In Minneapolis, which has one of the biggest and most spirited Native American communities in the nation, Rainey was raised as a Red Lake Ojibwe. Although the Red Lake Reservation is a sovereign state five hours to the north, Rainey was raised in the area known to Northerners as "The Cities," in his mother's home on historic Milwaukee Avenue on the South Side of Minneapolis. Living less than a mile from the Minneapolis American Indian Center and the Little Earth housing developments, Franklin Avenue served as the post-Reorganization Act hub for Native American life in the area. Both the housed and the homeless, as well as the Native Americans who don't even want to be housed, nevertheless call this area home.
When Rainey was five years old, he began using his GE tape recorder to record Pow Wow singing groups because he was interested in Pow Wow singing. Shortly after, his mother signed him up for a Little Earth Juniors dance and singing practice. He started hanging out with The Boyz, a renowned drum trio from Minneapolis, when he was a preteen at a home several of them shared in the Little Earth projects.
Rainey finds himself caught between two civilizations once more on Niineta. Working with producer Andrew Broder this time. Before they became more often acquainted through Vernon, Aaron and Bryce Dessner's 37d03d collective—both of whom contributed to the most recent Bon Iver album—the two of them initially met backstage at Justin Vernon's hometown Eaux Claires music festival.
Thus, each song began with Broder's rhythms while the two of them experimented with different tones and tempos. Then, additional 37d03d collaborators were brought in to arrange and recontextualize the vintage Pow Wow sound in weird, new spaces in between using samples from Rainey's extensive collection of Pow Wow recordings, the CD layers and reworks excerpts from his career as a singer in upper Midwest and Canadian settings..

How to hire Joe Rainey for an event