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 Interview: The War and Treaty 

  • Post Author
    by Music director
  • Post Date
    Sat Aug 20 2022

by: B.R. Downing

BELOW IS A TRANSCRIPTION OF AN INTERVIEW WITH THE MUSICAL DUO THE WAR AND TREATY, ON JULY 17TH, 2022, PRIOR TO THEIR PERFORMANCE AT THE LA FÊTE DE MARQUETTE FESTIVAL IN MADISON, WISCONSIN. THE INTERVIEW WAS CONDUCTED BY MDMPH HOST, ROBERT THE RIVER, WITH THE WAR AND TREATY MEMBERS MICHEAL TROTTER JR. AND TANYA TROTTER. 


ROBERT:

Hi, this is Robert the River and I'm here with my guests, The War and Treaty.

MICHEAL & TANYA:

Hey everybody, I'm Michael. And I'm Tanya. And we're just happy to be here with you today and thanks for choosing to interview us. 

ROBERT:

 And we're glad to have you. So, what is your background?

TANYA:

Well, we're a husband-and-wife duo, we actually met in Laurel, Maryland. That's where we met as a couple, and from there I guess maybe three or four weeks later we hooked up as friends and just fell in love right away, you know right away, and I guess six months later we were married. So that's our background as a couple and how we met and how we got together as a couple.

ROBERT:

And were you both musicians prior to that, did that inform the musical pairing?

TANYA:

Yeah, we were both musicians. I started out when I was eight years old. You know, in the church, the Baptist Church in Washington DC. And from there I guess by the time I was 17 I was doing it professionally in the Washington DC area and I had my first recording contract at 17 coming right out of high school and my first movie deal with sister act two. So I've always been in music and the entertainment industry, but when I met Michael I was actually not doing it for myself anymore I was in a duo with my brother at the time, Willie Blunt, and he couldn't make some of the rehearsals and things like that. So, we didn't start out doing music together, Michael and I, but eventually three years later into the marriage we did.

MICHEAL:

And I got my chops from when I was a child, singing in church. I did my first church performance at Holy Trinity Baptist Church in Cleveland, OH. I was three years old and I sang standing on organ bench my uncle was playing. And I have been in a couple of competitions; festival praise and then I won the DC Future Fest singing competition sponsored by the mayor at the time, Mayor Barry. And then, I didn't get into my songwriting until I joined the military, the army, and I started writing songs over there and started learning how to play the piano over there on what has said to be Saddam Hussein's piano in Baghdad, Iraq, in our palace that we took over. And then I started writing songs about the fallen after one of our commanders were…Captains were killed, and a Sergeant, I wrote a song – my first song about that situation. And it brought so much healing to the troops that our Colonel at the time changed my position over there and said, you know what? This is what you need to be doing, I want you to be writing songs about the fallen. And you're gonna do it at the memorials and you're gonna bring healing to the troops. And I did that for about three years and then I got out of the military to try my hand at songwriting and playing, and that was around 2007, February 07, and I bopped around for about three years before I met Tanya and the rest was history once we met, you know, and being able to sing together and combine our stories has been kinda like the diamond in the rough in our lives because before then before we met being in love with each other and being able to sing and do what we do now…It's kind of like the story before it doesn't really matter, because now the purpose and the mission is so strong. It's like we realize, you know, what we can do together, especially with our music and The War and Treaty now represents the natural tug and pull of life. You know there's always a beauty that can come out of conflict when the conflict is in love and so that's just who we are as people now.

Photo by by B.R. Downing

ROBERT:

Do you let that idea inform your music?

MICHEAL:

