The Rebuplican
by Donnie Moorehouse
March 23, 2006

"Treefort Comes Out to Play Saturday Night"

Local band Treefort makes a rare live appearance this weekend, showing up at The Basement in Northampton on Saturday night. The group has been together for more than a decade, but only occasionally gets out on a local stage.

"We just don't try very hard to book gigs," explains drummer Joe O'Rourke. "We're all busy with other lives but we enjoy Treefort so much that we keep it alive. We are like golfing buddies or camping buddies, we get together when we feel like it and we really enjoy it."

Treefort was originally formed by Pioneer Valley favorite Matt Hebert as a vehicle to showcase the songwriting of Paul Hansbury. When Hebert got too busy with his band The Ware River Club, he handed over the drums to O'Rourke.

"It was perhaps the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me," said O'Rourke, who took over the backbeat in 1998. "This is the perfect band for my style of drumming."

Like Hebert, O'Rourke sees the project as a chance to expose Hansbury's craft.

"The thing is, the band is really about Paul," he said. "Paul Hansbury is a true rock' n' roll poet. His voice, lyrical style, phrasing, and sense of rhythm are all his own. He has a unique sound that is completely natural and uncontrived. His lyrics, topics, and point of view are often surprising, shocking even."

O'Rourke is not the only one who has become a fan of Hansbury's style. Treefort has attracted some of the best players in the area. Along with O'Rourke, the band boasts Bob Hennessey (Ware River Club) on guitar, and Mark Turcotte (Steve Westfield's Slow Band) on bass.

"So many of the Valley's musicians know and love Paul's songs," O'Rourke said. "Some of them make the stage the night of the show. He randomly invites people up without warning to sit in."

Treefort released a CD in 1997 called "Girls Allowed." The group has a second "in the can" but doesn't have plans to release it just yet. For now, the band has no plans beyond Saturday's show.

"What we lack in ambition we make up in realism," jokes O'Rourke. "We have no expectations beyond the next gig. We're just a good rock' n' roll band like a lot of other good, distinct bands. That's good enough for right now. Now is all we've got, all we need."

The Living Rockumentary
by Brian Marchese
December 26, 2005

"Toot Toot (My Horn) - Buy This Record"

I know it's the holidays and time to party and take advantage of a rare chance to just act like stupid humans--and god knows, I love it too, but I just wanted to spread the word that there is a very special CD officially out now.

Rehab Massachusetts has just become available through the excellent Brave Tiger Records, home of such quality local geniuses as Treefort, Josh Crane, and of course, Fancy Trash.  Read the Brave Tiger blurb to get an understanding of what Rehab, MA is all about. But I'll just put in my two cents, since I was involved.

I've been putting drum parts to Thane Thomsen's songs for 10 years, and I know that he likes each Figments album to contain an over all loose theme. However, for this, he went above and beyond.  Like The Who's Quadrophenia, Lou Reed's Berlin or Husker Du's Zen Arcade, Rehab Massachusetts takes you along for the ride of a troubled person trying to weather his own personal perfect storm, let alone get along in a chaotic world.

I know the words "Rehab" or "12 Steps" often carry a lot of baggage that the casual music fan doesn't want to interfere with his/her listening experience.

But rest assured, like Lou Reed never murdered a lover or fathered abused children but knew very well what wrong turns could lead to such personal tragedy, Thane's words go inside the deepest depths of personal hell, while still keeping hold of his journalism credentials.

The melodies are such that you find yourself singing them randomly, forgetting that you're possibly imparting a phrase not usually said in public. But this is a testiment to the quality of the songwriting. The saddest subjects can still posess hooks galore.

The recording is pristine. The best recorded drum sound of my playing ever on tape. Thank you, Mark Miller. The two days of basic tracks were among the most fun and rewarding of my recording career. Having beers while recording songs about the 12 Steps? The irony was noted, but no guilt expressed (the inverse of XTC's recording as the Dukes of Stratosphere -- stone sober while recording psychedelic druggy songs).

The band was picked by Thane. And while the experience at times inevitably felt like Figments, or felt like Lo Fine (being surrounded by Thane, Kevin and Bruce) the added Stuntmen element (Scott and Terry) was new to me, but fit very natually.

Listen to the samples up on Brave Tiger, dig the music, don't feel like there's any stigma or statement being made -- it's just a quality rock and roll concept record, done 10x better than most concept records (i.e. there's no one named The Acid Queen nor are there passages sung in Italian).

