This week, Z. shares a conversation with The War and Treaty.
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In just a few short years, the rapidly rising folk-soul duo has gone from playing high school auditoriums to opening for Al Green at Radio City Music Hall, singing with Mumford & Sons in Nashville, and recording with Emmylou Harris. In the process, they have put together one of the hottest touring bands tearing through the US.
If you’ve ever had the good fortune of being in the audience for one of Yola’s live shows, you will have been utterly blown away not only by the power of the British singer/songwriter’s voice and the intensity of her songs’ arrangements, but also by the bedlam her audiences devolve into in the presence of such a commanding, charming, visibly strong black woman. Yola owns each of these unabashed facets of her identity with bright-eyed self-awareness and unbridled joy, all of which pour forth from her astonishing debut album, Walk Through Fire.
This grandiose power that Yola possesses is deliberately not the focal point of the album, though. She and her collaborator/producer Dan Auerbach have artfully balanced the wildness of Yola’s experiences in myriad genres (pop, electronic, and rock among them) with the subtlety and nuance that her deft songwriting demands. It’s not just an album sung by a “strong black woman,” it’s not just country-soul, it’s not just a late ’60s/early ’70s pop throwback, it’s not just a collection of heart-wrenching, impossibly visceral love songs — it’s effortlessly and masterfully all of the above.
We sat down with Yola during her release week press gambit in Nashville and began our conversation recapping this year’s Grammy Awards.
BGS: In one of her Grammy acceptance speeches this year Brandi Carlile called Americana “An island of misfits.” I wonder if you agree — and what do you feel like you bring to this island of misfits?
Yola: I do agree. I think Brandi Carlile is on point by saying that. It feels as though people have congregated in Americana, maybe even running from other genres. It’s a place where we are celebrating eclecticism and being open and we’re at least seeking to be diverse — and trying to understand that diversity, instead of having fingers in the ears. There’s a little bit more to the scene. It allows people like Brandi Carlile to rise to the top, and rightfully so, because of their talent!
I have found, for me, that after being associated with a lot of different genres over the years, I’ve had to fight to just be me. I’ve had to do as much fighting in this particular scene, because everyone’s crossing something with something or being more unexpected than other genres. Doing shows at AmericanaFest and in this particular scene has given me a chance to develop. Full stop. And to get started.
When I first started I was pretty terrified to do what I was doing. Americana allows me to be like, “Hi, okay, I’m the black British woman with the afro — no, not the other one, the one called Yola.” [Laughs] And I can go, “Okay, I’m going to mix some soul with some country, but not in the way you think I’m going to do that.” Yes there’s going to be a ’60s pop sound in there, but again, probably not in the way you think I’m going to do that, either. Maybe it is my Britishness that is giving me the angle from which I approach each thing.
Mhmm. Heck yeah!
We’re working on diversity, like you said, but we’re a work in progress. So I wonder how you feel your blackness is part of that country-soul designation and how much of that is not connected to your blackness, as well. I feel like so many people, especially in the audience for your shows, see you step up on stage and they’re ready to scream and holler because there’s a “strong black woman” presence on stage–
Yes.
So I wonder do you feel a differentiation between what you’re establishing as country-soul for country-soul’s sake, and how much comes from your identity as a black woman?
Well, I think it starts with identity, because everything starts from within and from where you think you fit. Where do I fit? I think my entire musical journey has been based on where the frick I fit.
An island of misfits.
Yes, exactly. I found a bunch of weirdos that were as weird as I was and was like, “This is great!” [Laughs] That’s what has led me where I want to go, musically. It’s about finding what my voice wants to do. It’s all about the physicality of my voice, it’s got a soft side, almost choral, that then flips to this big, yelly, slightly more Tina [Turner] side. I can move very smoothly from one to the other. My voice is a seesaw in that situation. I need to be able to be the fullness of myself, so that’s kind of where the country-soul comes from — from within.
That’s at least physically what it is, as well as growing up listening to that music, listening to people who were already doing what I’m doing. I’m by no means inventing the wheel or even reinventing it, for that matter. It’s something that’s just been done. Ray Charles has done it. Mavis is doing it. Maybe the way I’m doing it, with this retro pop kind of angle, is something that others haven’t done, necessarily. But that is narrow in comparison to the vast eclecticism of my musical taste. It’s out of control how broad a day’s playlist can sound.
[Laughs] You’re like, “Are you ready to do that?” And I’m like, “Hey, I’ve got so many genres to get through right now!”
Add it to the list.