Totally, we have an EP out called Down to the River, and then we have two albums at the current moment which is Healing Tide, and Hearts Town. And all three of these projects were created out of a need to see our country united, you know. Especially Healing Tide because we released that in 2018 and the racial tension in our country right now is so high. You know, and yes it's been that way before, we have the horror stories of the 60s, we have the horrific stories of the history of black people in this country and any minority group and the history of you know, a lot of white people who don't believe in segregation and don't believe in racism that jumped in to the fight of the civil rights movement. Who were brutally erased from this Earth and brutally erased from the history of that fight and in order to reset you just gotta kind of wash it all away with healing waters. And so, Healing Tide was about that. You know and what we see now is a desperation for leadership, right? Where are the Martin Luther King's? Where are the Gandhi's? Where are the Mother Teresa's? You know, where are these people? And Healing Tide was very suggestive. It was like the song itself starts off with “what if I told you you'd be the one to bring World Peace?” Stop looking for Doctor King. Stop looking for the next hero and realize that it's staring you right in the face. It's all of us now it's not that just one person. And Hearts Town came in 2020 out of, you know, the height of it all you got the George Floyd's, Sandra Bland's. You have Philando Castile. So many different cases to where we were hearing the cries of the hood and the ghettos, and then we were home, then we had a pandemic happen, you know, loss at an all-time high in our country. So, Hearts Town was well, what if we created this space where we weren't influenced or touched by hatred at all? You know we're creatin' our own town now, because clearly we cannot move past this, clearly we have situations to where there are a lot of black people and a lot of white people who feel that things were better segregated. You know, we have a lot of black people who feel that you know, justice means revenge. We need revenge and we're not ever going to get justice here. Well what if we had a town where you know what well if you believe it can change. If you're white and you believe it can change if you're black and you believe it can change if your Asian, Hispanic, whatever. And you believe in change, you believe in love, let's build our own town and lock out all the noise and offer real suggestions. And that's what the album Hearts Town was about. It was about realizing that you know, Tanya doesn't have the answer. Michael doesn't have the answer. Rob doesn't have the answer.  We have the answer. The answer's inside of all of us. So, we try to create songs and our albums definitely have pointed to that ideal, you know, and vulnerability, because now we gotta put ourselves in there. We gotta talk about the moments where we weren't trusting even in our own relationship. So, that is definitely the music you're getting out of this camp so far.

ROBERT:

Yeah, that brings up a couple different ideas that I would ask about and it also kind of makes me think about an album I really like by one of my favorite artists, Rhiannon Giddens. She put out an album a couple years ago called There is No Other, and this ties into one of the questions I was going to ask, it's a little more nuanced, right? But music is storytelling, and one of the things I've done on my show is to kind of peel back this idea of genres. It's a great idea as far as being able to classify something, but it's sometimes also kind of like it kind of blocks off opportunities or limits the scope of what you can create artistically. This kind of ties into one of the questions that I was going to ask was; what kind of genre do you consider your music? And do you think genres are useful ideas anymore in respect to the fact, like if you go back 100 years there wouldn't be a lot distinguishing between like a Blues song or a Country song. And you know, to kind of speak to what you were saying too, I think maybe 100 years ago what might have distinguished between the two would have been race. It's effectively the same music from the same region, using the same instrumentation and, you know in a way that's kind of short selling the genres a little bit because there are ethnic elements that come from people's cultures, but also it seems like that, at least in my opinion, the best music is when you are collaborating with other people and moving the conversation forward musically instead of tracking back into the same cliches over and over again because you're not getting new art then. Anyway, I know that's a lot.

MICHEAL:

That's not a lot at all.

TANYA:

No, not at all. I mean, I think that overall, when we think about America and just globally, we are defined by a lot of isms, classism, racism, sexism, feminism. I mean, the list can go on and on and on, and whenever you have that view of just life, it will transfer itself into music. It transcends itself. The thinking goes into OK, so since we have this way of dealing with this box, we're going to make sure we put gospel in this box, and only this kind of person can do that kind of music. Or if you're from the Appalachian, you could only do Appalachian folk music, not realizing that as people travel and as they're exposed to different things, like my mother was from Panama, so I was exposed to, you know, Calypso music. And she was Catholic, so I was exposed to chanting and different things like that, and my dad was from New Bern, North Carolina. So, on the way down from Washington DC to New Bern, I was exposed to country music. I was exposed to the gospel music that my grandparents raised him on, and you know, as sharecroppers in New Bern. So, I think when you think about The War and Treaty we have been exposed to all different styles of not just music but life. You know, Michael has different cultures in his family. I have different cultures in my family. And when you're affected by those different cultures, what happens is you don't even know as you're saying that you're taking on something you heard when you were 8 years old. You know what I mean? It's like, oh wow, that's where that comes from, I was listening to Celia Cruz in the back of the car as a 9-year-old and I picked that up and I'm able to, you know, sing a song halfway in Spanish because I heard it. So, I think that you have to take away genres when people start to live and they start to grow and they start to get exposed to different styles of music. And that's what I love about where music is right now because kids are exposed to everything on Spotify. They don't have a genre.  You're not going to put them in a box because they can make their own playlists from an artist from China or from England or from the United States of America. So I think for us we just are exposed to everything, so everything we've ever heard everything we've ever loved, it's in our music, you know.

