregg. “It looks at how that imbalance of power takes over even in spaces like museums, and the indoctrination against native people, grabbing sacred items from sacred sites, and erasing bloodlines.
“It also dovetails into what’s happening now with the current administration in the United States trying to delete history, so that it’s more amenable to conservative whites. But to me, that amounts to colonialism.”
Despite the depth of his knowledge and feeling, Gregg is realistic about what he can achieve, even if he remains hopeful.
“I don’t believe anything I’m doing will change the world, but if I can contribute, then I feel proud to be able to do so. If someone says, ‘I learned from this record and I’d never thought about this before’, then I think that’s pretty solid. I don’t live and breathe off of that, but I certainly appreciate that as a byproduct of the compelling nature of making art.”
More serious than that in Gregg’s mission, though, is educating indigenous people.
“For indigenous people, gathering knowledge is not just a thing that you do, it’s a tool of survival.”
Wagon Burner is released on June 26 via Hassle
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