Artist On The Rise: Treehouse!
Treehouse! out of Myrtle Beach, SC, is more than just your average reggae band. This 3 piece has adopted a style eminent of their surroundings, taking their reggae Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, vibes and blending them with the hefty jam scene that sits above them in North Carolina creating what lead singer Jeremy Anderson calls “reggae jam rock”. The uplifting reggae beats, infused with strong guitar solos and dubbed out jams gives this rising young band a sound that is truly unique. Just as their predecessors, Treehouse! uses the roots of reggae music to spread a true message of enlightenment as they attempt to speak deeply to those eager to listen and endure this journey of life fully. I sat down with front man Jeremy Anderson on their upcoming 3rd studio album, Lifted,which drops next month, March 10th, and their past. The band has roots going back to their childhood and is in it for the long run. Consisting of Matt Link on bass, Trey Moody on Drums and Jeremy Anderson on guitar and vocals, Treehouse! is starting to make noise in both reggae and jam scenes. Their growing popularity in the Southeastern parts of the United States has enabled them to start venturing out and spreading their message to a broader audience, all due to a strategic touring plan. With positive reggae vibes and songs that will have you feeling boundless, Treehouse! is still able to pose deeper problems and issues of the world to the listener, both internal and external. Treehouse! is on their own journey to enlightenment and through that journey is asking, and willing, to take anyone along, as long as the listener is willing to open their minds to consciousness, questioning what is truly important in life.
What is Treehouse!? If you guys had a mission statement, what would it be?
Treehouse! is reggae jam rock that represents the East Coast looking to reach out worldwide to the conscious masses to raise the frequency of the collective consciousness towards positive paradigm shift. Basically, we feel that our music is a bridge, our own path to enlightenment that we can use to help others on the same path.
What can Treehouse! and its message do for an individual?
When we started this and when I started feeling driven to put out a message of awareness and positivity, and enlightenment to the extent that I can, while also on my own path of discovering this stuff personally… writing this stuff is really just therapy for myself. It helps me to sing this stuff every night so I figure if this can help me how it has, it should be able to help others, and its only blown my mind how much it has proven to be true from others testaments to us. You know? When they come up meaningfully and tell us some stuff that almost brings a tear to our eye, that they’re going through, and that our album personally helped them get through it. I never expected it to have that much meaning so we are only honored and humbled that we can help someone more than we could have imagined.
How did you guys meet?
We’ve all known each other since we were really young. Matt, this bassist, and I were in Primary School, boy scouts, baseball, all that stuff back in the day. Even in High School we were in 2 different bands that played a few shows together and whatnot. Trey, the drummer, and I met in Middle School from the school band or whatnot. We had more of a hard rock band in High School and jammed quite a bit and just picked that back up after a few years with a new direction. Basically, I started playing solo gigs, doing covers and stuff and would invite a few friends to come check it out, and invite Matt and Trey to jam with me and it started becoming consistent. So we almost started as a cover band in Myrtle Beach and just worked from there and kept expanding.
Who are the bands biggest influences?
I’d say, Slightly Stoopid is a big influence of ours. Tribal Seed’s, Passafire, those are the bands we see at the forefront of our genre kind of leading the torch. We get a lot of influence from those bands but we have a ton of influences, from all genres really. That’s our big goal, to wave the reggae flag but infuse it with every single influence we have.
The Self-Titled first album was an upbeat, fun reggae album. Growth while still being a fun reggae album seemed to have more depth, becoming more thought provoking, more about a need for change. What can we expect from Lifted?
Yeah the message becomes a little more eminent in Growth. We grew with that album and that meaning. Our first album, the Self-titled, we don’t play as much anymore. It was definitely our innocent youth, innocence is the flow of it but we honored our direction. Lifted is definitely a continuance of the vibe from Growth. We have 12 songs and it’s kind of a mix. 3 of the songs are from the same batch as Growth that we brought back in. Just from our live shows, we’ve had a lot of anticipation and requests for those songs so we kept going with them, pulling them off the shelf to put them back out there. We also expanded with new songs and a new style. Trying out interesting new dynamics and feelings but yes, we definitely kept with the consciousness, elevation towards the people listening both through the lyrics and through the sonic aspects.
