Indigenous - Biography
By J Poet
Mato Nanji Zephier, leader of the blues rock band Indigenous, is going to be a guitar god. The massive, full bodied tone he gets from his guitar cuts into the air like a psychedelic jet fighter that’s just swooped out of the heavens to sprinkle the crowd with fat blues rock bullets. Mato’s opening notes on “Things We Do,” the title track from the band’s debut Things We Do (1998 Pachyderm) will make your jaw drop. His style still echoes his influences – Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, B. B., Albert and Freddie King - but it has an undeniable power.
Greg Zephier, Mato’s dad, spent most of the ‘60s and early ‘70s playing in a Native blues band called the Vanishing Americans. It was his collection of Santana, Hendrix, Buddy Guy, and B. B. and Albert King records that Mato turned to for inspiration. When Mato started playing guitar his brother Pte picked up his father’s bass, his sister Wanbdi chose the drum kit and their cousin Horse joined in on congas, later adding other world percussion instruments. The quartet spent five years wood shedding in the Zephier basement in South Dakota and once they began playing live gigs, the rave reviews poured in, especially for Mato’s blazing guitar style. Not too bad for a kid that learned how to play listening to records.
Early gigs included the second Clinton inauguration ball and dates with Jackson Brown, Keb’Mo’ and the Indigo Girls. They released three self produced cassettes, including Live Blues From the Sky recorded through the soundboard of PBS station NET in Lincoln, Nebraska. Indigenous took the tapes to Pachyderm Studios, where studio heads Jim Nichol and Mason Munoz signed them to a deal and released Things We Do. Chris Eyre, the Indian director of Smoke Signals shot a video for “Things We Do” which help the band’s leap to the mainstream.
Their second album, Live at Pachyderm Studios (1999 Pachyderm) showed a quantum leap in the band’s abilities, with a smoking cover of Hendrix’s “Red House.” Circle (2000 Pachyderm) was #1 on the Billboard Blues Chart for four months after its release, and led to a major label deal with Jive and the eponymous Indigenous (2003 Jive). The band jumped back to the indie scene with Chasing The Sun (2006 Vanguard.) It used studio musicians in place of Pte and Wanbdi and with only Mato’s face on the cover, some thought he’d “gone solo.” Not so. On Long Way Home (2005 Indigenous) the band has become a power trio, leaning a more to the rock than the blues side, but still churning out powerhouse riffs with Mato’s impressive vocals delivering a solid, soulful punch.