Soundcheck: A Masslive Weblog
by Kristen Beam
April 7, 2005

"Valley cultivates labels"
There's a great cover story in today's Weekend section of the Republican about three of the bigger and more successful local indie record labels. George Lenker's piece covers Signature Sounds, SpiritHouse and Eremite Records. Lenker writes:

There are countless smaller labels of note in the valley, such as Henning Ohlenbusch's (of the band School for the Dead) Rub Wrongways and a new effort headed by Joshua Thayer (Fancy Trash), called Brave Tiger Records. Thayer's effort is a work in progress. His goal, for now, is mostly to get his and others' music out to a wider audience.

Northeast Performer
review by Jeff Breeze

Josh Crane - Hunting & Fishing on Dryland
Recorded at home by Josh Crane
Mixed and mastered by Dan Richardson

Sophomore slump is what strikes songwriters who spill a lifetime of songs into their first record and then don't know what more there is to say. After his debut Barebones, no one was sure which direction Northampton's Josh Crane would head, but most who heard were interested to see what would happen after he finally left his teens.

No one was expecting a 67 minute concept album about eschewing technology and getting back to the earth. Hunting and Fishing on Dryland rarely sounds hindered by the old Tascam 4-track that he used to record this album in his bedroom between last July and February. Crane uses space and reverb to create a sense of sound that's really just wide open skies. He's the lonesome cowboy dreaming of a ranch and a family singing because it's the end of the day.

Crane brings drummer Dave Provost and Fancy Trash bassist Joshua Thayer in for a few tracks on the album and they do their best to try and help pull Crane to his feet when he's “Out in a Ditch.” His brother Tim (who leads his own band the Wild Dogs) adds harmonica and brushes on the record, but otherwise all of the guitar, keyboard and vocalizing is all Josh Crane.

The results are striking, though the lullaby tones that fill some of the songs can wind up as nap soundtracks. Crane's voice and words are the centerpiece here and he uses the breadth of this record to define his voice. The more that you listen to him sing the more you realize that he has a sound that is more than the Tom Waits impression that he gets shackled with by casual listeners. Dryland is a sign that Crane can likely write a song about any object that fascinates him, and his concepts of how the sound is presented are far clearer throughout this album.

Dryland fulfills the promise of Barebones and exceeds expectations while making speculations about what will happen when he's finally old enough to drink a very interesting proposition.

Boston Globe
by Sean Glennon
April 30, 2004

"Fancy Trash plays acoustic twang-rock pure and simple"

It isn't easy to be Fancy Trash. It's not supposed to be. The twang-rock band based here has chosen to take on two of rock's most difficult challenges: performing as a trio and playing energetic, often edgy music on acoustic instruments.

Rock simply wasn't built for units of fewer than four pieces. The fourth part, typically rhythm guitar or keyboard, is a workhorse instrument, providing a hard connection between rhythm and melody, and freeing lead guitar to fill gaps and provide the ornamentation that grabs and holds an audience's attention. Bands that leave out that fourth piece must either perform as power trios (using noise to compensate for holes in their sound) or devote themselves to the tough work of making each instrument count during every second of every song.

Acoustic rock, meanwhile, comes with its own special challenges, most of them related to maintaining an intensity that isn't always necessary with electric instruments.

Most bands would wisely avoid this combination of hurdles. Fancy Trash embraces it. With its semicountrified, punk-influenced music that recalls Neil Young, Clem Snide, the Flaming Lips, and an assortment of '90s alternarock bands (from Nirvana to early Radiohead), the group doesn't simply pull off acoustic trio rock, it makes it seem natural. The band's live sets drip with energy. Its songs turn on delicate guitar picking and furious strumming by turns. And its members, guitarist-singer Dave Houghton, upright bassist Josh Thayer, and drummer Ben Laine, perform with a seemingly innate understanding of when to rush forward and when to pull back.

In the roughly 18 months since its formation, Fancy Trash, which plays Toad tomorrow, has become perhaps the most talked about act in a Western Mass. music scene known for producing such acts as Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Buffalo Tom, and the Pernice Brothers.

