Sixtyten Sessions: Catching Up With Tree No Leaves

Listen Up Toledo  |  By Michael Pierce  |  12/22/2015

Psychedelic overtones mixed with sizable splashes of 70’s-era blues rock are complemented by the melodically erie and on-point baritone vocal styles of Bowling Green’s Dustin Ray Galish - frontman and founding member of Tree No Leaves. Since 2008, the four-piece has changed members a few times, but that hasn’t stopped them from creating music that Toledo can be proud to call it’s own.

2015 has been a busy year for the band. Earlier this year they released Live At Sixtyten - an in-studio live set captured in front of an audience. Following that, in April they released Sparrow and the Space Ancients - a remix album of their own songs. And in October, they released a full-length album titled Skinwalkers - their eighth release since 2010. Following that, they put out a video for the song “Boogie Man”.

“The Skinwalker is a Navajo legend, a shape-shifting, werewolf type of creature. For us it was a visual theme that we wanted to play off of. The folklore of the Native Americans is also part of the concept art created by Mary Dunkin. We also did some field recording to add little thematic elements of nature to the album”, says Galish.

For this album, Sixtyten was used to capture the room sound of the drums and bass, but other studio spaces were involved with this project. Tell us a little about those places.

“We did a home setup at my spot in BG - mostly for vocals and some other overdubs. Our guitar player Calvin and I worked at Terra for a couple days to get the finishing touches on it - plus they have a fender rhodes, an old hammond organ, and some other synths that we used.”

And the band has recently gone through some lineup changes.

“Josh Waterfield was a huge part of this record - we wrote all of the songs with him, and he was very helpful with composing and putting his creativity into this album. But as a band we’re looking to progress more in a live setting, and he doesn’t share the same goals. Adam Rice is our new bass player. He’s the drummer for BathHouseBetty, and has been a wonderful addition to the band. We’ve brought in my wife, Sarah Smith - who was actually a founding member of the band almost seven years ago. She’s adding some additional keyboard parts as well as some backing vocals, which is something the band hasn’t had. She won’t be playing with us live, so we’re still a four-piece.”

The band is also excited about doing a vinyl release next year. “We’ve done the cd route before and we of course have plenty of mp3s floating around, but we’ve yet to do a vinyl run, so it’s a big step for us”, says Galish.  

Look for the vinyl release of Skinwalkers to drop later in 2016. In the meantime, check out their documentary of the recording process.