As a part of Treefort 10’s Deep Dive Series, we’re diving into Treefort 10 artists that our team recommends if you like (RIYL) Treefort Alums Mac DeMarco (2017), Foxygen (2013, 2015) + Molly Burch (2021).
Did you catch a set from Foxygen back in the day? Or Molly Burch‘s dreamy Main Stage set last year? You definitely have some FOMO if you didn’t see Mac DeMarco stage dive and climb the wooden electrical pole at Main Stage at Treefort 2017.
If you love these artists, you’ll love similar artists performing this year at Treefort 10.
Check them out below!
HUSBANDS
( oklahoma city , oklahoma )
Thursday, March 24th 10:00p – 10:50p @ The Olympic
Husbands plays landlocked beach pop that side-quests Krautrock, garage rock, and tropicalia. OKC-based songwriters Danny Davis and Wil Norton got their start directing a Godzilla musical at their college and then began sharing snippets of lofi grunge pop ideas that came together in their first album, “Golden Year.” This album caught local label Clerestory AV’s attention, who assisted Husbands release their second album (first vinyl LP), “After the Gold Rush Party,” on an imprint label, Cowboy 2.0 Records.
Husbands spent the most claustrophobic months of 2020 writing their third album, “Full-On Monet” (out January 18, 2022). Featuring TOTAL HIT songs like “Must Be a Cop”, “Liked to Party”, and “Wishbone”, Musicbed calls it “a densely layered masterpiece. Lush pop melodies. Surf-rock harmonies. Distorted synth hooks and psychedelic flourishes. All of it coming together to create music that’s free-spirited, brainy, and fun. Think road trips, crashing college parties, and big summer vibes.”
Past performances included an OKC release show that drew 550 attendees and a stint opening for Smash Mouth (what Wil and Danny both likely consider their finest moment as a band).
PAUL CHERRY
( los angeles, california )
Saturday, March 26th 10:20p – 11:20p @ Sonic Temple Red
Through pining comes purpose. Paul Cherewick, monikered Paul Cherry, makes a departure from pining for an unrequited love on his debut LP Flavour toward the hunger for creative fulfillment on Back on the Music. “Bouncing off the bottom: this pattern is the problem…” is the melancholic opening line of the new album, a meandering meditation on the life of an artist: chasing inspiration, finding community, and the struggle to maintain both. Throughout the buoyant, alright-on-the-outside tracks that make up his second album, Cherry staggers and stumbles back into love with his life and craft.
Music becomes personified inside Tootsie Roll, becoming an ugly, grinning trench coated villain plucked right out of a vintage Max Fleischer cartoon, cooing to the listener, “You know you want me. Take me, take me,” harmonizing over his own voice. Almost as if through excess, inhibition and precise self-analysis, Paul Cherry may find quiet. In the luxuriant arrangement of the title track, Back on the Music he sings, “You love to play, but it don’t pay. Feels like you’re caught in check mate.” Not everything fits neatly within the lines of these songs, as in the lonely, wobbling flute melody that carries us out of It Happens All the Time. Cherry shows us that often the path back to one’s self—disguised in this album as Music—is a wavering one.
SEAN NICHOLAS SAVAGE
( los angeles , california )
Sunday, March 27th 6:20p – 7:10p @ Linen Building
Life Is Crazy, the accurately titled new record from Sean Nicholas Savage, is unlike anything we’ve heard from the cult balladeer. No drums or bass on the album, the accompaniment consists strictly of pure piano and lush strings, leaving Savage’s songwriting bare to the listener like never before.
“for a fresh direction here, i’ve attempted to reduce the focus to just songwriting and singing. particularly contemplative ballads, which through the years remain closest to my heart. i’ve aimed for a vocal spirit and energy that closely resembles my live performance, which is an integral part of my identity as an artist not always represented in my recorded work.”
Life Is Crazy is a bold and attuned record. Conceived in his transition to theatre, it marks the dawn of a new era for SNS, and a long-awaiting return to the full-length LP format. This will be Savage’s first album release since completing a revered master-cassette trilogy – Magnificent Fist (2016), Yummycoma (2017), and Screamo (2018).
Lyrically, Savage grapples with his signature themes of perception, identity, and the unknown, among others. While still abstract, the metaphors and subject matter are effortless and more inviting than ever before. New to Life Is Crazy is a narrative tone removed from time.
