On September 25, the husband-and-wife team of Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Blount-Trotter – known to music aficionados as The War And Treaty – will release Hearts Town, the eagerly-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s critically lauded Healing Tide.
The buoyant, uplifting single, Five More Minutes, is available today. Michael Trotter explains, “That song’s saying, ‘if I have five more minutes to love you, it’s going to be the best damn five minutes of my life.”
The video for Five More Minutes offers a nuanced take on the song’s heartrending but ultimately redemptive origin story. Michael reflects, “After years of falling in and out of financial and mental depression, I had finally had enough. I was ready to take my own life. But in my darkest moment, where I was ready right then and there to end it all, my wife Tanya asked one last thing of me: ‘Just give me five more minutes. Stay with me. Just five more minutes to love you.’ And something in her eyes, something in her hands convinced me to give her that five more minutes.”
Hearts Town arrives as the follow-up to 2018’s, Healing Tide, a widely acclaimed effort that recently saw The War And Treaty named Emerging Act of the Year by Americana Music Association. Mainly recorded at Blackbird Studio and featuring such esteemed musicians as Jason Isbell, Jerry Douglas, and Punch Brothers guitarist Chris Eldridge, Hearts Town was produced by Michael and co-produced by Tanya and the duo’s longtime music director Max Brown. And while the album unfailingly harnesses the thrilling vitality of their live set, each song spotlights The War And Treaty’s heart-on-sleeve storytelling and poetic simplicity with greater impact than ever before.
When it came time to choose a title for the album, they quickly landed on Hearts Town-the Nashville duo’s adoring nickname for their ardently devoted fanbase. “Hearts Town is a neighbourhood strictly made up of people who all share the same kind of heart: hearts that love, hearts that heal, hearts that don’t see division,” says Michael. “There’s all different types of people within that neighbourhood, but they’re still somehow all working together-which is exactly the kind of town we want to live in.”
True to the unbridled spirit of The War And Treaty, Hearts Town opens on Yearning, a powerful introduction to the album’s narrative of loving without limit. In its tender reflection on life’s most urgent questions, Hearts Town turns to the subject of death on the darkly charged but undeniably hopeful Beautiful. Graced with Tanya’s operatic vocal work and a smoldering guitar solo from Jason Isbell, Beautiful looks back on the final days of Tanya’s mother, Judith May Blount, and finding peace in her passing.
And though a lighthearted tone is evident on tracks like Jubilee, Hearts Town achieves a pensive complexity on its title track, partly sparked from Michael’s experience as a wounded warrior who served in the Iraqi War.
On Take Me In, the final track to Hearts Town, The War And Treaty make an impassioned plea for unity in times of division. “Right now a lot of people are feeling so deeply engulfed in pain and surrounded by negativity, and sometimes you just need to hear that you’re good,”says Tanya. “That’s the whole idea behind Hearts Town: no one’s trying to change what you think or how you talk or anything else about you. You’re just fine the way you are.”
Since forming in 2014, The War And Treaty have amassed a following as eclectic as their sound itself, a bluesy but joyful fusion of Southern soul, gospel, country, and rock-and-roll. Known for a live show nearly revival-like in intensity, the duo endlessly creates an exhilarating exchange of energy with their audience, a dynamic they’ve brought to the stage in opening for the legendary Al Green and touring with the likes of Brandi Carlile and Jason Isbell.
With their debut EP, Down to the River, arriving in 2017, they released Healing Tide in August 2018 and earned immediate critical praise. The following year, The War And Treaty bolstered their reputation as a phenomenal live act by appearing at leading festivals, in addition to inking their deal with Rounder. And at the start of 2020, the duo won over new fans by taking the stage at the 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards, performing alongside icons like Cyndi Lauper, John Legend, Gary Clark Jr., and Common.
As their fanbase continues to expand exponentially, The War And Treaty feel more and more inspired by the Hearts Town community and its boundless potential for mutual uplift. “This is a place where everything that is broken can be fixed,” says Michael. “Hearts Town is a place where you can come broken and open, regardless of your past, and find love just like we have.”
