1. Everette Helper's Song
2. Badlands
3. Trip To Little Big Horn
4. Old Man's Vision
5. Wounded Knee
6. Big Foot
7. Hotchkiss Gunner's Lament
8. Broken Promise Land
9. Casino
10. So You Want To Be An Indian
11. Walking Through The Prayers
12. Three Chiefs
13. Listen To The Children

"It is a collection of ballads, as well as a journey through the past, present, and future of the Native American people in and around Pine Ridge, South Dakota," Stuart says. "This includes the legends of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and the tragedy of Wounded Knee, as well as the modern-day struggles of the original Americans. Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull -- they are the superstars of this world."

The music on Badlands is performed by Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives -- drummer Harry Stinson, bassist Brian Glenn, and guitarist Kenny Vaughan. Preparing for this music, Stuart immersed himself in recordings of Native American music. "The first thing I was met with was the beauty of the pan flute," he says. "But I realized that that's really not my sound. I decided that the best thing I could do was stand still, make the best music I could, and put the stories inside that." The music does include contributions from two of Stuart's friends, Marvin Helper, a medicine man, and his brother Everett, a drummer and singer. "They lent their presences and their voices to this," Stuart says. "For me, that gave it deeper authenticity."

One Badlands song, "Hotchkiss Gunner's Lament," features the wordless vocal harmonizing of Connie Smith, Stuart's wife, whom he first saw perform at the Choctaw Indian Reservation in his Mississippi hometown of Philadelphia. Twenty-five years later, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the two were married.

Stuart first visited Pine Ridge Reservation as a member of Johnny Cash's band; "I was adopted up there," he says. "We played a benefit at St. Frances Mission, in the early 1980s. As John was singing a song about broken treaties and injustices to the Lakota people, an elder of the tribe started coming down the aisle of the auditorium. John was almost through with the song, but the elder just looked at him, and John just kept playing. He walked slowly to the front of the stage. And when he finally arrived, he just simply raised his fist and said to him, 'That's America.'"

The effect that this event had upon Stuart was incalculable in its raw emotional power. "The Lakota people touched my heart,” he says today. He recalls that that following the onstage encounter, he returned to his band's touring bus. "I understood why we were there," Stuart remembers. "It was on account of poverty. I walked out of the bus. A bunch of kids had followed me outside. I had this big red suitcase then that was full of , custom cowboy clothes and boots, knives, rawhides – and money. I took the suitcase, unzipped it, and just dumped it on the ground, then threw the suitcase at them. I said, 'Take it.' All of this experience, the whole thing about the Badlands and Wounded Knee, all of it: It got in my attention. But it's the people's spirit and their dignity in spite of over a century's worth of injustice and hardship that got all of my heart"

This is where the Badlands songs come from. "I've tried to offer myself as a tour guide," Stuart says. 'I wanted to show people, many of whom may not know or have the patience to sit down and understand the whole story of Native Americans, some of the historic moments. But at the same time, "Hotchkiss Gunner's Lament" is from the perspective of the gunners who killed those people. Connie Smith's voice in there is the wail of everywoman. With 'Wounded Knee' being the centerpiece of the sequence, I still deal with more contemporary sides of the story. 'Casino', 'Broken Promise Land' are two of those kinds of songs."

For Stuart, there's bottomless grief and on-going grimness to this story. But sadness, he believes, is not the story's totality. "There is a silver lining to this record, and to this story," he maintains. "It feels pretty hopeless, at face value. But, three or four trips ago up there, an elder said to me, 'We have all this history that we've lived off, we have all of our elders to listen to, but it's really time to look the other way and listen to our children.' I sense a new Native American pride. Their victory is coming. It seems to me that they are wiser, more worldly, more educated now, and that there are better opportunities. I see a ray of light coming out of someone who perhaps today, is on a playground, a leader in the making up there who I believe will lead the people on to better things. Keep your eye on the children."