Cary Morin released the latest single from his upcoming album, Innocent Allies, “Indian Hunters Return,” which was written with his son, Eli. “My wife and I were on tour in the Southern U.S. in January 2022. We stopped in Ohio to visit family. We flew our son Eli to join us for a few days,” remembers Morin. “After describing this project to Eli, I invited him to write a song with me. I told him about my memory of a Charlie print that hung in my grandfather’s house for as long as I could remember.”
The painting, dubbed Indian Hunters Return by Russell when he finished it in 1900, depicts an image of a camp with several teepees and hunters returning from the hunt with food. “In that moment, you can see Charlie’s treatment of the sky, accented by the remaining snow on the ground,” says Morin. “There’s some commotion around the hunters’ return. The landscape is a calm but cold Montana winter day, with the familiar bare Cottonwood trees and a cloudy sky. The painting itself suggests the respect given to an elder tribal member offering the elder the opportunity to eat first before the others.”
“After viewing the image, we wrote down what we thought might have happened to the characters just before the action in the scene depicted in the painting,” says Morin, of whose recollection of this painting in his grandfather’s house is a vital childhood memory. “The story in the song speaks to things the hunters encountered on their hunt, including a man who was mourning the loss of his son. One could assume that it was in battle that he died. The hunters could hear the man singing on a hilltop in the distance and decided to leave him to his mourning.”
Award-winning “Native Americana” fingerstyle guitarist and songwriter Cary Morin has made a lasting and lauded career out of his genre-crossing musicianship and deep dives into new cultural influences and music styles, but his upcoming release Innocent Allies brings a whole new medium to the fold. “This album is a collection of songs inspired by the famous Western painter Charlie Russell and my life in Great Falls, Montana, where Charlie lived and worked,” says Morin who was born in Billings, Montana, in 1962. “My father was an Assiniboine tribal member from Wolf Point, Montana, and my mother from The Crow Tribe in Lodge Grass, Montana,” he recalls. “Surrounded by music and art as a child, I was also surrounded by my father’s and grandfather, Robert Yellowtail’s, favorite artist and local hero, Charles Marion Russell. His work was everywhere; in our house, in businesses, on the walls of our families’ homes, and at the state capital. As a Montanan, knowing his work was the same as knowing the Montana mountains, rivers, and the big Montana sky.”
With Innocent Allies—due for release on January 26, 2024—Morin observes details in Charlie Russell’s painting from his perspective as a Native Crow and sets them to song. “Situations depicted in his paintings that might not be obvious to some are subtle cultural or ritualistic details,” says Morin, pointing out Russell’s Indian Hunters Return, in which an elder is being served their meal first; a customary gesture in Crow culture. “As an Indigenous artist, I bring a perspective to this aspect of Charlie’s work by way of this body of songs.” Morin is also quick to note that Charlie Russell was a friend to the Plains Tribes, concerned with the destruction of Native culture and portraying Native Americans in his paintings with a dignity that was largely absent from other artists’ portrayals of the time. “This record is a masterpiece worthy of its place among the great works of art it was created to honor,” says Trina Shoemaker, the Grammy-winning producer who mixed and mastered the album at her Alabama studio.
Preorder the album and learn more at CaryMorin.com.