An Interview with The War And Treaty: Are You Ready?

Michael and Tanya Trotter. I cannot wait to see these two fronting their band, The War and Treaty, on Sunday at Newport. Their EP, Down to the River, covers a ton of ground in a short amount of time, from funky, wah-wah pedal guitars to subtle and understated mandolins, the running thread through the record is the beautiful merging of Michael and Tanya’s voices. They can both belt, growl, coo, whisper, and croon and they pick the right spots for each way to accentuate the emotional qualities of Michael’s lyrics. In just a couple of weeks, Healing Tide, their new record, produced by Buddy Miller, comes out. We had the pleasure of chatting with Michael and Tanya and we are so excited to celebrate with them at Newport on Sunday.

RLR: Let’s talk about the new singles from Healing Tide, which is out August 10. They’re really different songs, but they’re both driven by questions. Can you talk about the evolution of each song?

MT: I guess we should start with the similarities. Both songs ask a very pivotal and important question. One’s dealing with: are you ready to love me? Which is pointed, and right in your face. It doesn’t leave much room to speculate and the subject is singing directly to love interest. And the word “me” there is so powerful, because it’s not just the “me” that you could easily fall in love with—it’s the ugly parts of me, it’s the mood swings “me.” Or if I get in a car accident, and I’m paralyzed from the neck down, are you still ready to love me?

 

 We were led into writing that after I had wrote “Healing Tide,” which now poses the question to the entire world. Instead of complaining and instead of being fact-finders and being civil rights inspectors, what if there was a big old healing tide, a tidal wave of healing water, or healing and love and cleansing—would you be a part of something like that? Would you put that same kind of energy behind the solutions.

Because, I tell you what, as human beings we have rights, and one of those rights is to have opinions that lean towards problems and to be very opinionated about problems. But we also neglect or negate our other rights as human beings, and our right to lean more towards the solutions. So “Healing Tide” flirts with a lot of different questions. It says: would you be a part of the healing tide? It also puts the responsibility in the listener’s face: it says, “What if I told you, you would be the one to bring world peace?”

During President Obama’s campaign everyone was really excited because not only was he an African-American President, but also if there was a man to take up that title and lead the free world into this new era where an African-American man is in charge of the free world, everyone thought it would have been Dr. King. But the thing that was so powerful about the Obama movement is that the responsibility became all of ours. It wasn’t like anyone was looking any longer for Dr. King; we were comfortable with being who we are. And I’ll tell you this much, Ken, the current presidency emphasizes that in a way that is so unassuming for others, because whatever moves he makes and whatever decisions he makes, it challenges us, not just as Americans, but as human beings to look for the leader inside of yourself. And that’s what the healing tide is all about.

RLR: There’s a lot to take in there, Michael. There are certainly many people who feel like the first step in healing is naming oppression, naming racism, sexism, homophobia. It sounds like you would agree but would ask for more than that. How would you respond to someone who would argue that what you call “pointing out problems” is an essential part of healing?

MT: What I would first tell them is something I learned a long time ago from a guy named Paul Perrette: the problem is not people pointing out problems; the problem is people seeing people as the problem and not the problem as the problem.

Problems don’t create themselves. And problems are created by the same people who create the solutions: us. Yes, it is fun and righteous to have that sort of indignation and to say these are the problems that we face, but the key word there is “we.” And it’s only problematic when you face it alone or you eradicate others out of the equation. And we get stuck there. It’s like if I hit my toe and I let it throb and I don’t deal with the issue, I’m going to sit there in pain. Or, I can choose to walk it out, jump it out, and in some cases I might even curse it out.

 

 RLR: So let me ask you about your role as a writer, as a performer, as a musician in helping people with this conversation and coming to the idea of working on things together?

MT: That role is challenged on a daily basis. It would be easy to say I have this one position but it’s better for me to tell you where I start at. And I start it in my home, in my household: being my wife’s husband and letting her be my wife. It starts with intentionally parenting and intentionally being a friend to people and not only those who look like me or come from my walk of life, but seeking out opportunities to share and experience folk who don’t look like me or who don’t have the same kind of walk and talk. These decisions have to be intentional. And intentionally creating art that tells a beautiful picture, and paints a possibility, and I believe that is the role that my wife and I take. And also the responsibility of that position is letting it work on you first. And I want to let this lady chime in, because she taught me early how to stay grounded in love and how to even have an argument and not go to bed angry.

