Originally recorded in 2001 and release in 2025, The Mount St. Helen Band was a pivotal band from the thriving Silver Lake, California music scene. Their music captures the essence of “indie” as many bands were striving for artistic independence. The band’s lead singer “Roxy”, far too young, passed away in 2019 and the band and their families hope that this album will help keep his spirit alive.

Stream the full album now

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Purchase the album from Mass MoCA’s Research and Development Store

Purchase the album on Bandcamp

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Stream the full album now

Purchase vinyl LP edition

Watch a mini doc of Kasambwe Brothers journey to the US

MASS MoCA Records is collaboration between the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Hen House Studios.

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Recorded live at Bernie Larsen’s Ojai Underground Exchange, Ojai CA on 12/6/2019 (by the legend himself, Bernie Larsen.) Then a brilliant mix was done by Niko Bolas….then Micah fucked all that up with his 4-track cassette machine. Fortunately, Bob Rice was able to salvage the piece of Micah’s self-indulgent wreckage with his skillful mastering touch. What we are left with is what crickets around the world are calling “A TIMELESS MASTERPIECE OF MODERN MUZAK!”

Guitar + Vocals: Micah
Bass + Vocals: Aroyn
Drums + Samples: Tony

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Described by Rolling Stone as a “trippy troubadour” and a “musical polymath who combines an indie DIY aesthetic with a questing hippie spirit and a relentless work ethic,“ Particle Kid is a constantly absorbing and evolving musician who has both musical DNA and professional experience backing Neil Young (along with his brother Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real), collaborating with John Doe, Tinariwen and the Flaming Lips and working on his own projects like the psych-punk orchestra Insects vs. Robots. Micah’s dad, Willie Nelson, helped name his band: Micah rolled into the house one day and Willie meant to say, “Welcome home, Prodigal Son!” but he had just burned a fat one and it came out as, “Welcome home, Particle Kid!” instead.

Time Capsule was recorded in many different places and times with different people over the past 5 or 6 years, on everything from 16-track, 2-inch tape machines in fancy recording studios and cassette 4-tracks in bedrooms to laptops in hotel rooms. Originally Time Capsule was going to be three different albums or EPs until Micah decided, “Fuck it, let’s put it all on one big record,” envisioning that “the songs would be like cut-out pieces from magazines and the little weird segue interludes would be the glue that holds it all together.” He came up with the idea earlier this year while quarantined in a studio: “I was thinking about how all of the art and music we make are like little time capsules, tangible forms of memories captured and frozen in time, like little plot points in our lives that exist now and we get to dig them up years later and revisit them.”

The album feels like an organic, laidback friends and family affair, with many of the guests and influences being the people Micah plays and tours with. “Velocirapture (The Serpent Flew),” featuring Lennon on vocals, guitar and mellotron, was written while super-stoned, wide awake and daydreaming about dinosaurs. Fittingly, since this record recalls at times both Dinosaur Jr. (one of Micah’s favorite bands) and Sebadoh/Sentridoh/Lou Barlow, “Someone Else’s Dream” features J Mascis on guitar. “All One Day (Shadow of the Sun)” is a birthday tribute featuring Willie Nelson and Jim James of My Morning Jacket. “WTF (No Somebody)” is a positive vibe that features the Lovely Eggs. “Love Is Worth” is a twangy stream-of-consciousness tune featuring Margo Price.

The finale is “Amerikan Lyfe,” an epic family jam featuring Willie: “Shit was hitting the fan all around us and this increasing existential anxiety about everything, so there was an odd comfort in being not only stuck in a recording studio and able to focus on making new music as a sort of temporary escape from it all, but it was especially very cathartic/therapeutic to have a reason to collectively scream, ‘LIFE! LIFE! LIFE!’ over and over again as loudly as possible,” he says. “Having these great memories with folks I love to help offset such darkness during a very stressful time is a true gift.”

“It feels like we are experiencing a major plot point in history for better or worse, and the idea of collaging all this music into a literal time capsule was interesting,” he says. The album will be available digitally and on CD along with a limited run of 20 actual time capsules, hand-crafted from hempcrete (a fire-resistant, highly insulative building material made from hemp stalks) by Micah. Inside each one will be a thumb drive including the record, videos, printed album artwork, industrial hemp seeds that he cultivated himself, and a physical ticket to a Particle Kid concert in 20 years. Then people can fill the time capsule with their own mementos and reconnect with it decades from now. “It’s like an interactive art piece,” he says.

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Keturah is a popular Malawian musician who has released several albums and has gained popularity in Malawi and beyond. She is known for her powerful vocals and inspirational lyrics, which often incorporate traditional African rhythms and melodies.

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Native American Musician, Actor and Rights Activists Floyd Red Crow Westerman Two Most Pivotal Albums “The Land Is Your Mother” Re-Issued by Hen House Studios.

“Even today’s young Indian people can sing some of Floyd’s songs. And certainly their elders, people like me, remember him well and speak of him often and talk about how you know his albums he released, really gave us the opportunity to have a voice about what was going on in Indian country. To me that is Floyd’s major accomplishment.” – KEVIN GOVER, Under Secretary for Museums and Culture at the Smithsonian

Like most Native Americans of his generation, Floyd Westerman was wrenched away from the arms of his family at the age of five and sent off to a government boarding school nearly 100 miles away. These blatant attempts to destroy Indian civilization by breaking up families and making traditions obsolete became one of many subjects Westerman would take on when he developed into an important Native American protest singer and actor.

