Bill Miller

A Mohican Indian from northern Wisconsin, Bill Miller has long been one of the most admired figures in the Native American music arena and beyond, receiving five Native American Music Awards in 2000, including Songwriter of the Year, Song of the Year, Folk Artist, and Artist of the Year for Ghost Dance.  In 2005 his album, Cedar Dream Songs, won a Grammy Award for Best Native American Recording. 

With music, Miller discovered a way out of the entrenched poverty of the reservation.  Music had always been an essential part of life, and Bill (whose Indian name, Fush-Ya Heay Ka, means "bird song") learned traditional songs at an early age.  "We didn't have much," he recalls. "There was nothing but woods, trout and a Zenith radio that picked up AM stations across the country.  I'd hear Barbra Streisand, The Beatles, Stones, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan. I became a fan of all kinds of good music and the emotion it can capture."

Red Dirt Rangers

One of Oklahoma’s most original and respected Americana bands, The Red Dirt Rangers, incorporate a mix of folk, rock, and country with an ole-time western twang.  Add some swing, a little bluegrass and soulful harmony.  The result is great original songs that don't sound like any of the above genre and yet are greatly influenced by them all. 

The Rangers take the rich vein of Americana music and infuse it with their own Oklahoma style, incorporating an array of instruments and ideas which add to the rich texture of their songs.  Their unique blend and energetic delivery has contributed directly to the musical genre widely known as Red Dirt music.

Sam Baker

In 2004, Sam Baker played a few of his songs in a Texas Hill Country bar and afterwards handed a copy of his just finished CD Mercy to a local disk jockey.  The DJ started spinning Mercy the next day and over the next three years it slowly, but surely, spun its way around the world.  All by word of mouth.  No record label, no publicity machine.  Nothing but one listener handing the CD to another listener.  Mercy is still traveling and still spinning.

Eliza Gilkyson

Gilkyson, a third-generation musician who grew up in Los Angeles knowing that her life would revolve around music, was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2002 alongside such luminaries as Willie Nelson, Nancy Griffith and Townes Van Zandt. Her CD Land of Milk and Honey was nominated for a Grammy in 2004.

“Eliza Gilkyson doesn't pull any punches,” says the New York Times. “She graces the music with her lush and passionate voice; a dark and lonely sound, hope and satisfaction, and edgy lyrics with piercing imagery round out the whole.”