TRE BURT Releases New Album 'Traffic Fiction'

Singer-songwriter Tré Burt has released his new album, Traffic Fiction, out today via Oh Boy Records. The album marks a musical reinvention and is deeply influenced by the soul music he listened to with his grandfather as a child.

His Grandfather, Tommy Burt passed away as he was writing this album, but their relationship is preserved via the 14 tracks found on Traffic Fiction. Today, he also released the music video for the album track “2 For Tha Road."

Tré will play two album release shows - tomorrow, October 7th at The Ford in Los Angeles and in his adopted hometown of Nashville on November 2nd in The Blue Room at Third Man Records. To purchase tickets, click here and order Traffic Fiction here.

Tré has previously teased the album with the jubilant “Santiago” which saw support from No Depression and MXDWN, among others and more recently “Kids In Tha Yard,” which Brooklyn Vegan called a bluesy, psychedelic soul song." Last month he released “Piece of Me” and American Songwriter said “The trippy, rock-tinged track finds the acclaimed, genre-bending songsmith trying to find his footing while feeling the sting of a broken relationship.”

Traffic Fiction is the follow up to 2021's You, Yeah, You, his sophomore album and one where bits of his roots and compositional ambitions began to emerge. On Traffic Fiction, they are in full bloom, from the sweet country-soul surrealism of the title track to the skywriting rock of “2 For Tha Show,” Burt as urgent and commanding as he's ever been. Traffic Fiction is the sound of Burt confidently bending a sentimental past to his present will.

To get to this new alchemy of soul, dub, and more than a little punk, Burt returned to the basics—self-recording in sequestered silence. During a Canadian tour, he spent a week in the foothills of the Rockies beside the Bow River in Canmore, AB writing these songs. He rented enough instruments from the affordable gear emporium Long & McQuade

to build a makeshift studio for his GarageBand demos. The title track soon emerged, its effortless magnetism prompted by a poem he'd written about stupid city congestion and a piece by saxophonist and singer Gary Bartz. 

Burt recognized he had found the sound of the next album, so he booked another rural cabin in Canada for 9 days and rented more guitars, basses, and the same keyboard he'd bought during the You, Yeah, You sessions. For the better part of a lifetime, Burt had told himself he didn't have the chops to sing like those childhood heroes from the Cadillac days. Burt built his one-man-band demos before returning to Nashville's The Bomb Shelter to work with a trusted band of pals and esteemed producer Andrija Tokic.

With the full band, those demos poured out into circumspect love songs and joyous tunes of existential reckoning. His grandfather was dying. The world was struggling with a pandemic and the specter of a third world war. But Burt gave himself permission to have fun and be funny, to let these songs lift him and, eventually, maybe others, too. Traffic Fiction indeed feels like a buoy amid these turbulent times, something that pulls us above the wreckage. 

At three points during Traffic Fiction, Burt interweaves bits of recorded conversations with his late grandfather, Tommy. They talk about Stevie Wonder, Burt's career and the fatigue it can bring, and, finally, the sense that he's carrying on a family tradition through these records. It's a reminder not only of what Burt experienced while making Traffic Fiction but also of what he overcame. He found strength in the soul of his youth, and, for that, he's never sounded stronger.

Photo Credit: Mary Ellen Matthews

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