Just tack it on, you know? I don’t know if I’m going to go all the way like, Beck levels of breadth. He’s covered some ground, it’s impressive. But I’m enjoying this kind of freedom right now. As fun as it is knowing that country and soul are always going to come out, it’s nice to be able to be free enough to explore gospel and blues and rock and roll and pop. You can hear from the record there are probably four comfortable genres within it and they all move completely seamlessly from one to the next. That’s what I love about music. I love how close it all is.
Going back to the physicality of your voice for a moment, one of the things that struck me about the album is that it feels like you’re laying back–
Mmmm. You know me!
It feels like you’re being reserved, your signature Yola-dialed-up-to-eleven isn’t there all of the time. Talk me through that less-is-more decision making process.
Certainly, the songs kind of spoke for themselves. When you finish writing a song you can decide whether you’re going to tack a big ol’ outro on the end of it and then whether you’re going to freaking scream to the heights of the ceiling on that outro. But I thought, I don’t know whether I listen to albums where the singer is going hell-for-leather, top to bottom, all the way through. I like to listen to albums top to bottom and I like a bit of a gradient. So as the songs come, one by one, I kind of have a look and think, “Okay, I don’t think the song needs this.” It’s about trying to respect the song and the will of the song. Sometimes the song really needs it, like “It Ain’t Easier.” I’m going to go there! [Laughs] I was purposefully selective and I think it was each song that led me.
They are! “Still Gone,” in my mind is about being in a relationship. You met someone, they were amazing, then whoever the heck that person was, they fucked off and the person you end up with is your consolation prize. You’re looking over your shoulder thinking, “Oh, still gone!” It’s like chasing the dragon, but it’s the person you were dating. That first hit, that’s the one. Everything else after just pales in comparison. It’s very much that moment of realization, that moment before you start checking out of the new relationship, when you start staring off into the distance.
That faraway look in your eye!
That faraway look in your eye! It’s all tied together. That’s the precursor feeling. It’s the “You’re literally everywhere, but you’re not here” situation.
So “Keep Me Here” turns that same idea on its ear.
It does! Because you haven’t got the guts to be alone. You’re being a chicken. You’re being fed, again, chasing the dragon. Like, “That first hit was good, can’t we just have that bit?” No, you can’t. You have to have the full wonderful person — especially when they’re not wonderful, that’s challenging. You’re just hoping for those little moments, those little glimpses that keep you hooked in. In my situation, I was working with my ex, my partner at the time, and so it was very much like being totally hooked, and musically hooked, and socially hooked, and all of these hooks become something that keep you holding on in light of glaringly horrible interactions in every part of your life. I think it takes a lot of self esteem to grow up enough to realize you need to move on. The twenties are not really the time when self esteem is at its full!
It’s funny that we begin that “chasing the dragon” when we’re in our twenties when we have no idea what that thing actually is.
[Laughs] Exactly! We have no idea! But we’re just desperately going for the thing. It felt good that one time, maybe it will happen again. It’s about as well-advised as taking smack, you know? It shouldn’t be like a hit, though. It should be consistent. But you don’t learn about the healthy ways of doing life until you have the experience.
Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen
We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: black history isn’t just American history, it’s American roots music history — they are inseparably intertwined. As such, one month out of the year simply cannot do this cause justice. To mark the occasion we’d like to travel back over a year’s worth of writing and reporting to revisit just a few of the incredible black artists, creators, and activists whose indispensable perspectives and awe-inspiring work moved us.
Angelique Kidjo’s reimagining of the Talking Heads’ landmark album, Remain in Light, was not only one of our top albums of 2018, it was the subject of an exhaustive deep dive for an edition of our Small World column, which points out the stunning amalgamations and consistencies that made the record a perfect vehicle for Kidjo’s singular talents and sensibilities.
For Canon Fodder, we examined the remarkable success of Tracy Chapman’s self-titled, debut album. In 1988, Chapman appeared as the culmination of pop’s newfound social engagement, and the record captures the sound of a young artist clinging to her optimism, even in the face of so much cynicism.
Our inaugural season of The Show On The Road, hosted by The Dustbowl Revival frontman Z. Lupetin, included many black voices, including husband-and-wife duo, Birds of Chicago. Their special brew of soulful rock and roll and goosebump-raising secular gospel is a much needed shot of pure positive energy.
Alt-folk singer/songwriter AHI answered five questions and gave us five songs to go with them in an edition of BGS 5+5 that touches on Bob Marley, Thunder Bay, and oh so much more.
Writer, storyteller, historian, and songster Dom Flemons released Black Cowboys in 2018, an album whose depth and breadth rivals that of a museum exhibition. For our Shout & Shine interview he unpacked the forgotten histories and untold stories of black identities that shaped the American “Wild West,” and thus, the country as a whole.