MICHEAL:

I think the unique position that we have is understanding that music is literally life…period. You know, my first introduction to a country song was not the radio. It was a Western. It was a movie, a movie about life. My father, you know, wore chaps and a country hat and a country belt. You know, my dad, he wore country, but he was so hood. So, I learned to defy the odds that way. My dad played anything from Hendrix in the car all the way to Mozart, Beethoven, Solari, and it wasn't confusing to me. I didn't understand genres, I understood music. In fact, I remember reading a transcript where Duke Ellington was offended when they named his music Jazz. He was very offended. Art Tatum, offended, in fact they were emphatically offended by that. They said ‘how dare you call music a genre?', It's music, I make music. Music is beautiful and for you to generalize it, it's slavery, it chains me. Because what if I want to write an Aria for Tanya? What if I want Tanya to sing like a Leontyne Price piece? You know, will you not allow it because I didn't go to school for all those years to say this is how it should sound. So, you know, I, I feel that if you must say well, what is the music of The War and Treaty? …..well, it's life. That's what it is. It's not a genre, our show is definitely not a genre. I mean you'll be able to experience that tonight and tell me if I'm right, or wrong.  But, if you need, if you're just one of those people that just have to classify it, it's just you gotta name it something you know, like record labels; I think that there's a cool term now called Americana. No one knows what the heck it means, now the way I explain it is, well, Americana is the purity or the root form of any music, therefore accepted by America. You know, Rhiannon does a great job with tracking the history of an instrument you know, and she does a great job of tracking the history of the pain of that artist or that person, …and they call it roots. But what we do is, Tanya and I, we celebrate that style, that sound. We celebrate country, rock, gospel, you know Blues, R&B. We celebrate the freedom that also came with that you know. And so I like to say that, that's what it is.

ROBERT:

 You know, that's awesome. So, I wanted to pick up on some that you mentioned and it kind of ties in with some of the questions I had. You guys are on Rounder Records, right?

TANYA:

Well, not any longer, we served our time there.

MICHEAL:

Oh, we just signed to a major which is Universal Music Group Nashville.

ROBERT:

OK, so apologies for the faux pas there. Uhm, well, the question that I had was, and you spoke about this a little bit already, but like particular to artists, maybe not necessarily genres, but like to artists, like, who were your influences.

TANYA:

Oh wow.

MICHEAL:

To speak to Rounder, and I don't want to speak for Tanya, you know I've been influenced by so many of Rounders roster. Della Mae, or whether it was a Alison Krauss, uh, at the time, Robert Plant, you know still, of course, who isn't influenced by the great Robert Plant, but Del McCrory. So, you know if you start going through the history of Rounder and start looking at a different artist that that have had spent some time and then start looking at the history of bluegrass musicians like Ricky Skaggs, Ricky Skaggs influences me, just every time I'm able to sit in his presence. It's like a breath of fresh air. You know, regardless of whatever his beliefs may be, Ricky Skaggs is a beautiful gentleman. But I am widely influenced by, if I need to go in order, first off: Ray Charles – 

ROBERT:

I actually…, I'm being a little bit of a nerd here, but, I saw you guys perform on Austin city limits, I believe it was a tribute to Ray Charles.

MICHEAL & TANYA:

Oh yeah, yes, Hey Pretty Moon is on our Hearts Town album.

MICHEAL:

…, Ray Charles is a genius. His female counterpart of that world is Nina Simone, and Simone is courageous. In terms of a pianist, she might be slightly more talented than Ray, it's argumentative; but Nat King Cole. Some of the greats that we have overlooked or maybe we have forgotten. Nat King Cole, Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash. and June Carter. It always appalls me when people do not mention June as one of the voices female voices that have shaped the genre country. June Carter, although she wasn't known for that – and Anita Carter was more known for the voice in the Carter Family. But I, I particularly gravitated towards June's pain in her voice you know and being able to be influenced by her. Malia Jackson. When you think, Of Queen of soul – everyone thinks of Aretha, but I would tell your listeners on this other, look – go back and really listen to Mahalia Jackson. Listen to her interviews, listen to her voice, listen to her skill. You know, and see if you aren't pulled in, by, that kind of thing. Ike and Tina. In terms of Tanya and I, you know, and then I'll toss this Tanya, in terms of duo-ship I look at Ike and Tina Turner. I look at Ashford and Simpson, I look at The Civil Wars, Sonny and Cher, you know. Ike and Tina, you know, unfortunately, we all know the history behind them, but, we look at pure musicianship – Ike was a bad man and Tina Turner is untouchable. I'll leave it at that.

