Since punk rock was born out of rebellion and revolution, it may see unusual to now refer to a punk band as an institution. But when one has been around as long as the Cult Heroes, they have definitely earned that.

Indeed, this year marks the 35th anniversary of the Cult Heroes, who formed in Ann Arbor in 1978, and have been stalwarts of the local rock 'n' roll scene—and beyond—ever since.

The Heroes come to the Blind Pig on Friday. “We always try to play the Pig every summer,” says frontman Hiawatha Bailey, the sole founding member who is still in the band. “It will be a cultural event, a gathering of the tribes.”

The Heroes only play about a half-dozen gigs a year, mostly because “my bandmates have day jobs, or kids in college, so it’s difficult to coordinate everyone’s schedules,” says Bailey. The Heroes also include James Conway on guitar, Terry Ivan on bass and Nikki Savage on drums.

“I also play about 10 or 12 gigs a year on my own, or as guest appearances with other bands,” says Bailey. Over the years, he’s also performed with other local heroes like Scott Morgan, Robert Gillespie, Dennis Tek from Radio Birdman and the late Ron Asheton of the Stooges.

The Heroes have gone through several lineup changes over the years, “sometimes out of necessity, because guys would turn into knuckleheads or a-------,” says Bailey irreverently.

It’s been “about five years,” since the Heroes’ last album, “Nation of Strangers,” which was an anthology.

“But we definitely want to release a new album. I write almost every day, and we have a voluminous song list, between original songs and covers, but the record will be mostly originals. It’s just a matter of narrowing down the list of songs we want to do, and tweaking them, before going into the studio, but I’m not sure yet when that will be.”

Bailey was actually part of the Ann Arbor rock / counter-culture scene for many years before co-founding the Heroes. He was in the White Panther Party in the 1960s—“I was the only black person in the Party,” recalls Bailey, who also has Native American heritage. He worked with the Party to “help get John Sinclair out of jail for that ridiculous sentence,” referring to Sinclair being sentenced to 10 years in prison for giving two joints to an undercover narcotics officer in 1967.

After that, he was a roadie for local bands like the Up and Destroy All Monsters, the latter of which included Asheton and the now-deceased Michael Davis of the MC5.

“Once John got out of prison, all these radicals and musicians came here to be part of the scene,” remembers Bailey. "Michael (Davis) and I moved into the old farmhouse, and a lot of those guys wanted to hang out with one of their MC5 heroes, so we’d all end up jamming there at the house every day."

After watching the Monsters for a few years, while setting up their gear for them, and honing his own singing and songwriting skills, Bailey co-founded the Heroes in ‘78. “I was inspired by the fact that music was a healing force, and I knew this was something I could be good at, and something I had a real passion to do."

He still remembers their first gig. “Ron called me and said they were looking for a band to open for them at the old Hamburg Pub, and asked if we’d be interested,” says Bailey. “We definitely were, although we only had eight songs at the time. So we did our set, and afterward, Ron said, ‘That was pretty good, you guys are a lot better than I thought, but what are you going to do next?’

“I asked him what he meant, and he said that was too short of a set, that we had to go up and do another set—so we did the same eight songs, but in reverse order, so we started out with the song we ended the previous set with. And as we went through it again, we were stronger. We’d started out kind of tentative and nervous, but by the time we did the songs again, we were more forceful.

“I’ll also never forget that when we pulled up, the marquee referred to us as ‘The Occult Heroes.’ I asked the owner, ‘What the hell is that?’ And he said, ‘I thought that was your name, I thought you guys were devil worshippers or something,” says Bailey with a laugh.

Then, after gigging around Michigan and building up a regional rep, they knew it was time to broaden their horizons and play shows in other cities, specifically New York.

“Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys advised me on what to do to set up a New York showcase gig, and he posted fliers all around the city for our show, at CBGBs, and it went off really well. I remember the review in Variety calling us a ‘very promising hard rock combo,’ and calling me a ‘riveting lead singer.’"

So, things took off for the band, and they got a proper manager, so Bailey was no longer responsible for the bookings, and “he had us playing Toronto, and the Carolinas and other East Coast markets, and then we put out our first 45, ‘Prince and the Showgirl’ and ‘Berlin Wall.’”

So what keeps Bailey coming back to punk rock, all these years later, at age 65? “I just still have the attitude,” he says. “Every rehearsal, when we run through the old songs, I can still feel the same passion for the songs that I did when I wrote them, years ago. Those punk elements are still the same. We just take our thoughts and systemize them and harmonize them and put them in your face.”

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.