The Journey, the latest album from Benin native, guitarist Lionel Loueke, tells stories of migration historic and modern, with musical textures and flavors that demonstrate our world — musically, culturally, and otherwise — is entirely interconnected. We featured Loueke in our Small World column.
Guitarist and songwriter Sunny War gave us a stripped-down, stunning rendition of “He Is My Cell” for a Sitch Session, showcasing her unique picking approach and the complicated emotions channeled through her writing.
Kaïa Kater’s most recent album, Grenades, was an exercise in self-love and self-learning. Our Cover Story unpacks how the project spans generations, hemispheres, and textures, and left the singer-songwriter “swimming in her own shadow.”
In 2018 we lost one of music’s brightest lights and most ethereal talents when Aretha Franklin passed. We did our best to tribute her everlasting legacy by diving into her best-selling album, Amazing Grace, for an edition of Canon Fodder.
Americana duo Nickel&Rose premiered their EP, aptly titled Americana, on BGS after being inspired by touring across Europe, noting the way international audiences reacted to and consumed American roots music. They offer their own personal musings on perseverance, loss, and compassion without empty promises that everything is going to be okay.
Charismatic, dynamite performers the War and Treaty (AKA Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Blount) told us the stories that led to the making of their latest album, Healing Tide — from the beginning, with a piano in Saddam Hussein’s palace basement, to the pair meeting at a festival, to the present, as their music and mission of love gain steam across the country.
In another edition of Small World, we take a look at cellist and songwriter Leyla McCalla’s brand new album, The Capitalist Blues, and the myriad themes and influences from around the globe that went into the writing, production, and execution of the songs and stories therein.
Gospel singer/songwriter Liz Vice balances intensely personal experiences with universal ideas like the Golden Rule on her album, Save Me, and our conversation with Vice gets into the nitty gritty of that balance and the personal growth and reckonings behind it.
Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton made his case for why down home blues and old-time American music are not simply relics of bygone eras in his Shout & Shine interview. He is not merely a preservationist mining bygone decades for esoteric material or works that fit a certain aesthetic or brand. He simply takes music that is significant to his identity, his culture, and his experience and showcases it for a broader audience.
Host Craig Havighurst spent some time with Cedric Burnside on his podcast, The String, where they discuss the blues, soul, and regional folk’s growing influence and representation within the Americana community — as well as Burnside’s own commitment to the spread of Hill Country blues.
Legendary song-interpreter Bettye LaVette’s first major label release since 1982 focused on the work of one artist and songwriter, who just happens to be Bob Dylan. In our interview LaVette gives us a frank and engaging peek inside her mind: “Oh, honey, I am 72 years old. I basically don’t give a fuck. Nothing at this point wears me down. I know that all of this going on right now, either it’s going to pass or we’re going to pass.”
Photo of Kaïa Kater: Raez Argulla
Artist: The McCrary Sisters
Song: “Go Tell It on the Mountain”
Album: Go Tell It on the Mountain/No Room at the Inn
In Their Words: “I have always loved the Staple Singers, so when our producer Scott Billington at Rounder Records shared his idea of using the song ‘Respect Yourself’ for the groove of this song and put ‘Go Tell It On the Mountain’ to that feel, we jumped all over that opportunity. I love it, I pray — and yet I know — you will love it too. So join us on the highest mountain and lowest street corner to proclaim the message of love, joy, peace, and happiness!” – Regina McCrary
Artist: Drew Michael Blake and The Belfry
Hometown: Parkersburg, West Virginia (Based in Nashville, Tennessee)
Song: “Cut and File”
Album: Blame The Miles Between
Single Release Date: December 7, 2018
In Their Words: “I think, like a lot of other people, I walk around in a delusion and most of the time I don’t really see it. For a long time I was under the impression that everyone knew better than me. I thought the girls I was in love with knew who or what I should be. I thought my peers or my elders knew what I should do better than I did. ‘Cut and File’ is about experiencing a moment of clarity where you see right through those delusions, and start figuring out that those answers can only come from within. When I first started playing in bands in my teens, it was me and my friends in an old barn turning up our amps, sweating through our clothes, and playing rock and roll. I think the feeling and the energy of those early days comes through in this video.” — Drew Michael Blake
Photo credit: Chad Cochran
This is a playlist about the new band’s favorite soul and funk music at the moment. We’re a diverse group of musicians with different tastes and backgrounds, and these are genres we all like and listen to together while rehearsing and recording.
Jackie Greene (Lead):
Sly & the Family Stone – “You Can Make It If You Try”
Who doesn’t love Sly? This is the funkiest circus I’ve ever heard.