TANYA:

Yeah, yeah, she's untouchable. There's nothing to say about that. My influences started in my church, you know, I always laugh about this guy named Joe Lewis, who you know Joe Lewis would come down the aisle in his suit and he was the James Brown of our church. I mean, you're getting a split. You're getting him ripping off his shirt, you're getting the, you know – 

MICHEAL:

In church!

Tanya:

 – in church, and you're getting as he throws his jacket off one of the deacons putting the jacket back on him to cover him up 'cause he's ripped his shirt open on Sunday morning. 

MICHEAL:

How old was he?

TANYA:

He had to be, I was a kid so he had to be late 40s, 50s. I'm still friends with his daughter on Facebook and we just laugh about it, and they have videos of the older Joe Lewis, you know, when he was calmer, but, he was still like…, when he took that microphone, he took that microphone out of it and had the cord, he gave you the best show…, that was the that was the best tithe and offering dollar I put in there because it was the best show that you were gonna get on a Sunday. You know, Sunday or any day. My brother Willie Blunt, an incredible singer.

MICHEAL:

Awesome vocalist. 

TANYA:

He was one of my influences growing up. Genovia Jeter. And then when I got more into classical music and started getting into the Arias and different things like that and went to college. Leontyne Price became one of my favorites and then of course Whitney Houston, Gladys Knight, who's still almost 80, has probably one of the best-preserved voices in the industry. To me, her voice is like fine wine. I'm like when is it going to start getting old? You know? Aretha Franklin. The Hawkins family. Actually, Walter Hawkins has songs even now –

MICHEAL

Gospel artists. 

TANYA:

– gospel artists, that takes me. I can remember hearing songs like “Thank you Lord for all you've done for me” at 12 and 13. Or singing these songs that took me through, you know, as a teenager, so a lot of the people that influenced me aren't big names. I got into the fashion thing with Dolly Parton. I thought she was incredible and just looking at her, iconic. Patti LaBelle, iconic look, iconic voice. It's just Uhm, Celia Cruz. All these bigger than life artists when you look at them, they were bigger than life and their music has transcended time. So, I was influenced by those people. 

MICHEAL:

There's an artist that hit me in my older years like, you know, in my adulthood, that when you talk of in terms of Soul, OK this is going to be an odd thing I want to say. I've never heard an artist move me the way this guy did, and I've said this before about other artists. I mean like you have your Chris Stapleton's, you have your Glen Hansard's, you have your Ray Charles and Soul singers like James Brown. And, you know, that hit you in the gut – Temptations. This guy comes from the mountains, and I became familiar with him from the movie Oh brother, where art thou?; Doctor Ralph Stanley. When he sings the song about O death and it's just him no instrumentation – and I've heard him with music as well, of course, with his guitar – but when he sings that song… even talking about it, I get slightly choked up. He moves me in a way I've never been moved before. Especially as a black man who, like Tanya, you talk about watching those singers in church and you talk about the whooping and hollering and it's guts. But this guy I tremble. I shudder when he sings that song, and I haven't been moved like that ever. 

ROBERT:

Wow, that was… That's awesome to hear about all of the different influences, and I feel like we could do an entire show honestly on like this one question.

TANYA:

Yeah, yeah, just influences.

ROBERT:

I had no idea that Rounder had a lot of bluegrass artists.

MICHEAL & TANYA:

Oh yeah Rounder predominantly is a bluegrass label, you know.

ROBERT:

So, I didn't know that, but then there's other things too, right where… we talked a little about Ray Charles. I know you guys are going to be playing some shows in the next week or two weeks with Willie Nelson, and Willie recorded with Ray.

MICHEAL & TANYA:

Yeah, yeah, Seven Spanish Angels. 

ROBERT:

Yeah, and so once again, that's kind of where we go back to this idea of like defying genre. And then I recently did a show where, you talked about Robert Plant, and I did a Blues dedicated show. Usually what I do is I, you know, put everything from like the Mississippi Delta region, which I've probably cast that net very wide, but I did a Blues show, I had a set where I played Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, and Leadbelly.