DINNER TIME
( atlanta , georgia )
Friday, March 25th 5:00p – 5:40p @ Mad Swede Brew Hall
Sunday, March 27th 7:30p – 8:10p @ Sonic Temple Red
Founded by lifelong friends, Alejandro, Andrew, London, Ian, and Chad, the indie pop/psychedelic band Dinner Time offers a haven from the monotony in life with appetizing moods of the surf, sand, and sun, all in a coincident echo and chorus. Coming hot off the heels of 3 tracks self-recorded in lockdown, and the success of their breakout single ‘Walden Park’, the band’s sophomore album ‘Halfway Down’ promises a new level of production quality and maturity from the Atlanta-based 5-piece.
MEN I TRUST
( quebec , canada )
Sunday, March 27th 6:00p – 7:00p @ Main Stage
The story of Men I Trust’s rise to indie fame is a bit more abnormal than most. The group initially started without their lead singer. In 2014 keyboardist Dragos Chiriac and bassist-guitarist Jessy Caron, both Quebec music graduates and high school friends reunited after college and came together to form a duo named Men I Trust. Their music was heavily inspired by the electronic movement of the 2000s. If you take for example a song from their self titled 2014 debut like Endless Strive and compare it to their most recent output you immediately hear the difference in their approach to production. The programmed robotic electronic drums alongside these boisterous synthesizers give you a closer look into how the duo looked at song creation. The basics where all there, the dance-inducing, funkiness and soothe demeanor coupled with great vocal performances by frequent guest collaborators offered a range of different song types. At that was really missing would soon be discovered.
Sometime in between June of that year and March of the next Emma was asked to join the band as their official and full-time singer. In early March of 2016, they released their first single as Humming Man.
Read the full bio on menitrust.com
JULIANNA ZACHARIOU
( san diego, california )
Thursday, March 24th 7:30p – 8:20p @ Sanctuary
When Julianna Zachariou was young, she was often pegged as “old for her age.” Her earliest songs explored themes of addiction, listlessness, grieving, aging and loss of purpose. As a deep intuit and quiet observer, the stories she heard weekly from her father’s pulpit and her mother’s justice work gave her a heavy sense of the human experience without having lived it. Music, another legacy in her family, is where she began to house these stories and in her own private ministry, attempted with song to heal the pain of others.
Julianna, now 26, has found her own story. Her current project, built with help from mixing engineer Callum Barter (Lotta Sea Lice) is a true labor of love. Not only is it a leaping ode to self acceptance but it is also an exceptional display of Julianna’s unrelenting creative independence as each song you hear was written, played and produced by her and her alone. Becky, the project’s flagship single and Julianna’s first release after coming out as queer is “an homage to a steadfast type of love and all the quiet riches that come along with it” (KPBS, San Diego). Its companion, The Bad Guy is an open invitation to feeling your feelings and allowing the holy work of consequence to ensue without self-damnation. The full length project is set for release in spring of 2022.
Julianna Zachariou is a writer, producer and multi-instrumentalist and Is a contributor to the band Echobaby. She lives in San Diego, CA with her dog and her partner Becka.
GEESE
( brooklyn , new york )
Sunday, March 27th 10:50p – 11:50p @ Sonic Temple Blue
Geese is a band from Brooklyn.
SUN JUNE
( austin , texas )
Friday, March 25th 11:20p – 12:10a @ Linen Building
The five members of Sun June spent their early years spread out across the United States, from the boonies of the Hudson Valley to the sprawling outskirts of LA. Having spent their college years within the gloomy, cold winters of the North East, Laura Colwell and Stephen Salisbury found themselves in the vibrant melting-pot of inspiration that is Austin, Texas. Meeting each other while working on Terrence Malick’s ‘Song to Song’, the pair were immediately taken by the city’s bustling small clubs and honky-tonk scene, and the fact that there was always an instrument within reach, always someone to play alongside.
Coming alive in this newly discovered landscape, Colwell and Salisbury formed Sun June alongside Michael Bain on lead guitar, Sarah Schultz on drums, and Justin Harris on bass and recorded their debut album Years live to tape, releasing it via Keeled Scales in 2018. The band coined the term ‘regret pop’ to describe the music they made. Though somewhat tongue in cheek, it made perfect sense ~ the gentle sway of their country leaning pop songs seeped in melancholy, as if each subtle turn of phrase was always grasping for something just out of reach.
