Album Review – Blaine Bailey’s “Indian Country”

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Traditional Country (#510) and Red Dirt (#550.7) on the Country DDS.

Blaine Bailey was the very first performer to get booted from the new music reality TV competition The Road on CBS where up-and-coming country artists get judged by Keith Urban fans. But instead of being an embarrassment, there might not be a better, more resounding endorsement for the music of Blaine Bailey. If Keith Urban fans don’t like it, you know it’s good.

He didn’t belong on that damn show anyway. Along with it still being early in his career, what Blaine Bailey is building is too thoughtful, too heady for that audience. It’s almost like he knew he was a fish out of water, and instead of playing the game or changing who he was, he leaned into being his most honest and authentic self, and used the opportunity as a platform, even if it secured his early exit.

“This next song is a song I wrote. It’s about issues we face as Native Americans. Cultural appropriation being one of those,” Bailey said in a portion that was edited out of the televised broadcast. “So this next song goes out to all my Native brothers and sisters that may have felt like they had a voice that wouldn’t be heard. They’ll hear us now. It’s called ‘T-shirt.'”

“T-Shirt” is from Blaine Bailey’s 2024 album Home (read review) that landed him on the radar of many in the independent country realm, and found the proud Native American exploring the Red Dirt sound originating from northeast Oklahoma. It’s a region where the White man lives on top of an area forcibly settled as Indian Country. In a true Red Dirt spirit, Home mixed a lot of rock influences in with its country inflections.

On the new album Indian Country, the music lives up to the name. Country is exactly what you get from Blaine Bailey, and in heavy doses, with plenty of steel guitar and Telecaster twang, country shuffles and train beats, only the stories are told from the Native American perspective, giving the music and songwriting a more distinctive aspect.


Country music legends from Johnny Cash, to Waylon Jennings, to Marty Stuart all championed the cause of America’s native people, and Ray Price might have come with some Cherokee blood. But Blaine Bailey is really one of the first Native Americans to enter the country music space so boldly and intentionally. Why more Native Americans, especially from northeast Oklahoma haven’t taken up country is kind of confounding. Blaine Bailey finds his calling in being that indigenous representative country needs.

But don’t worry, this is not an album that beats you over the brow with one grievance after another. Yes, Bailey starts the album off with some social commentary about the laws and placards you’d see around Oklahoma and beyond in previous eras forbidding Indians from drinking alcohol after dark, or at all. Bailey takes his role of representing Native Americans in country music with seriousness and reverence. But numerous songs on the new album are about Blaine wrestling with his vices, and thankfully, overcoming them.

You do wish at times you understood, or maybe engaged with the vocals more on this record. Bailey’s a good songwriter, but something about his tone or these treatments don’t lend to strong attentiveness to the stories. Nonetheless, Indian Country is a great listening record, with slick playing and fetching licks, well-crafted choruses and melodies, and a pleasing outcome for a traditional country record.

Blaine Bailey wanted to make an album that was unapologetically Indian, and unapologetically Country, and that’s what he did. Both of these things might mean that his music isn’t ready for primetime, yet. But for those who demand their music be real and taken from true-life experiences, they wouldn’t have it any other way. Blaine Bailey is what they crave.

8/10

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