Green's music seems to pour from a bottle that could be plastered over with labels. It is first and foremost Canadian Indian music, but it is also country blues, country rock, Canadian rock, and even more specifically, the kind that can only be played somewhere where the temperature goes down to 30 degrees below zero for weeks at a time. Guitar playing seems to come as naturally to the Green clan as donning warm clothing in such hideous circumstances. Billy Joe Green learned from his father, who loved Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, and country legend Wilf Carter. He also learned from his brother Richie Green, and from his uncle, Robert "A-Go-Go" Green, whose nickname implies something groovy. All of them spent hundreds of hours playing, sometimes while gazing out at the Lake of the Woods in tribal territory that straddles the borders of Ontario and Manitoba.

As a teenager Billy Joe Green joined the Feathermen, a primarily Ojibway band led by the fine guitarist Martin Tuesday. Tuesday might have been Saturday night, such was his reputation for being progressive. Green hopped onto the band as second guitarist and became involved in elaborate interplay with Tuesday, some of the songs lasting until Wednesday morning. It was the beginning of more than three decades for Green working as both a sideman and bandleader in blues and rock clubs in Winnipeg, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Edmonton. On record, he mixes together original songs with covers by bluesman Robert Johnson and an arrangement of "Greensleeves." His son Jesse Green is also a guitarist and leads the band Peacemaker, based out of Winnipeg. ~ Eugene Chadbourne