ALL THINGS BLUE
( los angeles , california )
Wednesday, March 23rd 9:50p – 10:40p @ Linen Building
LA-based goofs, India Coombs and Jon Joseph, came together to create Dream Punk soundscapes in their most tender and naughty forms. All Things Blue celebrates life’s experiences and wraps them in the soft tones of 60s analog. Coombs’ composition is impactful; power presented in sound, and the natural depth in her lyrics and melody will have you dancing and thinking of love/life/minds lost (or found). Joseph is the perfect wing-man to Coombs; decorating each story with musical quirks, foxy boxy beats and sun-worn shine to extend their mystical ambience. Dirty riffs, choruses that hook on your brain for days, and stories of lives lived to the fullest remind us all of good times, angst, and of being a little turned on.
JAMES SUPERCAVE
( los angeles , california )
Friday, March 25th 7:20p – 8:10p @ Knitting Factory
Saturday, March 26th 7:50p – 8:40p @ Neurolux
Astronauts of inner space.
DENT MAY
( los angeles , california )
Thursday, March 24th 9:30p – 10:20p @ Linen Building
Known for shepherding a kind of classic American songwriting into the age of bedroom recording, Mississippi born musician Dent May is soaking it in and taking his time on his new LP Late Checkout. After contributing heavily to his local Oxford music and art community, May began putting songs online and performing alone under his birth name in 2007. After befriending Animal Collective while they were recording Merriweather Post Pavilion in Oxford, the band offered to release May’s debut The Good Feeling Music Of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele (2009) through their record label Paw Tracks. May’s distinctive croon and sentimental writing won over fans around the globe, and his music continued to evolve on Do Things (2012) and Warm Blanket (2013). Pining for a new scene and life in a big city, May moved to Los Angeles in 2015 and began work on his sprawling epic Across the Multiverse (2017).
NIGHT HERON
( portland, oregon )
Sunday, March 27th 5:30p – 6:20p @ Sonic Temple Blue
Featuring members of Reptaliens, Y La Bamba, Radiation City, and Aan, Night Heron makes smooth groovers that can tame even the most savage of beasts.
DANIEL KERR
( boise, idaho )
Friday, March 25th 12:40a – 1:40a @ The Olympic
A mixture of music that is all that happens to come out of Daniel Kerr. He truly hopes people enjoy the sounds but he’ll end up doing it even if they don’t. Also, Daniel will be giving away a bunch of temporary tattoos at his show.
M A N E
( portland, oregon )
Thursday, March 24th 12:40a – 1:40a @ The Funky Taco
M A N E is a 5-piece Art-Pop R&B project featuring current + former members of Pure Bathing Culture & Y La Bamba. Their record “Leo // Lib // Bull” – released July 23rd, 2021 on Literal Gold Records – was mixed by Jake Viator of Stones Throw Records (Mild High Club, Mount Kimbie, MNDSGN). They look forward to a string of dates and new releases in 2022.
ANGEL ABAYA
( boise, idaho / los angeles, california )
Thursday, March 24th 5:00p – 5:50p @ El Korah Shrine
Angel Abaya is a 25-year-old musician from Boise, Idaho. After being a part of many local groups, Angel started her solo project in 2019, and has released a single, “Gelli”, as well as a quirky, fun EP and short music film Quaranmood which was released via Earth Libraries. She is currently working on her debut album, The Bubble, a record that trades Angel’s former synth pop sound for a grungy, groovy (but still pop) vibe. She is well-known in Boise’s arts and music community for her arts advocacy and involvement as a music artist with organizations such as Treefort Music Fest and LED.
JOSHUA LEWIS
( boise, idaho )
Friday, March 25th 4:40p – 5:30p @ Neurolux
Born from Joshua Lewis‘ adoration of 60s pop and experimental recording techniques, paired with his keen ear for production, the beautiful and engrossing Too Soft sounds as if John Lennon’s acclaimed Double Fantasy were produced by the famous experimental producer Sonic Boom. It puts you in the passenger seat and takes you on a journey through love, loss, and heartache, and yet is propelled by unabashed optimism and the desire to learn from one’s mistakes in an effort to find true happiness and meaning in this modern age.
