Gregg Deal is a proud member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe.  He is a multi-disciplinary artist and activist, and he often describes himself as a "disruptor." 

Through his artworks, paintings, murals, performance work, filmmaking, spoken word, and more, Deal invites the viewer to confront critiques of American society, politics, popular culture and history.

He describes his work as honouring Indigenous experiences, challenging stereotypes, and pushing for accurate representations of Indigenous people in art.  Suffice it to say, it’s powerful stuff. It was a direct result of this one of these "disruptions", a gritty art installation performance piece entitled “The Punk Pan-Indian Romantic Comedy”, which saw him establish the band, Dead Pioneers, Gregg Deal of the Dead Pioneers with the intent to create original music for the performance piece, and beyond.  The Dead Pioneers' first single, “Bad Indian” was heavily influenced by Gregg’s Indigenous voice, and solidly built on a “First Peoples” perspective.  The band aren’t afraid to tackle hard political and social issues, standing in solidarity with Indigenous rights, Black rights, Brown rights, Asian rights, Gay rights, Trans rights, Workers rights and beyond.  Dead Pioneers hits hard, with plenty of original material— From songs to spoken word with punk riffs. 

We managed to line up an opportunity to speak online to Gregg at his Colorado home, where we asked him about his musical journey so far, his thoughts on the direction of The Dead Pioneers and above all else, what music means to him …