A Dakota Sioux, Westerman remained at the boarding school for the next 12 years, until he had finished high school. By this time he had learned guitar after watching the older students play and picking up some basic chords from them. Like many players who begin with rock or folk music, he sensed that learning three chords was enough to perform much of the music that was circulating at the time, and he was right. He enjoyed music and he continued playing and singing after graduation. He was influenced by both the folk music of Bob Dylan and fellow Native American Buffy St. Marie, but, like many Native Americans, deeply loved country & western music and had a sincere fondness for one of its most expressive geniuses, Hank Williams. In a tribute to his own family dynasty, Westerman began using the name Red Cloud, which he had inherited from his grandfather and which had important spiritual connotations among the Sioux people.

Westerman began performing in the Colorado area, his guitar playing improving considerably. At this time he established a friendship with the young author Vine Deloria Jr., also a songwriter. The subject of many of their discussions was the lack of songs about Native American issues and traditions. A collaboration began, as Westerman took sections of Deloria’s book, Custer Died for Your Sins, and created profound, sometimes humorous songs from the subjects. This work led to signing a recording contract in 1969 in New York City, and the eventual release of “Floyd Red Crow Westerman – Custer Died For Your Sins”, titled after his friend’s book and a few years later the album “The Land Is Your Mother”. Both albums have a strong country flavor that suited Westerman’s voice and have remained a sought-after classics ever since. The albums eventually went out of print and are now available through the record label Hen House Studios.

Westerman has performed all over the world, including large benefit and festival appearances with Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, Harry Belafonte, Kris Kristofferson, and Jackson Browne. He has been heavily involved with AIM, the American Indian Movement, during his entire career and has testified at congressional hearings on Native American issues, such as uranium mining. Although highly respected for his musical and songwriting accomplishments, he has actually had more time in the mainstream spotlight with his work as an actor. He made his screen debut in Renegades, playing the father of Lou Diamond Phillips. Since that time, his list of credits includes roles in Dances With Wolves, The Doors (he was Jim Morrison’s spiritual guide), Lakota Woman, Clearcut, and Grey Owl. He has also shown up on the small screen, playing the role of Uncle Ray on Walker, Texas Ranger as well as leads on Northern Exposure, L.A. Law, X-Files, Millenium, Roseanne, and appearances as Sitting Bull in the four-hour miniseries Son of the Morning Star.

Westerman kept up an active schedule, his work as both an actor and musician focusing on “…the institutions that have destroyed our rights,” he says. “That’s what our struggle is all about, our spiritual rights and the Indian point of view…

– Eugene Chadbourne

The post Floyd Red Crow Westerman -The Land Is Your Mother appeared first on Hen House Studios.

“Even today’s young Indian people can sing some of Floyd’s songs. And certainly their elders, people like me, remember him well and speak of him often and talk about how you know his albums he released, really gave us the opportunity to have a voice about what was going on in Indian country. To me that is Floyd’s major accomplishment.” – KEVIN GOVER, Under Secretary for Museums and Culture at the Smithsonian

Like most Native Americans of his generation, Floyd Westerman was wrenched away from the arms of his family at the age of five and sent off to a government boarding school nearly 100 miles away. These blatant attempts to destroy Indian civilization by breaking up families and making traditions obsolete became one of many subjects Westerman would take on when he developed into an important Native American protest singer and actor.

A Dakota Sioux, Westerman remained at the boarding school for the next 12 years, until he had finished high school. By this time he had learned guitar after watching the older students play and picking up some basic chords from them. Like many players who begin with rock or folk music, he sensed that learning three chords was enough to perform much of the music that was circulating at the time, and he was right. He enjoyed music and he continued playing and singing after graduation. He was influenced by both the folk music of Bob Dylan and fellow Native American Buffy St. Marie, but, like many Native Americans, deeply loved country & western music and had a sincere fondness for one of its most expressive geniuses, Hank Williams. In a tribute to his own family dynasty, Westerman began using the name Red Cloud, which he had inherited from his grandfather and which had important spiritual connotations among the Sioux people.

Westerman began performing in the Colorado area, his guitar playing improving considerably. At this time he established a friendship with the young author Vine Deloria Jr., also a songwriter. The subject of many of their discussions was the lack of songs about Native American issues and traditions. A collaboration began, as Westerman took sections of Deloria’s book, Custer Died for Your Sins, and created profound, sometimes humorous songs from the subjects. This work led to signing a recording contract in 1969 in New York City, and the eventual release of “Floyd Red Crow Westerman – Custer Died For Your Sins”, titled after his friend’s book and a few years later the album “The Land Is Your Mother”. Both albums have a strong country flavor that suited Westerman’s voice and have remained a sought-after classics ever since. The albums eventually went out of print and are now available through the record label Hen House Studios.

Westerman has performed all over the world, including large benefit and festival appearances with Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, Harry Belafonte, Kris Kristofferson, and Jackson Browne. He has been heavily involved with AIM, the American Indian Movement, during his entire career and has testified at congressional hearings on Native American issues, such as uranium mining. Although highly respected for his musical and songwriting accomplishments, he has actually had more time in the mainstream spotlight with his work as an actor. He made his screen debut in Renegades, playing the father of Lou Diamond Phillips. Since that time, his list of credits includes roles in Dances With Wolves, The Doors (he was Jim Morrison’s spiritual guide), Lakota Woman, Clearcut, and Grey Owl. He has also shown up on the small screen, playing the role of Uncle Ray on Walker, Texas Ranger as well as leads on Northern Exposure, L.A. Law, X-Files, Millenium, Roseanne, and appearances as Sitting Bull in the four-hour miniseries Son of the Morning Star.

Westerman kept up an active schedule, his work as both an actor and musician focusing on “…the institutions that have destroyed our rights,” he says. “That’s what our struggle is all about, our spiritual rights and the Indian point of view…

– Eugene Chadbourne

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