What is your favorite song lyrically or specific lyric?
I will say that we have a lot of songs and some people remind me of things that we say and it almost kind of shocks me that we have these songs because they write themselves when I can open my mind to put them down. Just off the top of my head, it would have to be our single off of Growth, “Young One”, which we co-wrote with our brother band Sun-dried Vibes. The whole meaning is unity and awareness of what is really important in life. The chorus goes “Young one keep your focus, keep your sense of control. You must recognize all the lies you and I are a part of it all.” It’s the simplest way for us to remind ourselves that there is more to the story of life than anyone is going to tell you, that you have to find for yourself, for yourself but with those of like minds.
Where did you guys record the album?
We recorded Lifted in the same studio as Growth, in Charleston, SC. It’s a pretty modest studio but our sound engineer Wolfgang Zimmerman really has it together with the sound that we’re looking for. We decided to go with him again because we wanted the familiarity, we wanted to be comfortable with everything we’ve done so far so that we can go in and actually expand upon that instead of having to readjust. We had it mastered by Jocko at More Sound Studios in Syracuse, NY, who also produced John Brown’s Body and works regularly with Easy Star Records.
Do you guys have any weird recording rituals or superstitions?
We do take “Lifted” seriously and that was our state while tracking most of it. It depends. Whenever we go to the studio it’s always with a direct mission under a strict time frame so we kind of just have to bang it out when we are there. We’re still waiting for the opportunity to sit in a studio with nothing to do, that’s when you create the most. A studio is its own instrument and will bring out the music. You can bang out a beat on a desk and make it into a full album, you know? As for now we’re more of a live band so we have a few live show rituals but nothing too crazy that we’ve seen some other bands do in our past. It’s pretty funny to jump in the van with a few of these bands and see what they do to keep their sanity on these 12 hour drives we’re used to.
For those of us outside of the Southeast of the country, can we expect to be seeing Treehouse! soon?
We are working on consolidating our touring structure in that we’re taking it bit by bit to where we can actually build infrastructure in each area we go instead of just a mad dash across the country and back. Our process will be Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic in the summer. Everyone up there can expect us to be coming their way, especially in promotion of the new album. Florida, Virgin Islands, Tennessee. Those are the places were going to be ramming this year. As for Midwest and West Coast you are going to have to wait until at least next spring. It’s always a hard decision because we constantly have people telling us to come out but if we can’t make it work were not going to risk a solid foundation. We’re looking at it like “If they want to see us, they got 20 years.” because that’s how long we plan to be around at least. This is our lives so we want to make sure its proper. Just know when to do see us, we’ll be even tighter.
Are you guys playing any festivals? Or looking to get more involved in the festival scene?
Absolutely, that’s where we shine, the festivals. That’s what were really looking for this year. We confirmed Camp Barefoot in West Virginia on August 20th.
Does Treehouse! have an ideal/dream festival?
Besides Bonnaroo, I mean who wouldn’t want to play Bonnaroo? I’d say All Good Music Festival would be our prime festival, that’s the vibe were going for. All Good or Blackwater. All Good is a prime jam festival and we consider ourselves reggae jam rock. Being from Myrtle Beach, SC, we get the beach vibes but also being so close to North Carolina, we get a good jam scene from there so we call ourselves “reggae jam rock” and ride that line. So as far as a jam festival it would definitely be All Good but Reggae fest would have to be Blackwater. All Good was my first festival, I went with Matt, the bassist, and it opened my eyes to a new atmosphere, social atmosphere.
If you could jam with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?
Bradley Nowell, I mean that would be a fun jam.
Be sure to check out Treehouse!’s new Album Lifted on March 10th! Take a listen to their first single released off the album “Look into the Stars” below
