Today, acclaimed Indigenous storyteller and activist Logan Staats is sharing his latest single and video for “Holy Man”, a track that “was written alone on the side of a hotel bed,” says Staats. “In the past, being on the road for me was different. It was much more of a solitary and lonely experience. Living show to show, town to town, night to night can be challenging.
“I was missing my family and my community and I was in a period in my life where drugs and alcohol served as an unhealthy coping mechanism which in turn, reinforced a sort of self-imposed alienation and confinement.”
“The residential school system had skinned my family alive. As I was trying to put both those pieces and myself back together – I remember being on the road alone in my hotel room, and opening the bedside table and seeing a standard hotel copy of the Holy Bible. This song is about that moment, what that moment meant to me. At the time I had been searching for answers everywhere and the bible for me was a symbol of everything taken away from my family. It was also a moment where I realized I have a tremendous amount of healing to do. I had such a deep-rooted anger and hatred for the institutions of the so-called ‘Residential Schools and of the Catholic Church who used a ‘doctrine of discovery’ which corrupted the bible’s teachings in order to justify the genocide of generations of my people.”
“The lyrics to this song are quite literal. There are no hidden metaphors, it’s cut and dry. They capture a moment that I carry with me to this day.”
MORE ABOUT LOGAN STAATS
In 2018, veracious Mohawk singer-songwriter Logan Staats was chosen from 10,000 hopeful contestants vying for a spot on musical competition show ‘The Launch’. Before an audience of 1.4 million viewers, Staats won, officiating the breakthrough that would lead him to Nashville and Los Angeles, and to his single “The Lucky Ones” winning the Indigenous Music Award for Best Radio Single. “The Lucky Ones” also occupied #1 in Canada.
In the years between now and then, Staats has come home, making the intentional decision to re-root at Six Nations of the Grand River. “I wanted to bring my songwriting back to the medicine inside of music, to the medicine inside of reclamation,” he says following a phase of constant travel and intensity.
To Staats, music is a healing salve, contemplatively composed and offered to listeners in need of comfort. Since returning home, Staats has been able to create music authentically again, reclaiming his sound through honest storytelling and unvarnished, sometimes painful reflection.
