For music producer extraordinaire Trey Mills, things are finally coming full circle. After a decade spent producing, writing, or co-writing numerous Top 30 or better BDS hits for other artists, the Owen Sound native gets back to his performance roots with his debut solo album, Athabasca (Sept 18, 2007; OP3/Universal). Having collaborated with the Juno-nominated R&B group X-Quisite and the Grammy-nominated Classical quintet Canadian Brass, Trey’s credits range the musical spectrum. He has worked with renowned recording engineer and multiple Grammy winner Dixon Van Winkle, produced a Christmas hit (Zoë Bentley’s “Very Merry Christmas”), and lent his talent to the soundtracks of popular television shows like Soul Food, Degrassi: The Next Generation, and, football hooligans take note, The World Cup of Soccer. Despite Trey’s diverse musical background, Athabasca follows in the great tradition of Canadian singer-songwriters. Combining pared down production with introspective vocals, Trey sings about love, loss, and the Canadian landscape, inviting comparisons to Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. Sitting down to chat with Trey in his Toronto studio, you can’t help but admire his infectious passion for melody.

“I love all kinds of music,” he enthuses. “Marvin Gaye, Kanye West, Rachmaninoff, Carly Simon, Queen, Joni Mitchell. I’m all over the map. It’s pretty hard to figure out what genre I belong to, but I don’t need to label myself. Everyone else will do that.”

If Trey’s attitude seems refreshingly laidback, chalk it up to experience. At the age of 12, he put his first band together; at 19, he won a CMPA (Canadian Music Publisher’s Association) Award, Q-107’s Scott Little Fund Canadian National Songwriting Competition, and a US Billboard Special Achievement Award. Although he initially enjoyed the success, he quickly became disillusioned with the commercial side of the industry and felt forced into pitching his music rather than performing it.

“I loved the music but the interviews and promo made me crazy,” he remembers. “I felt pressure to be an entertainer as opposed to being an artist and I couldn't see how I could connect the two. My approach has always been that of a music lover, not a critic or musicologist. I realized that I was happier making music in the studio and letting other people go out and talk about it.”

Trey turned to producing and, after fast-tracking through a recording engineering program at Fanshawe College, became a pre-mastering engineer at CINRAM. Although his producing career took off as he mastered records by Michael Jackson, Boyz II Men, and Pat Metheny, he continued to pursue his own music. Lead singer of the band Soul Among Lions, Trey produced their first and only album. When the band broke up, Trey focused on more personal compositions, improvising songs on his keyboard and acoustic piano. These late night and early morning sessions became a creative outlet, allowing him to work through the conflicting emotions that accompanied upheaval in his personal life.

“I’d sit at the piano and express myself,” he explains, “my frustrations, fears, needs, my passion for life and my fascination with everyday things. I like saying things everyone else is afraid to say. It keeps me feeling free.”
Despite his growing confidence, Trey was still hesitant about sharing his new music with an audience. It wasn’t until he was touring across Canada as producer and manager of his protégé Zoë Bentley that Trey realized he wanted to perform again.
“I would watch her go onstage, see how the crowd reacted to her, and just want to be out there myself,” he recalls.

Not only did the cross-Canada trip help Trey acknowledge his performing aspirations, it also inspired much of the material on Athabasca. Born and raised in Ontario, Trey was awed by the grandeur and diversity of the Canadian landscape. Athabasca is full of references to the skies, roads, and lakes of the western provinces, its title borrowed from the name of a town 150km north of Edmonton. Listening to Athabasca you feel like you’re on the road with Trey, his earnest, often humourous lyrics the musings of a friend in the passenger seat.

“I thought that if I put myself out there and told the truth, hopefully someone would connect with it and not feel so alone,” he says simply. “I think the process has been a documentation, or snapshot of where I’m at creatively at the moment.”
This lyrical honesty is matched by the simplicity of the album’s musical arrangement. Unlike heavily produced pop CDs currently topping the charts, Athabasca is a model of restraint.

“I'm pretty much always singing over a piano except ‘Best Week’ where I'm over a banjo,” Trey confirms. “My entire record also has live strings or horns, bass, drums and an assortment of guitars so I think it’s pretty musical. I’ve done a pile of R&B drum programming, but this album has no programming at all.”
Trey also credits recent changes in the music industry for making him rethink his aversion to performing.

“For the first time since I was a kid I think there are a lot of great new artists and bands making really creative records,” he says, once again becoming animated. “Major record companies have lost their ability to filter what we listen to as we can jump online and check out thousands of new bands every day. Access to music has never been better. I’m really excited about new possibilities for music so I think I’ll want to continue collaborating in the studio writing and producing.”

Judging from the warm reception he’s received, it seems fans prefer to have Trey in front of the microphone. During a recent trip to the Beaches area of Toronto, the singer-songwriter was stopped at a red light with the windows of his truck rolled down, a rough version of his single “Saving Me” blasting on the stereo. A woman in the next car leaned over and exclaimed, “What are you listening to? I need to buy it!”
With responses like that, Trey just might have to put his producing day job on hold and concentrate on performing full time.

www.treymills.com