There is a lot of exciting news swirling around The War and Treaty and some of it frankly is a little surprising. It’s actually not startling that a film is in the works about the husband-and-wife duo, Michael Trotter, Jr. and Tanya Trotter. Their story is remarkable and told in the roots music they share with fans like the ones expected at their October 20 show at Heights Theater.
It’s not amazing that they recently won the Americana Music Association’s Duo/Group of the Year award, even in a field including fellow artists like Los Lobos and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. It’s also no shocker that they’ve got a major label release on the way. By phone from their Nashville home, the Trotters gave us the update on the new record.
“The album is actually called Lover’s Game. It’s our very first major release and our first release on Universal Music Group out here in Nashville. Very proud of it,” said Michael. “It’s produced by Dave Cobb and we’ve had two writers on it, a guy by the name of Dave Barnes who wrote the first release, which is ‘That’s How Love is Made,’ he co-wrote that with Tanya and I. And there’s a song on the album that was solely written by a producer and songwriter named Beau Bedford. He does a lot of work for The Band Perry, and that song’s called ‘Dumb Luck.’
“But everything else was written by myself and Tanya and we’re very excited about this release,” he added. “Vance Powell engineered it – very, very talented engineer who’s done so many artists from Elle King, Chris Stapleton, the list goes on and on. So happy that he was able to get his hands on our stuff and we were able to finally work together.”
There’s no official release date for the album, but Michael said it’s slated for 2023. The biggest news about the album, and the most surprising turn in The War and Treaty’s evolving story, is there are songwriters not named Trotter contributing songs to the record. The story of this band and this couple is about the trust in their partnership. It literally saved Michael’s life and helped them create Healing Tide and Hearts Town, a pair of breakthrough albums focused on healing and hope. So, it must have been strange to turn over some of their very personal creative process to others, we suggested.
“It was weird at first, but I’ve looked at it differently. For me, it’s about growth. You’re only as great as your surroundings and the reality of the situation is, you know, if Tanya and I were building an island by ourselves, we’re the only ones there to marvel at it,” Michael noted. “So, to let people in to collab and teach us the ropes and show us how it goes, we’ve always had that in our career, not so much in our songwriting process.
“It just feels good to grow this way and to get into the culture of Nashville,” Michael added. “Nashville is all about songwriting. It feels great.”
We note that their circle of two is tight. Like the proverb of the wedding ring, they revolve around one another with an unbreakable bond. Letting others into their songwriting is a new step, but there have been folks who have helped them along in their lives as artists and people. They mention their mothers. Tanya talks about her siblings. There’s Buddy Miller, the Nashville songwriter and musician who produced Healing Tide. Of course, they acknowledge each other.
Michael added one other influence, a person he said is pivotal to The War and Treaty’s success.
“Together with The War and Treaty, we’ve had several people and I can go into those names, but one name in particular that I feel we’ve kind of done a poor job in crafting this person into our story is Rissi Palmer,” Michael said. “She’s one of the first African-American charting country artists ever. Her name is Rissi Palmer.
“She was kind of ousted in the industry because some things happened – she was signed to a major situation but some things happened in her contract that she blew the whistle on and had to go to court and ended up winning her case. But then, no one wants to deal with a smart woman after that so they kind of ousted her out. But, Rissi Palmer was so important to The War and Treaty’s story.
“Without Rissi, we don’t make the right moves. And Rissi Palmer, we had to learn about her bitter ride,” he continued. “She didn’t come telling us about the horror stories of the industry. She, in fact, encouraged us about the industry and how the industry is beautiful, there’s beautiful moments, and just told us we have what it takes, she got it. She was the first one to hear our style of music and really Rissi was the first cheerleader.
“I feel we’ve kind of overshadowed those moments with her because of how impactful Buddy Miller and Emmylou Harris and John Prine and all of these mega-legends in the Mount Rushmore of Americana have kind of cemented themselves into our story,” Michael said. “Right there with them is a young Black girl from North Carolina named Rissi Palmer.”
The Trotters have their own inspirational, well-documented story. Film fans, consider this your spoiler alert. As the couple told Rolling Stone two years ago, military veteran Michael was struggling with PTSD from tours of duty in Iraq. One day in 2017, he’d planned to end his life, just years into their marriage. They’d only met in 2010 and hadn’t been working as a band very long. Tanya asked Michael for five minutes more to explain the reasons he needed to hang on. The main one was love. He’s since worked with therapists to manage his PTSD. That experience informed the song “Five More Minutes” and was a compass for the kinds of songs the couple wanted to create.
We wondered how the couple handles the weight that comes with addressing matters of healing in song.
“I will say this, it is heavy but it’s also an honor to be able to carry that banner,” Tanya said. “One thing that I have become very mindful of, and Michael as well, is with every opportunity that we have is to just pause – whether it’s a fan that’s in front of us, whether it’s getting opportunities to do big television spots or a film – and to take that moment and really digest it. And sometimes what that looks like is just stopping and crying a little bit.
“We did an event yesterday that was really big for us and in the middle of us doing a television piece, I just stopped and was like, ‘Y’all need to give me a minute,’ and just cried, because that opportunity will never happen again, you know? Not that way,” she continued. “You only get one first time to meet a fan, you get one first time to do a film about your life. You only get one first time to get Duo of the Year at the Americana Awards. So, it’s really just taking it all in and understanding how blessed and how fortunate we are that God, the universe, whatever people want to call it, has chosen us to be those people to add a little bit of light and inspiration to other people’s lives.”
It’s going to look great on the silver screen, we add, and ask for an update. Director Numa Perrier and producers like Gary Gilbert and John Legend have been attached to the film.
“There’s not much we can say about that,” Michael admitted, “but it’s gonna be something to see. There is one casting that I’m extremely excited about, but we’ll see, you know?
“It wasn’t anything except tell us your story because we’ve heard, but we want to hear it from you. And we did that,” he said of how they were approached. “And then they said great, we want to make an in-time movie about your story because it’s developing still right now. We don’t want to do a biopic about an artist that everybody knows, everybody knows their songs, everybody knows what happened. We want to do a story about a band who people are still discovering but it’s unfolding right now and they can grow with it from the movie thereon.”
Any married couple could guess why a husband and wife might call their band The War and Treaty. Close as the Trotters are, on all things they do not agree. But they do agree that Americana music is having a moment now.
“I think it’s the changing of the times and it’s all timing, when things happen, how things are supposed to happen. With Americana music, the way I look at it is I think people are ready for that surge of the traditional and to go back to the roots because everything has gone so far away from the way a lot of us grew up, you know, listening to the basic handclaps in gospel music or in country music just listening to the guitar and storytelling. R&B music, the lyrics,” Tanya said.
“The truth is Americana music never died, it never went away. It just left the mainstream,” Michael added. “People wanna go back now. If it’s country, people want to hear,” and he belted out some Hank Williams note for note, “‘Hey good lookin’, what you got cookin’?’ If it’s R&B, you know, they wanna hear somebody like Otis Redding, Sam Cooke. They want to feel again, you know? And if it’s soul, they want some James Brown! They want to feel. They’re tired of artists getting up there, half-assing it and not feeling it and just doing what they need to do because they realize they can get a buck from it.
“Tanya and I, what we want to do is we want to put our heart and soul into it, in every moment, because we don’t know when we’ll get a chance to do that again.”
The War and Treaty, with special guest Yasmin Williams, Thursday October 20 at Heights Theater, 339 W. 19th. Doors at 7:00 p.m. for this all-ages show. $24-$352.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2022.
