The War and Treaty
Composed of Michael and Tanya Trotter, the duo blends roots music, bluegrass, folk, gospel and soul to create a unique sound. But they didn’t always perform together; Michael wrote a few songs for Tanya and her brother, but when her brother couldn’t make a rehearsal, Michael stepped up.
“Michael and I heard how our voices sounded together on the song he wrote for my brother and I, and we were looking at each other like, ‘This is really good!,’” said Tanya. “We weren’t dating at the time, just working together, but we ended up getting married. Two or three years later, people were telling us to sing a song together. So we ended up singing our songs together at church, and the people were so amazed by it.”
Michael and Tanya Trotter took distinctly different paths to becoming The War and Treaty.
After winning a talent show when she was 13, Tanya knew singing would be her life. Growing up in a tight-knit community just outside of Washington, D.C., Tanya had a voice that was already hinting at the force it’d become: honeyed and bold, guttural but angelic. She’d discovered writing, too, and every blank space was an opportunity. “My mom would come into my room late at night and catch me reading books and writing, with a flashlight,” Tanya says, laughing. “I used to write on everything––envelopes, everything.”
Michael started writing later, and for different reasons. He spent part of his childhood in Cleveland before moving with his mother, brother, and sister to Washington, D.C. The family spent time in and out of homeless shelters––a limbo Michael would experience again as an adult. He was 19 when his first daughter, Michaela, was born. “She was the first thing I felt that I’d done right––my little girl,” he says. “I joined the army for her.” Michael enlisted in the United States Army in 2003, two years after 9/11. “I didn’t know it was wartime,” he says. “People say, ‘How do you not know that?’ Well, in the neighborhood I grew up in, we weren’t patriotic. No one cared––that’s rich people’s news. Meanwhile, someone I know just got shot yesterday.”
But what Michael did know was that as a soldier, he felt proud––then scared. He was sent to Iraq, where leaders who outranked him saw the fear in his eyes and treated him not as an underling, but as a brother. Stationed in one of Saddam Hussein’s rubbled palaces, he had access to a piano that had emerged miraculously unscathed. A captain heard him play and sing with his once-in-a-generation volcano of a voice, and he encouraged Michael to pursue music. When that same captain was killed, Michael sat down to write––really write––for the first time.
Officers noticed the tribute, pulled Michael from the front lines, and gave him a new charge: write and perform songs for the fallen. So whenever a brother or sister in arms died, Michael spoke to buddies, uncovered the story, and penned a song for the memorial. It was a heavy burden that also made him safer. “I remember, I would walk from one point to another, imagining people were chanting my name––imagining a concert that had nothing to do with death,” he says.
When Michael returned home, he was booked on a festival that also featured Tanya Blount. After his set, Tanya approached him and asked if he’d written his songs. He had. The two exchanged numbers, but Michael, battle-weary, scarred, and daunted by Tanya’s beauty, couldn’t understand why she’d want anything to do with him. “I threw her number away because I had a lot of insecurities that I still have. I thought, ‘Who would want to be with a guy who went to war?’”
Tanya didn’t wait on him. She called Michael, and the two became inseparable. Today, they’re married and have created a six-year-old son and a powerhouse duo. When The War and Treaty stepped up to fill an ill Buddy Miller’s spot at the 2017 Americana Music Festival & Conference, jaws at the Cannery Ballroom in Nashville collectively dropped. Just as anticipation surrounding Healing Tide is more than high, the music on the record is more than just sublime roots soul. It’s part of a mission.
Originally from the Washington DC area, the Trotters stumbled upon Albion after getting lost while driving to Indiana. After spending a night at the Days Inn to rest, they decided to explore the Albion area. After talking to a few people and searching for a home they liked, the couple moved to Albion and fell in love with the small town.
“Michael is a two-time award winner, and so what we wanted was a small town where we could raise our son and a place that’s quite peaceful and quiet,” said Tanya. “We landed here and fell in love with it.”
The War and Treaty: Healing songs
The War and Treaty- Are You Ready To Love Me
The War and Treaty - Millennium Stage (December 10, 2017)