Houghton, who formed Fancy Trash after walking away from the Colorado-based alt-rock band the Reejers, doesn't necessarily think his new band's music is all that hard to pull off. "There are some people who write songs without any instrumentation at all," Houghton says. "Sinead O'Connor is someone who can pull that off, with that amazing voice. I can't do that. But I don't think it's that hard to write songs for an acoustic trio. You just can't try to do too much. If you keep it really simple it'll be all right."

Houghton and his bandmates haven't quite figured out how to make that approach work in the studio. Their self-titled debut CD, released by the band in August, brings Dobro and pedal steel (the latter provided by Scud Mountain Boys veteran Bruce Tull) into the mix. Live, however, they make it work by throwing themselves into the music, by letting Houghton's songs possess them and drive them through a performance.

And the fact is, though "Fancy Trash" is certainly a worthwhile record, the band's music is written to be performed onstage. "We have an old-school approach," Houghton explains. "If it sounds good live, that's a good start. That's all we need. We can figure out the studio stuff later."

Ray Mason, the pop singer-songwriter who is generally regarded as the dean of the Western Mass. rock scene, believes Fancy Trash doesn't really have anything to figure out. The way Mason sees it, Houghton and company got it right from the start by taking on the challenge of acoustic performance.

"That whole approach with upright bass is perfect," Mason says. "It's got a great earthy, woody sound. You can't get that sound with an electric bass. I try, but you just can't."

Playing as a three-piece, for all the work involved, also has helped Fancy Trash succeed artistically. When a trio uses space as part of a song rather than something to fill, all three musicians must pay closer attention to detail, and they must have a level of confidence in both their songwriting and performance skills to keep the listener engaged.

Houghton's glad audiences and other musicians have taken to Fancy Trash's sound but says he never set out to please anyone but himself and his bandmates. If Houghton learned anything from his decade in the Reejers, he says, it's that music works when you let it flow in its natural direction. Creating a sound is like writing a song. It doesn't need to be easy, it just needs to work.

"You have to just be receptive to whatever idea you have," Houghton says. "If it's a good idea to begin with, it's worth developing and finishing up."

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

VMag
February 2000
review by Mal Thursday

Treefort - "Girls Allowed"

Western Massachusetts has certainly made its contributions to the Y'Alternative/No Depression school of country rock. Bands like The Lonesome Brothers, Ware River Club, and Drunk Stuntmen have followed a trail blazed by the likes of Ray Mason Band and Scud Mountain Boys. Treefort's first album, Girls Allowed, positions them somewhere between the aforementioned bands and the twisted rockabilly of Angry Johnny.

Like the other local alt-country/roots-rock bands, Treefort can pick it; their mix of acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin, and banjo is authentically down home without being self-conscious, at times even pretty ("Darrin"). What sets them apart is their main songwriter, Paul Hansbury, and his unique vocal delivery. What he lacks in natural ability and technical prowess he makes up for with deadpan humor and no-bullshit honesty. Sure, he's no Pavarotti, but his occasional flat notes are part of a Western Mass musical tradition that has produced such crooners as J Mascis and Steve Westfield.

For newcomers, Hansbury's singing may be an acquired taste. For fans of Treefort's oft-inebriated live shows, the record offers definitive versions of the band's best known songs in an intimate, live in the living room ambience. Sing-along favorites Brockton, Parking Valet, and the absurd Idi Amin Dada are among the longtime set-list staples kindly included on Girls Allowed. "Jackie and John" details a working class wedding reception: "I got some napkins said 'Jackie and John' on 'em / Didn't get no matches, they couldn't afford 'em." My personal favorite on the record is "Wimbledon": "I'll never play Wimbledon, baby / I'll never hold that golden bowl / My name will never be engraved on the Stanley Cup / I'll never figure out the pick and roll..." It's lonesome genius.

Though it's clearly Hansbury's record, it's also a band record. The musical contributions of such heavies as Matt Hebert (Ware River Club), Marc Turcotte (Slow Band), and multi-instrumentalist Bob Hennessy combine to make Treefort monsters of Twang. At times, they achieve a laid back Basement Tapes-era Dylanesque flavor, while at others they recall the shit-kicking cow-punk of The Knitters.

Treefort has a lot of really funny songs, but that doesn't make them a novelty act. They also have a lot of really great songs. Though often perceived as sort of a scruffy kid brother to the more established bands with whom they share members, with this album Treefort proves themselves to be legitimate players in the Valley's Alt-Country Army.