Lee Dorsey – “Neighbor’s Daughter”
Sort of an obscure record, The New Lee Dorsey has a bunch of Allen Toussaint songs and all of them are awesome, but I always really liked this one.
Bill Withers – “Ruby Lee”
One of the baddest, rawest grooves ever. The album +’Justments is one of my favorite albums of all time.
Ben Rubin (Bass):
Marvin Gaye – “Got to Give It Up (Pt. 1)”
I love this song because the pocket is so deep and sparse and Marvin lays on top so sweet (yes I meant that figuratively and literally).
Prince – “Sign ‘O’ the Times”
I love this song, because to me it represents some of Prince’s best work. When the song came out, it was so ahead of the times in terms of lyricism AND production.
Megan Coleman (Percussion):
Aretha Franklin – “Day Dreaming”
The groove and musicality of this song legit brings tears to my eyes. Also, I’m a sucker for a good ole fashioned love song.
Michael Jackson – “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”
I mean…how beautiful is he in this music video? This was one of the first songs I fell in love with as a child and it will always hold a special place in my heart.
Jon “Smoke” Lucas (Drummer):
D’Angelo – “Playa Playa”
This is the intro to the era that captured my soul at 12 years of age. The sound, feel, and performance of this record is priceless! All-time favorite of mine…
Nathan Dale (Guitar):
Otis Redding – “Ole Man Trouble”
I wore out both sides of my The Dock of the Bay cassette during the summer of ’92. “Ole Man Trouble” was the last song before the auto-reverse tape deck flipped back to side 1. The song hooked me every time. There is some kind of magic happening between Cropper’s guitar parts and Otis’s painful vocal delivery. Otis opened the door to soul music for me.
Prince – “Sign ‘O’ the Times”
Prince’s brew of pop craftsmanship is something I was never embarrassed to admit I loved. His blend of funk, soul, blues, and R&B along with the addictive hooks is a perfect kind of music to me. The genius of his artistry is captured brilliantly in “Sign ‘O’ the Times.” Its sparse musical approach keeps the funk but leaves room for the lyric’s heavy topics of the 1980s.
Alex Kettler (guitar tech)
Lettuce – “Phyllis”
It’s a simple groove that opens up to a plethora of synths and horns. The song keeps progressing while always lightly grasping the main line until it goes full-circle.
Photo credit: Michael Weintrob. Pictured front: Jackie Greene; Back row (L-R): Nathan Dale (guitar), Jon “Smoke” Lucas (drums), Shannon Sanders (musical director, organs), Megan Coleman (percussion), Ben Rubin (bass).
Listen to Aretha Franklin sing “Amazing Grace.” The hymn was nearly 200 years old when she tore into it on her 1972 double-live gospel album with the same title. Her version is nearly eleven minutes, and she spends most of that time wringing those lines of every emotion that has ever been felt in those intervening centuries. Aretha delivers those lines like she’s preaching, and the congregation answers in kind: applauding when she hits that high note on “a wretch like MEEEE” and voicing their excited approval when she locates untranscribable vowels in those simple words “amazing grace.” It is a vibrant collaboration between performer and audience, each pushing the other to new heights of spiritual ecstasy. The Southern California Community Choir comes in like a band of angels, but Aretha isn’t even done yet. Instead, she shakes them off and tests the limits of her upper register.
That is just one of many goose bump-inducing moments on Amazing Grace, which remains her best-selling album as well as the best-selling black gospel album of all time. While it has been overshadowed by the secular albums she recorded for Atlantic Records in the late 1960s and by her unprecedented comeback albums in the 1980s, it remains a touchstone in her catalog, an album that explains her complicated relationship to the gospel world as well as to the pop charts. Beyond that, it’s just an incredible set of music, with all the intensity, all the purposefulness, and all the spontaneity of her own or anybody else’s live albums. Amazing Grace surpasses even her 1971 Live at the Fillmore West, which is saying a lot because that album is a stone classic.
It is, however, an unusual album in her catalog: Title track aside, her voice is often subsumed into a larger choir. She was never one to be upstaged (the only instance I have found is when the violence outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention overshadowed her performance of the national anthem inside), but she slips in and out of the choir, harmonizing with them one moment and soloing the next. The point of the album—the point of gospel, in general—is to share the spotlight with a host of friends and family. Aretha understood that gospel was not a solitary pursuit; the music is not private or internalized.
Rather, it is public, communal: the sound of many voices united in a joyful noise unto the Lord. Even when she is pushing heavenward on “Amazing Grace,” she is no longer the diva she was in the secular world; perhaps this project offered her some escape from the royal demands of pop stardom, the tabloids printing rumors, the endless tours, the complicated business machinations, the physical drain of being the best-known pop singer on the planet. In church, surrounded by people she loved and trusted and admired, with only God as her audience, perhaps she felt at ease.
