Music

War and Treaty plays SoMa on Down to the River tour

Husband and wife Tanya Blount and Michael Trotter Jr. of The War and Treaty perform tonight at South on Main in Little Rock.
Husband and wife Tanya Blount and Michael Trotter Jr. of The War and Treaty perform tonight at South on Main in Little Rock.

Michael Trotter Jr. learned how to play piano while serving in the Army.

In one of Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palaces. On a black, upright piano once owned by the dictator.

The War and Treaty

8 p.m. today, South on Main, 1304 Main St., Little Rock

Admission: $10

(501) 244-9660

southonmain.com

"That was a very spiritual experience for me," says Trotter of playing on a piano left behind after troops infiltrated and took over one of the Iraqi leader's homes in 2004. "It was something I would do to take my mind off where I was at. I'd give myself concerts, sounding horrible, but I felt like I was at Carnegie Hall. To be able to play on Saddam's piano and realize that it offered me some kind of tranquility inside of the war was a blessing."

Trotter was speaking earlier this month while on the road in a Ford Transit van near Cleveland with his wife, vocalist Tanya Blount, and their 6-year-old son. The couple and their band, The War and Treaty, will play tonight at South on Main in Little Rock.

In the early 2000s, Trotter was a high school dropout from Maryland with few prospects. He was searching for his path in life when the chaplain of the Senate, Rear Adm. Barry Black, with whom he went to church, suggested the military.

"I had made a series of mistakes and I was looking for a way to rectify those mistakes, and also live up to my responsibilities as a man," Trotter says. "I went full time into the Army. It turned my life around, and it offered all kinds of experiences, good and bad."

During his time in the service, Trotter wrote songs and performed them at memorial services for his "battle buddies," including his captain, who were killed.

"I became a songwriter for my infantry unit," he says. "I did that from 2005-2007. I would write songs for the fallen."

Making music was a way for Trotter to cope, if just for a while, with the hell of war.

Trotter, 36, also won the Military Idol talent competition, the Army's version of American Idol.

After leaving the Army in 2007, he returned to Maryland and worked on a singing career.

Blount, a Washington singer influenced by Aretha Franklin, Dolly Parton and Mahalia Jackson, met Trotter at a back-to-school concert and the two soon began writing songs together.

"I fell in love with her voice," Trotter says. He also fell in love with her -- "She was so smart and beautiful and wise."

They married in 2011 and eventually moved to Albion, Mich.

Blount stepped away from the band after losing her mother in 2015, but Trotter kept performing.

He hit a creative streak and came up with the songs for last year's soulful, rootsy Down to the River, but needed his wife to make his vision happen: "I knew what was missing. It was Tanya's love. I prodded and picked at her, but she didn't want to hear it."

Then he hit on the title cut, with its call for spiritual renewal and unity. Blount was in.

"She liked it and she wanted to sing again," he says.

They started gathering steam with local performances and recorded the album, which has a raw, joyous edge and features a spirited blend of folk-tinged gospel, soul and blues punctuated by Blount and Trotter's impassioned vocals.

"We wanted it to not be perfect," Trotter says. "We wanted the mistakes to be in there. We wanted to give up the facade that we're perfect as a human race, and we wanted to use our record as an example of what can happen and how many hearts can be touched and changed when you operate out of honest and pure love."

Work on a follow-up has started and there could be a summer release. In the meantime, the couple and their band are on the road, sharing their music and spreading a message of love and perseverance.

Blount says, "Our story is one of hope. It's the story of a blended family, but we came together as husband and wife. We've made it through the ups and downs of post-traumatic stress disorder, and we're showing people it can be done. There's a life beyond what you're going through, there is life past that and you can be happy and you can have love."

Weekend on 04/19/2018

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