Powerful Vulnerability
As you enter 20 Front Street, a wave of history and humanity welcomes you. Formerly an antique shop, it has since been transformed into an intimate setting for local talent to really meet with an audience. Warm lighting, a carefully crafted space where sound freely travels, the carved wooden gate from India that gapes wide like the mouths of the many vocalists who have performed here in the just three years it has been operating. This venue truly transports you.
Enter Trey Simon. Trey’s presence is intelligent. Dressed sharply and speaking kindly, your eyes are fixated on the stage. He greets you and eventually your eye meanders to the troupe behind him, they grip their instruments and wait patiently.
It all started with his grandfather’s guitar. Trey’s grandpa was a blues musician and traveled and played a multitude of shows throughout his lifetime. At age 12, Trey decided to start lessons and by his third lesson had already formed a band with friends. Blues musicians inspired him like Lightning Hopkins, B.B. King, Albert King, and Stevie Ray Vaughn, and more singer-songwriter influences like Ray LaMontagne and Amos Lee, but John Legend’s Get Lifted album was the one that Trey claims truly gave him his voice. At his core, Trey is a songwriter, but with tastes of rhythm and blues, as he quips, “Chicken’s no good without marinated seasoning.”
Fashion is a huge part of Trey’s presence. To him, his clothing is an expression of freedom. As a biracial person, growing up, he says he didn’t fit in. He wasn’t quite black, wasn’t quite white, but he took on style like a chameleon until he found his own. It goes along with being a purposeful person, he is interested in whatever makes you feel confident. Choosing pieces that range between Salvation Army finds to Gucci, one is drawn to the suredness he carries himself with.
Trey’s warm vocals powerfully land in your ears. As he sings about true heartache and love and beauty and confidence, you reminisce about when you’ve felt the same. His band comes to life as Trey shares his past and brings it to the present. He says it’s not always easy to sing his songs as they make him relive some painful events, but he explains, “As an artist, we have a beautiful opportunity to be vulnerable and transparent about our experiences. I’m going to be very transparent about the things I’ve failed in, the things I'm growing in, about the things that have hurt me, about the things that have torn me apart, but with the perspective of, ‘[I am] not a victim of my circumstances but a product of someone that overcame them.’”
Trey has recently moved to working on his music full time. Formerly an employee of Dessert Oasis Coffee Roasters in Rochester, MI, Trey was able to perfect his craft at their weekly open mics. Doing full-time music is a true step for him, but he says he comes at it with a “God-you’re-either-real-and-you-show-up-or-I’m-screwed” mentality. Dealing with rejection is always the fear as one steps out on their own musical journey. But Trey’s faith and talent and determination is what drives him. Many will connect with the unpredictability of success and rejection and how they coalesce into who we are as artists, and Trey truly embraces it.
Trey’s effortlessness on stage makes you feel comfortable, like you are peacefully receiving a gift. He speaks to the audience sitting just a few feet from him as if they are family. The unifying power of music is something that draws Trey, saying, “The very foundation of what we are is a vibration, is a sound, is a spoken word, and I think music is the closest thing to that, and I think it’s the one thing that unifies cultures, peoples, even past language barriers.” To him, being transparent is the true career of an artist, to which he states, “Death to the ego, it’s all about building relationships.”
Trey Simon’s new single When The Lights Turn On releases October 2nd, 2019.
Support him on Instagram (@treysimonmusic) and Spotify.