Nearly fifty years later, the origins of the project are still debated. Jerry Wexler, president of Atlantic Records, claims he encouraged her to record a gospel album, believing she needed to issue a major statement after so many singles-oriented albums. Aretha, however, claims the idea was hers all along, as was the plan to record it live in church. Others claim her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, pressured her to reconnect with the church, although he had instilled in her at a young age the belief that spiritual gospel and secular pop both sprung from the same well of black history. “If you want to know the truth,” proclaims a very proud C.L. during his short sermon, “she has never left the church!”
Aretha surrounded herself with some of her gospel heroes, including James Cleveland (the King of Gospel to her Queen of Soul) conducting the choir. Also taking part were her brothers and sisters, her grandmother, and her idol and mentor Clara Ward of the Famous Ward Singers. According to David Ritz’s 2015 biography Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, Wexler “was determined to sneak the devil’s rhythm section into church,” which meant hiring some of the session musicians that had been backing Aretha on her recent records: bass player Chuck Rainey, drummer Bernard Purdie, guitarist Cornell Dupree, and percussionist Pancho Morales. Even that rhythm section is in dispute, however, as Aretha denied the devil had anything to do with the way they played.
And that is where the disputes end, because as soon as Aretha enters on the opener “Mary, Don’t You Weep,” she presides over the album. She is the choir director, the producer, the soloist, the choir member, the preacher. She hammered out the track list with Cleveland in the weeks before the performances, favoring a repertoire that mixed old hymns and new pop songs often in the same arrangements. “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” bleeds so gracefully into “You’ve Got a Friend” that it’s nearly impossible to distinguish Thomas A. Dorsey’s composition with Carole King’s hit. She swaggers through Marvin Gaye’s “Wholly Holy” as well, but the most commanding arrangement is her gospelization of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” which had recently debuted in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel. Not exactly churchly fare, but Aretha and the musicians playing with her find the kernel of spiritual steadfastness in each one. “He walks beside you,” the choir testifies, and she interjects, “He’ll put all of his angels beside you!”
Perhaps she doesn’t mean heavenly angels. Perhaps she means earthly angels: the people up on stage with her and the people down in the pews. In those words are echoes of the Civil Rights movement, a reminder of all the marches and demonstrations that showed strength and righteousness in unity. Gospel was integral to those events; in fact, Aretha performed with Martin Luther King Jr. repeatedly both as a gospel singer and a pop star. Perhaps that connection is what made Amazing Grace so popular at the time; it’s definitely what makes the album so powerful nearly fifty years later.
“Can I get y’all to help me sing?” she exhorts the congregation on closer “Never Grow Old,” and by “congregation” I mean everyone in the church and everyone who ever listens to the album. No one can sing to the heavens like Aretha, but by inviting everyone to sing along, these performances continue to provide an example of how all of America might sing in one beautifully harmonized voice.
More often than not, it seems, the telling of the story of the War and Treaty begins with the war, specifically a piano in the basement of one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. It is a tantalizing tale, and we’ll get to that.
But this time, let’s start with the Treaty: the moment Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Blount first met and two formidable talents took hold in life and in music.
“We have probably two different accounts,” Michael says by phone from Nashville, Tanya audible in the background, laughing as she agrees with the prediction.
Spoiler alert: There is to be much laughter in the ensuing chat, from giggles to hearty peals, and much weighing in from whoever doesn’t have hold of the receiver. And some tears and choking up too. It’s a real delight, everything up-front and on the table, just as anyone who has seen them perform would expect, and every bit of it captured in their new debut album, Healing Tide, a wonder of gospel-soul-country-rock-folk carried on their from-the-heart vocals, both of them capable of gale-force belting and whispered-breeze tenderness, sometimes, somehow, both at once.
It’s a love story through and through, evidenced in song titles along: “Love Like There’s No Tomorrow” (the album’s foot-stomping gospel invocation), “Are You Ready to Love Me?,” (swampy Southern soul), “Here Is Where the Loving Is” (fiddles and guitars and Emmylou Harris!) among them. And a belief that love is contagious, that it can repair the world — the boisterous title song (a bit of Ike and Tina and a lot of Delaney & Bonnie, perhaps), the steamed-windows twinkle of “Jeep Cherokee Laredo.” And in “One and the Same” they have given us unity anthem for the ages. All of the ages. And in album-closing “Little New Bern,” Michael wrote a vivid ode to Tanya’s large, loving family and the former plantation land where it began and at which all the cousins still gather with her grandparents (73 years of marriage!) every summer.
