Long before the sacred drumbeats of a first people echoed across the plains or an unrealized rock singer tentatively strummed a beat-up old acoustic guitar, the mountains had been holding vigil. Sheepshead Mountain towered over a spirit-strangled boy in a dilapidated trailer, its granite face absorbing every assault, every struggle, every spark of rebellion that would one day become Tim Montana. Four hours south, the Bighorn Mountains witnessed another people—the Apsáalooke—who have lived in communion with this land for centuries.
As America turns 250, these mountains remind us that the country is still young, still loud, still learning. But the land? The land does not belong to the people; the people belong to the land. The sacred land has always known who we are.
How Tim Montana Was Raised Rustic
Tim Montana was forged in the shadows of his mountain—off‑grid, half‑wild, raised in an old elk hunting camp turned into a makeshift home in a rustic trailer that had long been relegated to the Montana wilds. There was no electricity. No modern conveniences.
Dominated by an adopted father who drowned his spirit not in water, but under the weight of his own delusions and paranoia, what Tim did have was a mother who believed in him and Sheepshead—that silent overseer that didn’t flinch at hardship.
It shaped him the way mountains shape weather—slowly, relentlessly, without apology. That upbringing didn’t just influence his music; it forged the raw, unvarnished worldview that pulses through every riff, every lyric, every howl onstage.
Just over the ridge line, the Crow Nation was shaped by its own mountains and history of drowning under oppression by the leaders of a young nation that could not understand or embrace their ancestral ways. For these people, the Bighorn Mountains are not scenery—they are identity. A sacred geography. A place where visions are received and ancestors speak.
Their homeland is and always has been the heartbeat of the world. And while Tim’s childhood and the Crow’s history are not the same, they share a proximity—geographic, emotional, spiritual—that shaped the musician long before he ever stepped onto the Crow Indian Reservation to explore a collaboration.
Tim on Growing Up Montana
The state of Montana has seven federally recognized Indian reservations that cover nearly 6 million acres, and their presence in Big Sky country is impossible to ignore.
Montana kids grow up knowing the stories—the loss, the resilience, the injustice that everyone feels but no one knows how to carry. For Tim, that awareness was palpable. His own childhood mirrored the same sense of oppression and abandonment he saw on the reservation.
Different histories, different wounds, but the same feeling of being pushed to the margins. But despite the suffering and sadness, there is ineffable beauty that radiates from the reservations.
“I was around 4 or 5 years old when my mother took me to a powwow and I experienced the ceremonial chanting, drumming and dancing in full regalia. It’s not something that you experience and forget. It moves you, connects you to that moment in time in ways that I can’t explain.”
That proximity meant Native culture wasn’t something distant or exotic—it was part of the soil he hunted on, the rivers he fished and the stories that lingered in the air. And that connection is what makes Tim’s latest single, “Watch Me Drown,” and its accompanying music video feel less like a crossover and more like a reckoning.
The song’s drowning motif—“Leave me here and let me drown”—echoes the feeling of being unseen, unheard, misunderstood. And when Crow voices enter the bridge—delivering a victory chant vocalized by First Crazy Dog and the young drum group Wolf Bear—the song becomes something else entirely: a fusion of frontier resilience, tribal legacy, rebellion, survival and modern rock ’n’ roll.
“The drum is sacred, it is medicine for us. After meeting with Brother Tim and understanding his vision, we wanted to open the song with the Victory Chant as an invitation for the breath of life to enter,” said Cordell Stewart (First Crazy Dog). “And that breath of life does enter the song through the chant, carrying the song toward its deeper message: You may watch me drown but you will also watch me rise.”
Setting The Stage With The Crow Nation
This collaboration began when Tim received the 2025 Excellence in Film and Culture Award from the Montana Department of Commerce. At the ceremony, he met Shawn Backbone, a Crow speaker whose humor, authenticity and deep cultural pride immediately captured Tim’s imagination. Afterward, Tim approached him, already knowing he wanted to work with a Native people on his new song.
That meeting opened the door: Tim realized he wanted to work with the Crow not as an outsider borrowing imagery, but as someone whose own childhood poverty and resilience paralleled the struggles of Native youth. When Backbone learned more about Tim’s background and saw he wasn’t coming from privilege or exploitation, the connection took root.
Through Shawn, Tim was invited to attend Crow Fair, where he experienced the “teepee capital of the world,” and encountered the living vibrancy of Crow tradition. Actor and historian Mark Brown then connected him to Cordell Stewart, known as First Crazy Dog, who introduced Tim to Wolf Bear, a younger drum group.
Tim deliberately chose to work with younger singers, believing they would resonate more with contemporary music while still carrying the heartbeat of tradition.
With the blessing of the Chairman of the Crow Tribe of Indians, Frank Whiteclay, Tim brought them into the studio in Billings, Montana, to record the bridge of “Watch Me Drown” and later filmed the music video on sacred Crow land along the Little Bighorn River—under the dominion of the Bighorn Mountains.
For Montana, this project wasn’t about borrowing culture; it was about connection and amplifying Native voices he fears are disappearing. The song carries echoes of Crow drums, voices and prayers, blending rebellion and survival with heritage and memory. It stands as a testament to those voices he worries could be lost—and by weaving them into his art, he hopes the blending can spark new beginnings.
“When you spend time on the reservation, you feel how heavy things are for the kids,” Tim said. “Montana has some of the highest youth suicide rates in the country, and a lot of that pain lives on the reservations. If making music with them gives even one kid a sense of hope or pride, then that matters to me.”
This deep-seated commitment to community echoes his previous efforts when Tim Montana and others raised $300K for Special Ops Xcursions.
This shared vision didn’t come from a place of appropriation. It came from synergy—two stories shaped by the same land finally meeting on purpose. It’s about a boy raised under Sheepshead Mountain and a Nation rooted in the Bighorns, each carrying their own scars, their own legends, their own songs. The mountains loom in the background, not as landmarks but as characters. The river moves with the memory of battles, prayers and stories older than the United States itself. And in the middle of it all stands Tim, a Montana kid who left home to survive and returned to reclaim the part of himself the mountains had been holding for him.
For touring information, merch and more, sidle over to timmontana.com.
America 250 Quotables from Tim Montana
What does it mean to be a patriotic American?
Being a patriot isn’t blind loyalty or pretending America is perfect. It’s believing in a country built by people from every corner and culture on earth—dreamers who chased their dreams and wanted a better life full of opportunity. America became great because free people came here to build something better together.
What are you most grateful for in America?
What I’m most grateful for in America is the freedom to become whoever you want to be, no matter where you came from or what you started with.
How has America shaped you as a person? America shaped me to believe that where you start doesn’t have to define where you finish. I’m as wild as the West, and that shaped both my youth and the man I am today. Through struggle, I forged an iron work ethic inspired by the great Americans who came before me.
