On this Artist Spotlight, we turn our focus to Hays Alternative group “Broken Treaty”. Relatively new to the area, they played a couple shows in 2023 and are looking to make an impact in 2024.
“As directionless as we are in life, we’d like to think we have a good musical vision.”
7eight5: Tell us a little bit about yourselves
Broken Treaty: We are a 3 piece alternate band looking to head in a heavier direction after we release our first album. Tyler Carrasco (Bassist/Vocalist), Andrew Gillette (Drummer), and Sam Nease (Guitarist). Originally, the band started with Tyler on guitar and Andrew on drums. Then once Sam joined the band as the guitarist, Tyler switched to bass guitar and vocals. As directionless as we are in life, we’d like to think we have a good musical vision. We have an album in the works that we hope to have released by the end of spring.
7eight5: How long have you been playing together?
Broken Treaty: We have been playing together since December of 2022.
7eight5: How did you come up with your name?
Broken Treaty: We’re two white guys and a Native American. The name is kind of one of those things that was a joke that we thought would make a great name. During practice one time Tyler had mentioned how he was reading a pamphlet on the different treaties broken between the Native Americans and whites, and cracked a joke about how we’re breaking the treaties of peace too by getting people riled up and pumped with our music, thus the name Broken Treaty. We all decided it was a good sounding name that makes people laugh whenever we explain it.
7eight5: Describe your sound. What kind of music do you play?
Broken Treaty: We would describe our sound as being raw and refined. It’s sort of a gray area between grunge and alternate. Though we plan to head towards including a lot more metal elements in our writing.
7eight5: Who influenced you growing up, and what impact has that made on your music?
Andrew: I would say my biggest influences were Avenged Sevenfold, Rush, and pretty much the whole early 90’s era grunge era. What I play is pretty much an amalgamation of all of these, with my own flair sprinkled in. I often try to imagine what my favorite drummers would play when I’m struggling to come up with a groove.
Tyler: Growing up, Aerosmith & The Beatles were two of the biggest (and still to this day) influences in my life AND music. But as time went on I found a lot of different sounds that intrigued me, like Alice Cooper, Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pirates, Guns N Roses and so much more could name them all day! But I mainly am a 70’s junkie head for sure.
Sam: My dad and I would listen to a lot of Pink Floyd together when I was a kid and that still is my biggest inspiration today. Nowadays I really enjoy progressive rock/metal bands such as Vulkan, Akord, and Porcupine Tree. Big buildups into roaring crescendos are my thing so if a song is 9+ minutes I’m probably into it.
7eight5: What was your first show like?
Broken Treaty: Our first show was at The Rose Garden Banquet Hall. We loved playing there and plan on having more shows there in the future. It was a big rush, that was the first time we got to put ourselves out there and sounded how we wanted to in our head. There was a really good turnout and we were well received, so it was a great first show.
7eight5: How have you guys grown since starting to play together?
Broken Treaty: We’ve all grown more than we ever could’ve expected when it comes to playing together as a group, and have also individually been focusing on improving our skills. We’ve learned how to be more disciplined in our playing and its brought us all together as band mates and friends.
7eight5: What’s your social media status as a band?
Broken Treaty: We are on Facebook and Instagram, you can find us by searching for ‘Broken Treaty’ We plan on expanding our social media engagement down the road.
7eight5: What do you do outside of your music?
Broken Treaty: We all work full time jobs, so having the time to practice on top of that can be difficult. We spend so much time on producing music together, that it doesn’t leave much time for us to do much together outside of that. But we do enjoy hanging out together when we all have the time.
7eight5: Where do you get influences from when writing music?
Broken Treaty: We pretty much just come up with riffs and ideas that we think sound cool individually, and collaborate on building upon that from there. We all have our own individual influences and coming together to combine all of those elements has worked really well so far.
7eight5: What comes first for you, the lyrics or the music? Or is it more 50/50?
Broken Treaty: The music definitely comes before the lyrics. We put a lot of care into the lyrics and vocals as well, but we always get a solid idea down for an instrumental before writing any lyrics.
7eight5: Where do you want to be as artists in 5 years? What’s a goal you are hoping to achieve?
Broken Treaty: We would like to have a solid fan base built up and be in a position that we can continue spending time improving on producing music in the same way we have been currently. Would also be cool to make a bunch of money doing so.
7eight5: How do you go about setting up shows to play?
Tyler: Usually I do a lot of talking to other band mates and see if any openings are available or ask bar owners or venue holders if they need any entertainment. Ask around and network, more or less.
7eight5: What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned since the band started?
Broken Treaty: Communication, it helps more than anything to have open ended collaboration from all ends. We are all pretty good about communicating with each other so it’s worked out well.
7eight5: How can people get a hold of you?
Broken Treaty: contact us by email at BrokenTreatyOfficial@gmail.com, or by messaging us on Facebook!
