Oliver Tree on crying, his cowboy lineage, and his influences… which are none

The last time Oliver Tree graced a stage in Austin, at ACL Fest 2019, the injured performer whirled around in a gold-painted wheelchair. Now at full strength, with a new cowboy persona, the "Life Goes On" singer returns to play a sold out concert at Stubb’s.

In advance of the concert, Tree took a phone call to discuss what makes him cry, the kinds of movies he wants to eventually make, his role in country music, and what he requires to get on stage.

Austin Chronicle: For this tour, what’s on the Oliver Tree rider?

Oliver Tree: There’s a lot of stuff on there: different colored shirts – I’ve got to have seven different colored shirts, so: red, green, blue, orange, yellow, black, and white. I want to make sure I have different options, depending on what mood I’m in that day. I make sure that people have at least one framed photograph or painting of me. Typically, I require a painting, but sometimes there is not a great painter that is connected into the scene and so I’ve taken pictures and photoshops. It’s just something that makes me feel like I’m at home and reminds me of myself. The thing that’s been the most challenging is I have to bathe before the shows and there really aren’t bathtubs at venues – there’s pretty much showers exclusively. So this tour I’ve been requesting them to bring these hot tubs. I take a two hour soak before my show and it makes me feel right at home.

AC: I’ve been using Dead Sea salts in my baths and it’s changed my life. Have you ever tried that?

OT: Oh, I do that all the time! I’m serious, it’s incredible. I’m glowing bro – I look like a pregnant woman. Not only is my skin glowing, but my belly is big.

AC: Cowboy Tears has me thinking about the power of crying, both in terms of breaking an emotional damn, but also as a facet to artistic expression. Why was that important for to address thematically on this record?

OT: The truth is I cry a lot. I’m a very emotional guy. I don’t really cry from being sad as much as I cry from being moved. I have a lot really crazy experiences in my life and I find myself weeping, if not every day, than every other day. It’s usually something where I’m going “Holy shit that is so fucking crazy!” During the making of the album, I went through a lot of hardship including a friend passing away and losing partners. It was an emotional time for me, during COVID, and I just kind of let it out into this record.

As someone who cries a lot, I feel like there’s such a stigma in America specifically – I can’t speak for other countries because I didn’t grow up there – but in America it’s like: “Don’t cry, suck it up, toughen up” and I think that’s bullshit.

AC: There’s a masculinity complex associated with it I suppose. Is that a concept you’ve been playing with in some of your videos where you’re weeping, but you have this buff body?

OT: I was experimenting with [testosterone replacement therapy] and different kinds of steroids for six months. I wasn’t aware of what I was taking. I was working with a nutritionist and he told me they weren’t technically steroids and that it was different types of vitamins and supplements. I found out after I shot the video that this dude had been injecting me with steroids and I was shocked man. I was upset because I was working out with three different personal trainers, drinking Muscle Milk for breakfast and Muscle Milk for dinner, but I ended up essentially being tricked into taking steroids which, to me, was just not cool.

AC: Well I’m glad you’re past that. Is your body recovering?

OT: Apparently I will never be able to produce the amount of testosterone I was before so I’m a little upset. I might have to be on steroids for the rest of my life.

AC: The last time I saw you perform in Austin, at ACL Fest in 2019, you were in a wheelchair that was painted gold. It was fun to watch for us in the audience, but I wonder, were you in pain?

OT: I’m glad you got a good laugh out of it, man!

AC: No, no. I’d never laugh at someone’s pain.

OT: That was a rough experience. I barely made it through that tour.

AC: If I remember correctly you had a mic stand built into the chair.

OT: Yeah we had a custom rig set up. The microphone was attached and that allowed me to do wheelies, 360 wheelies, and some spins. It was actually quite helpful. I was just there to play shows. It was either cancel the tour or perform in the chair so it was a no-brainer. You either want to see me or you don’t want to see me.

AC: I also recall that you wore a foam cowboy hat like the one Jim Carrey purchases in Dumb and Dumber.

