Annie Humphrey

Anishinaabeg singer-songwriter Annie Humphrey will bring her talents to the Historic Holmes Theatre on February 7 as the entertainment portion of the Native Harvest Dinner. Humphrey is a 2001 NAMMY (Native American Music Award) winner for Best Female Artist and Best Folk/Country Recording for her first album, The Heron Smiles, and won a NAMMY in 2003 for Best Video. She has been writing songs since she was a teenager, but started playing guitar when she was in third grade. “I started making stuff up on piano around the same time,” Humphrey says. “But I started writing when I was around 17 or younger than that. I started writing lyrics to go with the music I was writing.” The power of her songs and her voice had her performing not only in the region but with such music icons as David Crosby, Jackson Browne, and the Indigo Girls.

When Humphrey had her last child three years ago, touring slowed. “When I had my little one, singing kind of slowed down because I wouldn’t go places when she was really young. I traveled a little bit, but I had to bring her everywhere,” Humphrey says. “When you stop going out, they stop asking.”

That was when Humphrey really began to look for ways to make a living other than by touring. Though she graduated with honors from the Police Academy in California and did a hitch in the US Marines, she decided to pursue a degree in art at UND, but that was cut short by the Flood of ‘97.
“I paint, and I do beadwork. I try to stay home,” she says. “That was what forced me into writing more.” She is busy now writing for a new album and will be going into the studio in mid-February. “I’m writing all the time, Humphrey adds, “Of course, everything is changing. Some of the songs I had two months ago are dropping off, and I’m adding some new ones.”

Humphrey’s past work has included passionate love songs and calls to awareness about social issues, including many she has seen on the reservation where she lives. But these issues, she insists, are universal woes that all humans face.

Humphrey has also kept busy teaching a music performance class at the tribal college. She’s been teaching her students to make music with two or three simple chords and encouraging them to write. She also has been teaching local children how to make baskets, lip balm, and other products through her Turtleheart program. She also is working up a couple of songs to play with them at the Holmes Theatre show.

“I don’t know how this record will go,” Humphrey admits. “I don’t know if I’ll have to get a regular job.”

The musical world would be duller place if Annie Humphrey had to sit at a desk job somewhere.