But back to that meeting: “I remember going to Laurel Lakes Park for an event, the Love Festival, Aug. 28, 2010,” he says of a day of music in Laurel, Maryland, near where each lived at the time, at which they were both scheduled to perform. “I was led under this awning and I saw this most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life.”
A “wow” is heard in the background, as if she’s never heard this before.
“And she did what any beautiful woman would have done with a slouch like me. She ignored me,” he says. “We introduced ourselves and she thought nothing of me. I thought everything of her. So I got on stage and performed, and then after I saw this woman running across the field in heels toward the stage, and it was her. She just wanted to know about my songwriting. The rest is history.”
Tanya grabs the phone: “He’s kinda telling the truth,” she allows. “Mine is the part where he says I ignored him. I was out there with some friends and a young lady working with me at the festival kind of whisked me away and said, ‘I want you to meet Michael.’ Which kind of came as he said it. It may come off as I was ignoring him. But I wasn’t. I was trying to do two things at once.”
As to her reaction to his songs, well, on that she agrees wholeheartedly.
“Oh my goodness! I lost my mind!” she says. “After he finished performing I ran over and bought six of the CDs he had and was a crazy person handing them out to people — ‘This is the best thing I’ve heard!’ He was amazing.”
And then?
“We exchanged numbers — and he would have a different account here,” Tanya says. “He lost my number! Threw it in the trash can. So I proceeded to call him and ask him if he could write songs for my brother and I. We were working on a project. I invited him over to the house. He wrote 10 songs in about two hours. He had songs ready, came over and sang them to me and we became friends, inseparable friends. And after I had a birthday party, that was September of 2010, and from there, the next day, we never separated. He moved into my house the next day.”
Michael’s take?
“You know? That’s accurate.”
Okay, then. Now let’s skip ahead to March this year, when the couple, having made their home in Albion, Michigan, found themselves in Nashville, being produced by Buddy Miller at his house — “We wanted to give Buddy Miller a chance to be discovered,” Michael says, barely containing silly giggles. “Just wanted to help him out” — and surrounded by such stellar musicians as drummer Brady Blade, fiddler Sam Bush, pedal steel and banjo player Russ Pahl and multi-instrumentalist Jim Hoke, realizing the love-filled vision they’d been honing tirelessly in the intervening years.
Oh, and there’s Emmylou Harris climbing the porch stairs, not only to add her voice to “Here Is Where the Loving Is At,” but to deliver a batch of birthday brownies to Michael one day.
“Another lady who might need to be discovered,” Michael says, not succeeding at holding back the giggles, before adding, “Everyone knows her for her singing, but people don’t know she makes the BEST BROWNIES EVER.”
The sound is a realization of an array of influences and passions, some shared ones including Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, the gospel icons the Gaither Singers and James Cleveland. A big influence when they started performing together, Michael says, was the Civil Wars — he sheepishly notes running into that act’s John Paul White and, tongue-tied, blurting out that his act was called the Civil Wars. But what the War and Treaty draw on together is distinctly their musical DNA.
“We really have different backgrounds,” Tanya says. “My mom was from Panama. I grew up listening to Calypso and opera. My dad was from New Bern, North Carolina, and we also listened to Christian music, gospel, but also secular music — Whitney Houston. A plethora of sounds growing up. My dad loved western, so some country songs. We would have a guitar player in church, or sometimes just foot-stomping and clapping. ‘Love Like There’s No Tomorrow’ comes from that. Michael comes from a Seventh Day Adventist background and grew up listening to incredible harmonies and some of his writing comes out of that. His uncle Zilbert Trotter plays organ like no one I ever heard before. We took all that and married it together and it came together with the help of Buddy Miller as a beautiful piece of art.”
Though they’d made a well-received EP, Down to the River, spawning some viral videos to match the word-of-mouth from their dynamic concert performances, this was a whole other world for them, with new expectations, intimidating ones.
“When you get those musicians in the room, they know that no matter what accolades they have, they say, ‘Lead us,’” Michael says. “I had to learn to lead. Buddy Miller is not going to let you escape that responsibility. You come in and have a vision, he’s going to hold you to it. He’s a sweet man, but he has a way to make sure you stay authentic. He’s not going to do take 17, take 18. We did two takes of everything. We had it in the first one. Did the second one because Buddy felt guilty that we had it in the first one.”
He continues, “They all wanted to see where I wanted to go — show us what you’ve got. The intimidation factor was sky high. I don’t consider myself of the caliber of those giants, but then you have to believe you belong there. I remember playing my minor 7ths and diminished chords and this and that and they were laughing, had to explain to me what I was doing. Russ Pahl said, ‘How does it feel to have millions of dollars of education, and never gone to school a day in your life?’ I said, ‘Feels pretty good, Russ.’ He popped me on the head with a wad of paper and walked away.”
