Way back in the before-times, there was a festival called Eaux Claires, an outdoor music fest that did away with most of the annoyances and hype of your typical festival and focused on music and spontaneous collaboration. After four amazing years, it was supposed to be taking 2019 off to regroup, to return in…2020. While the event itself is probably finished, the community it celebrated and the collaborations it fostered continue to reverberate in new interesting projects. One of them, Bizhiki, made its Milwaukee debut at the Vivarium Wednesday night, to a small but adoring crowd.
As members of the powwow troupe Iron Boy, singers Joe Rainey and Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings participated in Eaux Claires from year one; artists were given virtual free rein to work spontaneously with each other, and the seeds of Bizhiki were sewn during the festival’s inaugural installment, as Rainey and company showcased their traditional music for Eaux Claires co-creator Justin Vernon and his growing network of oddball multi-instrumentalists (and their fans).
One of those was Andrew Broder, whose off-the-cuff set in the woods at Eaux Claires’ final installment featured Iron Boy and too many other guests to name. The eventual fruits of this union were Rainey’s 2022 solo debut, Niineta, a merging of Native singing and storytelling and Broder’s modern, relatively oblique electronica that had little precedent.
The approach is even more diversified in Bizhiki, at its core a three-way collaboration between Rainey, Jennings, and S. Carey, a frequent member of Bon Iver and core conspirator in the Vernon cinematic universe. While the group’s new album, Unbound, is at once more experimental and more accessible than Niineta, it still doesn’t come close to capturing the full power of Rainey or Jennings in the flesh—nor especially the two of them singing in unison.
Augmenting the trio for this performance were Jeremy Ylvisaker on guitar, Ben Lester on keys, and Steve Garrington on bass, all of whom also appear on the album; Carey handled drums and an array of gadgetry, and while his auto-tuned vocals served as a focal point for a handful of key mantras, it was the singing of Rainey and Jennings that kept the crowd riveted throughout.
“This is a song I used to sing to my babies,” said Jennings prior to the tender “She’s All We Have.” The grainy imagery projected behind the band for the most part echoed the song’s sentiment of nature under fire; in spite of the technological trappings, the intent of this music was simplicity, in message and in sound. There were meditative passages as well as moments that bordered on ecstatic; the three vocalists almost always led the way, yet surrounding them was a low-key post-rock band always threatening to get nuts. Ylvisaker especially made his presence known; his playing in synch with the singers during “SGC” was tantamount to a new genre emerging and it inspired a raucous crowd reaction.
Soon folks in the crowd were loosened up and giving “fish handshakes” to strangers, as demonstrated by Rainey and Jennings. Although Rainey grew up in Minneapolis, all three vocalists are now Wisconsin-based, and all fish-related banter landed swimmingly. At peak moments, indigenous dancers in various states of regalia emerged individually to energize attendees even further; dancer Michael Demain even hopped offstage at one point to rile up the valiant Wednesday-night crowd.
“I think we were actually asked to come here to help with some healing,” Jennings mused, “after that debate last night.” He had something there; laughter, for one, always helps, and dancing, even a slight swaying, is healthier than standing still. Body parts moving, shaking off flakes of modern life’s absurdity.
Then there are moments for standing still. After the life-affirming “Nashke!” and a brief retreat to the green room, the band returned to the stage and performed what eventually became recognizable as a cover of U2’s “MLK.” A simple, earnest prayer written by an Irishman four decades ago, presented here as a parting gift, a message of peace, the Native singers adding a whole new layer of meaning. It capped an hour of music that didn’t conform to any documented style but seemed to connect with every human in the room.
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