RLR: Oh great. Yeah, Tanya, what’s your take on this idea?

TT: I learned everything about how to treat people in the little Catholic school kindergarten class in Washington, DC. And it was: be kind, be kind to people. I try to walk through life like that, understanding that everyone brings their journey to their day; they bring their past to their right now. If we can take the time to listen to one another; I think we’ve lost the heart of listening with each other. And not just listening with our ears, but listening with our spirit. You can walk through a store or at a gas station, and you can see visibly if someone is having a bad day. And it’s our responsibility, even if it’s just opening up a door to let a person in, and to say, “I’ve got it for you, you go walk right in.” That let’s the person feel like you at least see them. We have to see each other again. We have to listen to each other again. And it’s my responsibility and it’s my service as an artist to let our fans know that we see them. We see you from the stage and we feel what you feel.

RLR: I saw a tweet about your performance at The Ryman and that the audience response made you tear up; can you talk about that relationship with the audience and the heart that you’re talking about?

TT: I take the opportunity to stand in front of people and do this incredible music very seriously. We were just talking this week how we were living in someone’s basement when Michael was sharing these songs with me that he’d written in the war. We didn’t have anything. All we had was our son and our love. And to be able to stand in front of people and have them cheer us on, and see the look of love in their eyes, is a complete honor. So it brings me to tears with every audience. I was in the business at seventeen as a young artist and I really never thought I would be able to do music again. The music I was a part of had shifted and changed, and hip-hop took over, and I just knew in my heart of hearts that I’d never get an opportunity to sing and share the different styles of music that I grew up with. So to be able to do that is a complete honor and an act of service that I don’t take for granted every day.

RLR: As Michael brings a song to the band, what does that look like?

TT: It depends on the day. He writes all day all the time. So I can be washing dishes and he’ll just walk up to me and say, “OK, the strings are going to do this. The horns are going to do this.” And I’m washing dishes, and I’m like, “Yeah, yeah!” So it’s wherever the spirit hits him.

He takes it to the band and he already has the ideas of how he wants it to go, whether it’s the guitar lines or the drum lines. And then, within that structure, he allows the band members to put their own creativity to it. He’s not like a dictator. [Laughs] There is freedom for the musicians to be able to stretch a little bit.

RLR: Tanya, I read in an interview that you feel like one of the good things about the EP is that it’s not perfect–there can be a lot of pressure to make things perfect, so how do you think about mistakes as one of the strengths in music or in performance?

TT: When I look at music and I listen to some of my favorite artists from the past, they weren’t perfect. You look at Ella Fitzgerald, who was a larger sized woman, and the crowds adored her. And you look at Nina Simone, who was, to the public at that time, was a dark skinned woman with a large nose and large lips. To the standards, she wasn’t perfect. Or you listen to a record with Ray Charles, and you hear him yelling out to his band on the record; or James Brown, who didn’t have a classically trained voice, but his “Please! Please!” moved you. The beauty of art is to not make it perfect. It’s like being an abstract painter; it’s not going to be perfect, and it’s abstract for a reason—so that you can bring your creativity to your own thought when you’re looking at it.

RLT: It’s interesting that you started with the surface-level ideas of beauty as you talked about Nina and Ella and then you get to the deeper aspects.

TT: And music has depth, and it’s not superficial like some people would like it to be. You’re not going to be perfect, no matter how many apps you have on your phone to make your teeth whiter or your eyes a different color. That’s not reality.

RLR: We’re excited to catch your set at the Newport Folk Festival. It’s a place with a lot of history, do you think about approaching this set differently in any way?

TT: We think about every show and its history. And to think about the history of Newport Folk Festival, and I’ve watched some of the greats that have graced that stage. I know I’ll be crying. I’m just hoping I can get through the songs. But it’s overwhelming. The thought of us playing the Newport Folk Festival is mind-blowing; no one could have told us that a year ago.

 

Believe it. The War and Treaty are the real deal and they hit the Quad Stage Sunday morning at 11:05!

Photo Credit: David McClister