The closest he had ever gotten to a music education was under the most unusual circumstances, which brings us back to Saddam’s piano. Michael, having enlisted in the Army in 2003, was sent to Iraq, scared and unprepared. He found himself in a platoon stationed in one of Hussein’s abandoned palaces. A captain heard him sing, heard the inspirational power of his voice and took him to the basement where there was a piano and told him to go at it, learn to play, make music. Not long after, the captain was killed and Michael was asked to sing at his service, the first time he ever sang a song he wrote in public.
But as he talks here, that wasn’t the part of the Iraq story he wanted to tell.
“No one knows this,” he confides. “This is special. I was singing in Baghdad once, and it was probably two in the morning, singing to the troops. And they were singing and clapping with me. And one of the soldiers on guard duty said, ‘You all gotta come see this!’ And when I looked over the gate, the Iraqis with their tea were sitting down at the gate, listening to me sing. And they were clapping and patting their thighs with me. That’s the power of music, the power of songwriting. The war stopped for at least 30 minutes.”
That’s the kind of thing he remembers as his and Tanya’s life accelerates, as success builds and the demands grow — not least being having to spend more time away from their child.
“I’ve cried on the road and broken down,” Michael says. “We travel with our son, but time has now come where we have to leave him with someone for two or three weeks at a time, all for the call of the mission and honoring our life.”
That mission. That call.
“I’m singing with my wife, songs I wrote for us, and we’re on the road and helping bridge humanity in our way. Toughest thing we have to deal with is leaving our son. But no one’s calling us derogatory words.”
He cites a couple of rough epithets that in past have been hurled at many from various directions.
“No one is doing that. There are no signs that you have to drink from the black water fountain. That’s not happening,” he says. “We are blessed that we have not faced it that way. We have a multi-cultural band that reminds folks of what we have overcome. I’m not here to promote the black race or white race, but am genuinely invested in unifying the human race. I do believe there ain’t no better thing in life. I’m almost coming to tears just thinking about if Dr. King’s dream can be a reality daily. We make sure at every concert that everyone hugs each other and tells each other they matter, black or white, foreign or domestic. We are all human beings.”
As the song says, with equal grace and power, we are all “One and the Same.”
Tanya puts it simply and profoundly: “This project is an act of love.”
Photo credit: David McClister
Artist: The War and Treaty (Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Blount-Trotter)
Hometown: Albion, Michigan
Song: “If It’s in Your Heart”
Album: Healing Tide
Release Date: August 10, 2018
Label: Strong World/Thirty Tigers
In Their Words: “I had a friend who went through a terrible ordeal. I asked if she was ok and she said ‘yes’ but the truth was that she wasn’t and I felt it but didn’t act on it. ‘If It’s in Your Heart’ is everything I should’ve said to her to let her know that I was willing to go through the rain with her. I should’ve challenged her more and that’s what the song is about.” – Michael Trotter Jr.
Photo credit: David McClister
Despite never having desired a musical career, Liz Vice set about answering a higher calling with her 2015 debut album, There’s a Light. She spread a message of inclusivity and love, even while self-doubt, impostor syndrome, and a hellacious tour threatened to upend her very sense of self. Making it to her sophomore album, Save Me, therefore became an incredibly personal celebration—a heady reminder about how faith in something bigger than yourself can serve as a beacon in this messy world.
Across Save Me, she touches on personal topics (the illness that very nearly ended her life when she was younger, the crippling doubt that got in her way at the start of this journey) while looking outward to the community. On “Brick By Brick,” she reminds listeners about the central tenet, “Love thy neighbor,” as a rippling synth takes the brooding gospel track into a clarion call for kindness. No matter what listeners’ relationship with faith, religion, or belief might be, Vice’s message is as old as time – and more necessary than ever.
There’s this saying I’ve always appreciated: “Sometimes the wrong train gets you to the right station.” Here you set out to pursue film production, but life led you to music instead. How do you feel about your journey?
It’s always, “What the hell am I doing? How did I get here?” It’s only been four and a half years; I still wonder. I feel like this record is so different, it’s so much more me because it does involve my storytelling abilities, and working with somebody who’s also a great storyteller—Micah Bourne. I get to use aspects of film—storytelling—but instead of the camera, it’s with a melody. It’s still hard, but I think about, man, production’s really hard. You’re not getting paid much, you still get treated like crap, and I was typically the only brown person on set.
Which has its own complications.
Oh, one hundred percent.