MICHEAL:

Oh, you see, OK wait a minute, you said Blues you're getting into the, that's – 

TANYA:

– The roots! Yeah, the root. 

MICHEAL & TANYA:

I would love to hear that show. Yeah.

ROBERT:

I'll send you a link. So, what was interesting though, was something that I didn't know that I learned when I put that show together, was that one of my favorite rock songs growing up was Traveling Riverside Blues, the Led Zeppelin BBC recordings in ‘71 or ‘72. I'd listened to Robert Johnson before, but when I was going through his catalog, I'd never realized that he was the originator of that version, or, he was the originator of Traveling Riverside Blues. And so, I was kind of blown away by that. And then, I did know about this though, and I talked a little bit on the show about how music kind of cycles back in on itself, and that Leadbelly did a version of In the Pines, which is,  I feel like that's one of those songs that even kind of defies genre, because like, it's been recorded by Blues artists and Country artists, going back to pre-recording days it was an existent song. But then Nirvana, they…, I think that their title of that song was Where Did You Sleep Last Night, and so like, they gave that song new life in the 90s in the grunge scene.

MICHEAL & TANYA:

Mm-hmm yeah. Totally.

ROBERT:

And so you know once again. It goes back to this. Idea of like. Music is hard to put in a box.

TANYA:

Yeah, it preserves itself. You know it music we have to preserve it but if a great song will always come back around, it just will. I mean, 20 years from now, our son, who's 11 will be in his 30s thinking about what he heard us doing and he'll remake a song, you know. And that's with any genre. Hip hop has done it. Country music has done it. You know every gospel music has done it. Every genre of music, they go back and they find…, the 90s was the sample generation where they took all the, you know Mtume and different records that were big in R&B and they redid it, you know. And they became big hits. So, I think in every genre it's a great song.

MICHEAL:

But what you just said, it, yeah, it doesn't preserve itself – 

TANYA:

We preserve it.

MICHEAL:

 – we  preserve it – and the thing about it is that I find very unique is, you hit the nail on the head with the right hammer. It is racism, to get down to the brass tacks of it all, you know a white guy can't sound like that he's white. You know, like Chris Stapleton, we're calling it Country…, that's Blues. He's singing Blues, you know he's got a bluesy voice, no, he has a voice. He's a great voice, you know. So does Garth Brooks. So did Charlie Pride, you know, so did James Brown. You know when you look at the musicians from the Appalachian Mountains, you know who took the guitar and they played it to their ability and sang the stories over their songs. You know, tell me what is the difference between them and Muddy Waters? Tanya and I, and our tour manager, and our son last night, we watched a movie about one of the greatest artists of all time…, Elvis Presley, and I was appalled by what I saw. Because here it is, I'm like I had no clue that Elvis did what he did. That Elvis fought for the barriers to be torn down the way he did. I had no idea that Elvis got his start in a black church in a black neighborhood. His family was too poor to live anywhere else. You know, and so when you talk about the gods of Blues, you know, and I was appalled because the famous interview from my hero, which is Ray Charles, he really did not have any favorable things to say about Elvis Presly. But, another hero I have is B.B. King and he admired, and honored, you know, Elvis. So I feel like racism has played a major role in areas where it is so foolish, I mean, number one it shouldn't play a role between me and you and Tanya. But it shouldn't play any role in music, and it has, you know it's been the deciding factor. Even to this day it still is. I mean so many people I feel like it's absurd to think that the number one rapper in all of history is Eminem, you know, based off sales. You know and then, at the end of the film it said Elvis Presley was the number one selling solo artist of all time and it's arguable because then you have this other little black guy who comes to mind, named Michael – Michael Jackson. You know, so I think that, I feel that we're in a a space now to where the people who are alive today, we're not, we're not taking that any longer. We're going to do what do we want to do, and we gonna do music. We use music to use music to do what we want it to do and Tanya and I, we want it to bridge, we want it to heal, you know? 

TANYA:

Yeah, and people in position are making great strides to break down the barriers, not just the artists you have because I think the artists, we create the music, but once the music comes out it has to go through the pipeline of the labels and the promoters and radio announcers like yourself that take a stand and say no, I'm playing this record because I like it. I don't care what that person looks like. You know I'm signing this artist because I feel like this artist is changing my life. I think you have people in high positions that unlike you know, maybe in the past, they're not afraid to say no. I want to be a part of this change and not just with my words but with. My actions.

