Before making their new album, the War and Treaty decided it was time to play ball with Nashville. Two years after the husband-and-wife roots duo signed to a major label, they wanted to show the mainstream country industry that they understood the conventions most country artists are expected to adhere to if they want a chance at success.
But for Michael and Tanya Trotter, leaning into country music custom wasn’t mere capitulation. Rather, the duo decided that if they embraced certain elements of the way things are done in Nashville, they might find the leeway and agency to buck other Music Row norms entirely. Enter Plus One, the group’s forthcoming album (due on Valentine’s Day 2025), which represents their distinct take on commercial country music.
Like most mainstream country albums, Plus One features songs co-written by Music Row’s biggest hitmakers (including Miranda Lambert), and it’s laced with banjo and fiddle on many tunes. Unlike most country albums, Plus One is largely self-produced by Michael Trotter, and the vast majority of its songs are written by either Michael or Michael and Tanya without any co-writers. The album folds all sorts of non-country genres into its sound: At one point, Michael raps a verse that includes the line “John Legend’s in our corner/This cannot be boring.”
“We wanted to make sure that Nashville knew that we weren’t hands-off: We’re here now, and we know there’s a Nashville way, but we also know that Nashville’s got something to offer, and we’ve got something to offer Nashville,” Michael Trotter tells Rolling Stone. “So we spent the time. We did some line dancing down at the Nashville Palace, we’ve eaten at [Lambert’s Broadway honky-tonk] Casa Rosa’s, we’ve frequented the Opry, we’ve frequented the Ryman, and gone to the museums. We’re in the culture of Nashville, and writing with these writers, who help create the soundtrack to the culture of Nashville, was a dream come true to us. But we also realized that we had a lot to say, and we had a lot to say that only we could say.”
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To give a sense of what he means, Michael Trotter describes “Carried Away,” the sultry ballad he wrote with Tanya, as an unusually honest depiction of grown-up passion: “In a moment where we’re overstressed, where marriages are barely hanging on by a thread, this word that we’ve lost contact with is ‘devotion,’” he says. “This song is about letting go and getting carried away with the one you love. I was like, ‘This is country music, and these three chords and the truth might be too much truth.”
Elsewhere, on songs like the catchy “Love Is On Fire” (co-written by the guy who co-wrote Luke Combs’ monster hit “Beer Never Broke My Heart”) and “Save Me” (co-written by Kendall Marvell), the War and Treaty take their first genuine stab at writing songs that could, or at least should, find a home at country radio. “Country radio has expressed to us that it wants us,” says Michael. “There are certain songs we created and dedicated just for country radio, just for Nashville.”
Tanya puts it plainly: “If you’re going to be in larger conversations, you have to try your hand at having something that a listener that listens to a Morgan Wallen or a Luke Combs or a Chris Stapleton can hear your music and say, ‘I hear them coming right behind a Chris Stapleton on radio,’” she says. “That’s not your end goal, but I think it is a goal.”
Those songs represent only a small slice of what the War and Treaty present on Plus One, an expansive 18-song album that touches on everything from bluegrass to blues.
But the duo makes clear that they enjoyed leaning into the Nashville-ness of their latest collection. Their co-writing experiences rubbed off in their own solitary songwriting, and you’ll hear many more Music Row lyrical tropes on Plus One (name-dropping liquor brands, songs about being out with the boys) than any previous War and Treaty record.
“There are certain songs,” says Michael Trotter, “that when you hear them you’re going to automatically think, ‘Listen, that’s Nashville.’”