Besides the opening cover song, the other tracks are all originals. What did your writing process look like this time?
I wrote with Micah Bourne, a spoken word artist, and Dana Halferty, who I met on set. I was listening to music, and I was like, “God, I’ve never written a song, and I’m terrified to do this thing that I feel like you’re calling me to do. Am I doing this out of a religious mindset?” Honestly, I don’t think Jesus would be very religious. We can’t earn our way into his good side, so am I doing this because I feel like he’s given me an opportunity to reach people and remind them that they’re loved? Or am I doing this because I feel a sense of religious duty?
Slowly, I feel like He’s been undoing this mindset of religious duty. The first time I ever heard this was when I was playing a blues festival—it was like my fifth show ever playing in front of an audience. This was the first time I got so nervous I cried. I sat on my couch and I felt God say, “I’m not asking you to save them; I’m just asking you to sing over them.” There have been so many shows where people say, “Oh my gosh, like I’m an atheist but I love your message. It’s something we can all relate to.”
You said you got more personal on this album.
“Baby Hold On,” I wrote that after one of the worst tours I’ve ever been on; I was like, “I’m done.” One of my drummers had to be sent back because his mom got sick out of nowhere, and then she ended up dying three months later. Then I fell down the stairs and broke my toe and had to drive three hours to sing in New Hampshire with my foot elevated on Vicodin.
It sounds like a testing ground, like “How much do you want this?”
I’m like, “I don’t want this!” This broken foot, and one of my drummers who I freakin’ adore, his mother passes away. This comes after our suitcases were stolen in San Francisco and then a month prior to that I got in a car accident—my friend’s car was totaled and I had a herniated disc. I’m just like, “God, I don’t want this. You have the wrong person. I told you I wasn’t strong enough, I told you that I didn’t want this bad enough” So having this real Moses moment. I listened to “Baby Hold On” and as soon as the “oohs” came in with the choir I started to cry. Sometimes I feel like it’s the words unsaid that hit me the most.
Even if you have a contested relationship with faith or you don’t believe in anything, there’s such a good message about kindness and community on Save Me.
Right, and I also think that we make God so small. He’s not logical, he’s not realistic. There are things I will never understand, and I have to let myself be OK with that. It’s not just me and God, me and the Bible, it’s me and people around me. … Everyone has a story, and it might not fit into this pretty package that we want it to fit in.
Even [Plato’s] Allegory of the Caves, I love that story. These three men are hanging from shackles and they’re living off the shadows of the world, and then one actually goes in the world to experience it, and he’s like, “Oh my gosh, so that shadow is this, and that shadow is this,” and the other prisoners beat the hell out of him. It’s like, how many times do we choose to live off of the shadows instead of the actual source?
Especially with social media, which might be the biggest metaphor for living off the shadows. What was a big turning point for you on this album, a way out of the shadows into the truth?
I want to be OK in my body. Once I can accept that I am a created being and there’s beauty in all that I am, even my deep voice that sounds like I smoke cigarettes every day and I don’t at all. Once I can love myself for who I am in a whole way, I really do believe, if you love yourself, you can love other people well.
Absolutely. I think that’s where it needs to start. In order to look outward, you need to start inward.
That’s one of the top commands—love God with all your soul and with all your might, and love your neighbor. If you want to love God, you have to love your neighbor. That is a sign you love God because He made them too. I’m not perfect at that, but what does it look like to start the conversation about what it actually means to love your neighbor?
How has your connection to God changed since moving from Portland, Oregon, to New York City?
I love living in New York City, and the reason why is because of something I didn’t necessarily get when I lived in Portland, like diversity.
Yeah, there’s that.
For the lack of nature, people try to tell me, “You can go to this park or that park,” and I’m like I literally lived at the bottom of an extinct volcano [in Portland]. I lived by the Gorge, where you drive 20 to 30 minutes east and you’re seeing waterfalls and canyons. I’ve lived here for a year and half, and already so much has changed since I moved here, so it really is like a constant recalibrating—like GPS—of how do I silence my mind, how do I connect with a spiritual being who doesn’t tend to work in a way that most would want to—with fireworks and earthquakes and raging fires? Sometimes it’s a whisper and you have to lean in more, but you have to position yourself in order to hear the whisper.
It’s got to be an interesting practice to explore. As you said, in the city you have this greater sense of humanity to remind you of something bigger.
No one looks at each other on the subway so it’s perfect for people-watching. I see every shade of people next to each other, and so many different languages, it really feels like heaven to me. Even though this place can be a hot mess, I just look at it and I think, “Man, God is in love with this city.” Even people who don’t even know Him! I love it here. It hurts so good.
Photo credit: Katrina Sorrentin
