Getting to know
tree river
Get to know the newest additions to the BSM roster, Brooklyn’s Tree River. Brooklyn four-piece Tree River have been a band for over a decade, but their name is criminally only just reaching our shores. Unsurprising really when they admit to writing songs for themselves and never trying to promote themselves. With a knack for big, bright, rollicking hooks, if it’s gargantuan pop-rock songs you’re after, then look no further.
ever heard over my songs and increasingly we started writing together. Then in 2012, I moved back to DC with another girl (who also dumped me a year later) and reunited with Phil who still lived there. We turned Tree River into a real band with Phil as the other main member and made a record called Inward which was mainly based on those songs. We moved to New York a couple years after that and the rest is history.
Tree River has been a band since 2010 - tell us how you first started? Trevor Friedman (vocals/guitar): Phil (Cohen, vocals/guitar) and I met on Facebook in Summer 2006 before starting at the same university in Washington, DC. We bonded over music and started sending each other every single shitty little song we’d ever made. But I moved to LA two years later to chase a girl (who dumped me a year after that) so our musical collaboration kind of went on hiatus for a bit. Around 2010, I started making psychedelic, escapist folk songs under the name Tree River, which was a play on the name Trevor. Phil started writing the coolest leads I’d
How would you describe your music to someone that has never listened to you before? Phil: Generally speaking, we’re shooting for colorful, loud, and super polished songs that try to evoke and synthesize elements from all our favorite rock music of the past 30 years, whether that’s a really technical, satisfying guitar lead or a hooky chorus melody that sounds weirdly familiar in some deep crevice of the listener’s subconscious. There’s a lot of dynamic range and variety in our sound, so we’ll go from heavy to mathy to tender to enormous. We love an over-the-top, massive, epic outro. But we 12