ROBERT:

Yeah I think there's, I think there's a tension. You know maybe 7 to 9 years ago. We saw a. Lot of independent artists start coming out and maybe they were releasing their, you know there was all different manner of ways to release it, maybe they were just making YouTube, they weren't signed right? But then you get into this idea of where the tension exists is if you have to sign with a label, can you retain your integrity and can you still bring your message out, and you know, kind of the flip side of that is if you've got a message to get out and you say, well, I don't want to be a part of a label, I don't want to be constrained, if it limits your audience, then then are you getting the message out anyway? And so it's you know it's tough in respect to telling the stories that want to be told as opposed to telling maybe the stories that are going to sell the most records, right?

TANYA:

I don't know, I can say for myself, I've never experienced a record label actually telling me what story to tell, you know, but that's my story. You know there's so many other artists that have to, you know, but that wasn't, that hasn't been my story, and I think that one thing that always holds true as an artist is just being authentic, you know? That's going to work whether you're independent or if you're signed to a label or not. You know if you're authentic, like people can…, you can't fool this generation. You can't fool the one before either because people can tell when it's not real, and it doesn't matter how much money you put behind it, eventually, throw it up on a wall – it'll stick a little bit, but it's going to slide down. You know, what sticks are the artists we've just talked about. Those artists 50 years from now we're talking about, Ray Charles, we're talking about Johnny Cash and June Carter. We're talking about them because they were authentic, and what they did. 

MICHEAL:

They were authentic but we can't belly over or ignore that those artists that we mentioned have fought for? You know, like you say, there's an influx of independent artists, and you don't get that without the struggles that Ray Charles went through, and Johnny Cash, and Elvis, Michael Jackson, and Prince. You know we just got finished touring Prince's Estate, Paisley Park. And Prince is very adamant about the struggles he went through as we all know with his record labels, but also the partnerships that he was able to finish forging that allowed him to come back from being just a symbol. All the way to symbol, to just being known as the artist formerly known as Prince, to coming back to being known as Prince again. And that is the tying in peace to being authentic and also staying authentic while you're going through those struggles. And I lead into The War and Treaty kind of a having the moments where we've had to put our foot down and say “this is what we need to do, and we want you to be involved. You know, as a record label of what we need to do.” You know, and I think that for artists who do that, you know, you're rolling the dice, you are. But in the end, authenticity like Tanya said, definitely wins and you get to sleep better at night. 

TANYA:

Yeah, I'm better when I'm myself. I'm better when I can go to bed being me – that's just the way it is.

ROBERT:

Yeah, and I think you know any of the music that I've listened to that seems like that's the best music 'cause, it's the authentic music is what people want at the end of the day, right? And in a minor shout out to Prince, one thing that I think gets overlooked with Prince is that he was like, possibly, the greatest guitar player ever. Like his guitar chops are so overlooked, and that's really how he started out in the late 70s, as a guitar player you know. Anyway, that's also, that's a different show in and of itself, too.

MICHEAL:

A little subjective, yes.

ROBERT:

So OK, I have a couple quick questions left. One I wanted to ask. Do you have any upcoming projects that listeners should be looking for?

MICHEAL & TANYA:

Yes, we actually do. We can't talk much about it, but we have a record coming out. Yeah, we got something in the can. 

ROBERT:

Nice, nice! The last question I had, I had a bunch more questions, but you know time will permit what time permits. This is something, you know, that I think drives all of us. Anybody who's an artist, or, you know, trying to do something right? So, I wanted to ask what is the most, like I don't know if I want to say personally rewarding, or just rewarding, in the fullest sense of the idea, but what's the most rewarding part of what you do?

