Grammy-nominated soul-country duo The War and Treaty returning to Detroit this weekend

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25-03-2025

The War and Treaty are coming home.
The widely acclaimed, Grammy-nominated soul-country duo – the first Black pair to be nominated for the Country Music Association's Duo of the Year award – have won over fans of all races and ages with their bluesy, gospel-tinged take on Americana.
Married couple Michael and Tanya Trotter view Michigan as their launching point and are bursting with excitement for their return. They'll play a 7 p.m. concert on Saturday, March 29, at Detroit's St. Andrew's Hall.
'Listen, Detroit is the spot, and we're just going to unleash for real,' Michael said. 'People say that all the time, but I'm serious. We have a very special show planned for Detroit because Detroit is special. Our very first sold-out show was in a little club in Ferndale called Otus Supply. We did live recordings there. The very first radio DJ to really invest in us is right there in Detroit at WDET Her name is Ann Delisi. Through her, we were discovered by Mr. Don Was, who's a Detroit guy, and the rest is history. Our career doesn't jump off without Michigan investing in us.'
Both Michael and Tanya entered country music from R&B backgrounds, and their approach has won over many fans who've never cared for the genre.
'I think it's because we are reminiscent of (Black) history,' said Michael. 'I think it's because nothing in country music reflects the history of our people, in terms we know. But if I can give you a different perspective, Ray Charles had one of the best country albums of all time (1962's 'Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music'). How can you feel connected when all the songs talk about blonde hair, blue eyes, you know? We're singing about a wider experience.'
Tanya, originally known as Tanya Blount, has been familiar to Black audiences for decades, due to her onscreen role in 'Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit' and her solo R&B album, 'Natural Thing,' released the following year. She said the leap from R&B to country isn't quite as big as one might think.
'I think it's the intention,' she said. 'Whenever you approach music of any kind, just be intentional. I grew up loving all kinds of music. If you listen to my first album, I had house music on that record, pop songs, R&B with saxophones, and things like that. I was into house music; I was into Whitney Houston at the time. With The War and Treaty, it was intentionally taking all the things that we love and infusing them. Michael went to work on infusing these sounds and not making it sound weird – because, sometimes, you can put a dish together when you're cooking, and you're like, 'This is disgusting.' And then, sometimes, you can put Caribbean flavors and add paprika and pineapple and all these different flavors, and it's actually good.
'I think that's what happened with the R&B and the country-gospel sound that we have now: Intentionally infusing these sounds together and making them work so that a person that might love gospel music doesn't necessarily have to go and listen to a gospel album. Or, a person that listens to country music may not have to go and listen to a full country album. They can listen to The War and Treaty and say, 'I feel the country tickles in here.' I think it's about being intentional.'
Michael credited Tanya with crafting just the right sound for the duo.
'To Tanya's credit, I want to tell you this,' he said. 'The one thing she was emphatic about was us being who we are, vocally. She's like, 'The vocals need to be the forefront. We need to saaaannnngg.' Someone put up a post that said Tanya is indeed the greatest voice of this generation.'
The pair met in Laurel, Maryland, at a festival benefiting a less fortunate community. Tanya heard Michael, then a homeless war veteran trying to break through in the music industry, and soon played his music on her midday radio show. He eventually became her pianist, and sparks flew.
'We fell in love – hard,' Michael said. 'We were married within six months of meeting one another, and there was no looking back. It was like, 'This is the rest of my life, right here. I'm good.''
Ironically, Michael did not start out as a pianist and didn't even know how to play piano until his adult years. He taught himself to play, during a tour of Iraq, on a piano formerly owned by Saddam Hussein.
'I am a 'once a soldier, always a soldier' kind of guy,' he explained. 'I served in the United States Army, and my experiences would shape me for this moment. The military is all about partnering up. We have a buddy system; it's all about your 'plus-one.' And I literally learned the importance of having a plus-one through my service in the military – serving my battle buddy, self-service, serving my country. Some of those experiences … would prepare me to partner up with my beautiful wife for the rest of my life. I needed a plus-one once the military was gone, and here it is.
'One of my captains identified me as a weak link and realized that I was going to get people killed. He read in my files that I love music. We had taken over one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. It had a piano in it, and he took me down there and said, 'Hey, man, when you are boggled with fear, find your way home right here.''
Michael, who was always skilled at hearing harmonies, would plunk away at the piano with one finger, one note at a time, teaching himself songs like Bill Withers' 'Lean on Me' and the theme song from '90s cartoon series 'Rugrats.'
'Anything that would get me closer to my childhood,' he said, 'and a feeling that was going to get me over the hump. I wasn't as confident in my piano playing until 2010, when I met my wife; she loved my playing and insisted that I would always be her plus-one on the piano.'
Tanya called Michael 'her inspiration.'
'I really do,' she said. 'I've been doing this since I was eight years old. There are people that you meet in every sector of your life that you draw inspiration from, and there are people that solidify your inspiration – and he has solidified it. For the last 14, 15 years, (he's) the person that I look at as an example, whether it's vocality, writing, producing, how you see music, how you hear music.
'Michael can literally hear music in the sound of the air conditioner going, or the sound of a bus or the birds, or the wind; there's sound in everything. And I have to say that I have never encountered anyone who approaches music that way. Most people have to get into a room and feel a vibe and do all these different things, but when it comes to Michael, it's every piece of your surroundings, and now that I'm with him, I'm always feeling it, I'm always seeing it. It comes from a supernatural place.'
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Though neither of the Trotters are from Michigan, Michael credited the city of Albion, Michigan for the birth of The War and Treaty.
'Back in the day, they used to call Albion 'Little Detroit,' he said. 'Albion has a rich history of hardworking, middle-class Americans who want to keep their town beautiful and want to thrive. We fit in there, we learned how to be family there, and we learned the true importance of community that doesn't really look like you, but feels like you. Jackson, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Marshall, Detroit – Michigan is our spot, so we always want to show out there.'
Saturday's performance at St. Andrew's will be recorded for a live album, he said.
'We have a little community we started online called Hearts Town,' he said, 'and we're encouraging everybody in Hearts Town to bring their cameras, their recorders, their camera stands, and we'll have a little area just so people can record the show.'
The duo said the evening will be all about positivity and good vibes.
'What we really want to do is restore people's faith back in people,' said Michael. 'It's really just letting people know that there are still good people out there. There are still people that believe in love and that believe in connection, and that's what The War and Treaty has always been about, reiterating that message to let them know they're not alone.'
General admission, standing-room-only tickets for The War and Treaty's Saturday, March 29 performance are available at concerts.livenation.com for $39.75. For more information on the Trotters, visit thewarandtreaty.com. St. Andrew's is located at 431 E. Congress, Detroit.
Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: The War and Treaty, Grammy-nominated duo, returns to Detroit