OT: Bro I’ve been trying to get that back actually. Someone – I’m not going to say who, but someone in my crew – sold it on eBay for a large amount of money. I’m trying to find the buyer and we have three different people who claim they were the one who bought it. But we actually had some internal problems with that and I had to let go of someone who was working on the road with us.

AC: Well my question is, was that foam cowboy hat in any way seminal to the cowboy hat image that’s so tied in with this album cycle?

OT: The thing is, artists are usually making their next album while they’re on tour for their last album, so I’d already been making Cowboy Tears at that point. I was already been getting into my country era before that too. You know, my grandfather was a cowboy and his grandfather was a cowboy, so I grew up going to my grandparents ranch and spent a lot of time feeding cattle and feeding horses. So it’s been a part of my lineage.

AC: You excel at character creation and thematic vision. Do you have an artist who you look up to for being really good at establishing concise artistic visions?

OT: For one, I don’t listen to music. I would only listen to music when I’m making it or mixing it or fine tuning an album. I’ll listen to it in the morning when I go on a run or in the shower after I finish a song or, if it’s good enough, I’ll lay in bed and play it on repeat, but besides that I don’t listen to music. I listen to when I have to – when someone is driving me in their car, like an Uber driver, perhaps. So I don’t have any influences on the music side.

As far as film goes, there are directors I like, but I haven’t had time to watch movies lately so I’ve kind of been pulling influence from my family history and trying to make it as authentic as possible. I don’t have any influences right now, but I think ignorance is bliss and I think not knowing what’s going on is actually going to be beneficial.

AC: If you were to make a feature length film, what kind of movie would it be?

OT: Well during COVID I wrote two feature film screenplays. One of them is a family-friendly-coming-of-age-love-story essentially about middle school. I’m not really going to be able to tell you too much about it, but it’s fantasy mixed with comedy, mixed with romance… and drama. It’s the first film that’s being made for parents and their kids to watch together. The second one is essentially NC-17, super hardcore, super raw — the most visceral thing you ever could watch – everything from drugs to sex, addiction, gambling. It’s about loneliness and I’m not going to say anything else about it.

AC: And you don’t want to divulge the title, which is…

OT: No, I can’t say. I don’t want anybody to make this shit before me. Really if my song “Life Goes On” didn’t take off – and I was hoping it wouldn’t because everything I’ve done has been a monumental failure … even Cowboy Tears, for sure – I would have retired already. “Life Goes On” was one of the biggest songs on Tik-Tok last year and it really screwed me man. I was planning on retiring and then, when that did so well, the label forced the hand on releasing this next record, which I’d already been making, but I thought this music was so great it didn’t need to be heard. What comes with releasing an album is a year of touring, at least, and then press and all this stuff that takes up all my time. It doesn’t allow me to make these films and produce them in the real word, but you know I’m working on them still and I plan to, after this tour, fully retire from the music industry and really get focused behind the camera, doing storytelling.

AC: You’ve really invented your own lane and yet, because of the success you’re talking about, it could be viewed like you’ve become part of a music industry that you seem to have no interest in being in. What is that push-and-pull like for you?

OT: It’s a love/hate relationship for sure. I’ve told my closest friends this: “Hey guys, if I couldn’t make music videos, you’d never see me again. We’d never make another song.” But when you work as much as I do, you really only see people when you’re working with them. So I have a lot of friends, but I don’t really see them unless it’s a collaborative effort. Music videos have been the silver lining and making them has been my film school in allowing me to make feature film level production in a music video.

AC: You’re going to playing in Austin and, as you surely know, we still have cowboys in Texas. Do you expect any to approach you and thank you for opening up the public image of a weeping cowboy or congratulate you on that representation?

OT: Yeah man it’s been happening at every show so far. I’ve been seeing a lot of cowboys coming to these shows and some of them even have cowboy tears tattoos and customized hats and jackets. The country community has really embraced me. Although my record label, Atlantic, made the fatal flaw of listing this as an alternative album, which was unbeknownst to me. It was my understanding that this would be released as a country album. It really screwed me over, blackballing me from the country industry, so it’s been hard to get the country industry to take me seriously when this album is listed as alternative. Realistically, I’m a country artist now so that’s been a very painful thing.