MICHEAL:

I definitely will lead off with this, the most rewarding part about doing what we're able to do for me personally, is the mere fact that I'm able to do this with the love of my life. I can't actively, honestly think of anything else other than that. I'm able to sing next to the most beautiful woman in my world. I'm able to, you know, get on stage and talk about love and talk about unifying and realize that I'm not lying. I'm not, it's not a uhm, it's not a gimmick. It's not something I'm doing and try to get some CD sales or try to get cool points. I can actually do it and say it alongside the woman who knows me better than anyone and not have any kind of like, “did I do it today?” Or have to be looking over my shoulder and see her saying “mm-hmm, yeah, right.” There were so many duos that fail because of this. You know, I love my wife, and I'm not BS'ing about it. You know, I love being able to do this with Tanya. It's rewarding enough for me. And then, I think the thing that we do at night is, we talk about that one person in the audience. “You see that person crying about what we say?” Did you see that person there weeping because we told them to “don't give up, hold on.” You know so many things that I feel that so many artists take advantage of, that they don't, they don't understand the power they have from the stage, and Tanya and I, we do, and we want to invite people to our Hearts Town, that's what it's all about. Hearts Town, it's about that thing we said earlier in the interview, of creating space for people to be able to come and heal and breathe and take a moment to tap into their better self, their heart you know.

TANYA:

And I would have to totally 110% agree with Michael that the most rewarding part is being able to do life with him, not just on stage, but in our real life, like what you see is what you get, you know, and being able to do it and travel with our son so he could experience it. So, keeping our family together, you know. And showing people as Michael said, you know that Hearts Town is a healing place, but we've been that healing space for each other before we even got to a stage, you know. Through our homeless days where we know how to, be together, love each other, through the ups and downs. With $8.00 and with $8000 and $80,000 so the money isn't – we're not driven by that. We're driven by, literally, the love, the communication, and the honesty that we have with one another, and we are in love. And we work at being honest with each other. We check in with each other all the time. You know, just as husband and wife, and for me personally, one of the things that is very rewarding is that I get an opportunity to consistently grow. You know, being on stage with Michael, they call him a force of nature, but he literally is a force of nature. He is the soldier up on that stage, and if you don't come ready, you know, every night to be there with your equal, you know, – it's raising up and learning, and this freedom. Not just being on stage with him, but the freedom you get in your personal life to just be yourself and just let go and learn. I mean, he is an incredible teacher and I enjoy learning from him and raising up to his level of spiritualism, professionalism and love. Incredible father. An incredible husband. And you know, most women get the kudos for being, you know, great mom, but a lot of men don't get it for being great dads, and Michael is an incredible father; he takes the time that sometimes I have to look back, and like, oh I'm being that busy mom again but he stops wherever he is and he notices everything. So I'm just very grateful to be able to love somebody so.

MICHEAL:

That moves me, it really does. And I think I want to end with this, we absolutely love our audience – 

TANYA:

Yes!

MICHEAL:

 – we love our audience whether they know us or not. The opportunity to be able to stand in front of them for 45 minutes as an opener, or for 60 minutes, or for 90 minutes as the headliner, to be able to look that audience in the face and thank them for listening, but, thank them for giving us that closer to the dreams we had as children. When we saw Michael Jackson put that glove on, when we saw Johnny Cash become the man in black, or when we saw Dolly Parton stand up there with the big everything you know. Or Elvis with the blue suede shoes. That dream of saying, I want to do that. You know every audience we stand in front of, gets us that much closer to fulfilling that dream. Or when I stood on the helipad in Iraq, you know, and I took that detail because I had a vision when I was sweeping it, there were bulb lights aligning the runway, and I just had a vision that one day I would be able to use my microphone instead of that push broom and I would walk across the Ryman stage instead of…, and see the floodlights on Ryman stage instead of those bulbs aligning the runway, you know, carrying troops into Iraq, and sometimes carrying battle buddies' bodies out. I had a dream that I'd be able to perform, and be able to sing these songs, and I'd be able to write songs that would unite us…, and be able to say something as a black man to a white man who says I'm your brother too. You know, every audience gets us closer to that dream, and we have something to say. Tanya and I are worth it. We're worth listening to, and tonight, you know Rob, you can even tell me if I'm wrong or right. You know, and that's that.

ROBERT:

Well, uhm, for me personally, and I think for our listeners too, you've bestowed on us the privilege of being able to hear your story; It's amazing, and I am looking forward to being in that audience tonight, and I should say, you know, I feel truly honored to have you both in the studio.

MICHEAL & TANYA:

Thank you.

ROBERT:

– and I, you know, kind of want to keep going but I should. Wrap it up here and I'll tell our listeners that you can check out Hearts Town here on 91.7 WSUM Madison and I want to give a special thanks to The War and Treaty for coming in today. See you on the flip side.

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