Documentary filmmaker Jeffrey Wengrofsky had always wanted to visit Detroit. Like his hometown, New York City, he envisioned Detroit as having a creative spirit forged out of the economic hardships of the 1970s. “Detroit and NYC were sister cities going through the same destructive metamorphosis,” he explains by email.

Wengrofsky asked rocker Sonny Vincent, who’s performed and recorded with a number of Detroit musicians, to suggest creative spirits in the area. Sonny listed several proto-punk rock luminaries: Michael Davis of MC5 fame, Ron and Scott Ashton, Dennis Thompson, and one musician Wengrofsky knew little about–Hiawatha Bailey. “The only thing I’d ever heard about Hiawatha Bailey was that back in the 1960s,” Wengrofsky recalls, “Hi used to roam around wearing nothing other than an American flag.”

Curious to meet this flag-wearing character in 2010, Wengrofsky headed for Detroit. At a party there, someone advised him, “You’re not gonna find Hiawatha in Detroit. He lives in Ann Arbor.”

When Wengrosky and Bailey finally met up, he learned that the flag story never happened. But he also realized that Bailey “had a big tale to tell and we had the personal chemistry necessary for a feature-length project.” Inspired, he drove back to New York to confer with his long-term cinematic partner, David Kavanaugh. The two filmmakers have worked on a slew of short film documentaries about NYC counterculture artists, poets, and actors. This would be their first roc-doc, but Kavanaugh was receptive. The two returned to Michigan and began filming The Song of Hiawatha.

The film chronicles the Bailey family’s migration north out of the Jim Crow South in the 1950s. From there the narrative weaves through Motown during its glory days and comes to rest in Ann Arbor in the late ’60s, then at the epicenter of social unrest. It chronicles the activities of the Black Panthers, the White Panthers, FBI surveillance, and how it all came together to shape the character of one counterculture punk rocker.

While the production team is putting the finishing touches on the film, a few holdups remain, financing first among them. Among other things, he’ll need to pay for a “blistering” Detroit rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack.