15 November 27 - December 3, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents West Texas Made Treaty Oak Revival’s third album pays homage to small-town life outside the city skylines. BY TYLER DANIELS M usic with grit, heart and zero pretense, Treaty Oak Revival is reshaping what southern rock sounds like. The five-piece power- house from Odessa, Texas, has a sound that blends country, rock, alternative and outlaw influences, a genre you could call southern rock. But really, they’re just making honest music that tells stories and resonates with anyone who listens. They play hard, loud and don’t apologize for it. The group is made up of Sam Canty (lead vocals), Lance Vanley (rhythm guitar), Jeremiah Vanley (electric guitar) and Cody Holloway (drums). The group gained traction in 2021 with their first studio album, No Vacancy, which, upon its release, was not widely known among fans of Treaty Oak Revival. The album exploded them onto the scene, with six sin- gles going gold and made Billboard’s all-genre Top 200 Albums, Hot Country Songs, Hot Rock and Alternative Songs charts. They’re now a staple on the Texas music scene and are selling out venues across the country. On Friday, Nov. 28, Treaty Oak Revival is releasing their third studio album, West Texas Degenerate. Speaking with Canty and Vanley about overcoming adversity and bringing small-town West Texas living to the world, they did a show in West Texas in support of San Angelo flood relief, which was overshadowed by the devastating Kerr County floods. Vanley mentioned how im- portant a cause that was for them to support, acknowledging how “tight-knit” the West Texas communities are. “Happy Face” and “Bad State of Mind” from West Texas Degenerate already have us on the edge of our seats for the rest of the al- bum. They explained why it’s so special to them, an ode to who they are and where they come from. But first, Canty cleared up the type of band they consider themselves. “We’ve always been a rock and roll band. We’ve always been a very rock-forward band, just because that’s what we’ve grown up listening to, basically, our whole lives, are rock and roll.” He added that they love the loud music and enjoy engaging with the crowd, as seen at punk and rock shows. That’s not to say they don’t have a south- ern drawl or appeal to the red dirt country scene in Texas, but they don’t see them- selves as a country band. In May of this year, they released The Talco Tapes, an acoustic remix of songs that utilizes fiddles and acoustic guitars more commonly associated with country music. Canty acknowledged how different re- cording The Talco Tapes was for them. “We had never really thought about what our music would look like if it were done kind of in the more traditional country aspect of things,” he says. On West Texas Degenerate, you can ex- pect more of the headbanging, loud music that has brought them to stardom. This al- bum is different for them, though, as it’s an anthem of their youth, a salute to their hometown and to the hardworking people of West Texas. “Those people who are out there busting their ass, working in oil and gas or whatever it is they’re doing their day to day out there in West Texas,” Canty says. “We kind of wanted to make something for the boys and girls back home to be proud of.” Life in West Texas is a grind, with Canty even acknowledging that nobody in the band lives out there anymore, but the group wants to normalize and not be afraid to ad- mit the truth of living out west. Whether it be drinking, teen pregnancies, or bank- ruptcy, it’s all part of life. “Drink and go to work, man. That’s it. That’s the plan over there,” Canty says. Canty has addressed his struggles with alcohol in the past, as he was an alcoholic for just short of a decade. He is sober now, but still remembers the feelings of dependency and withdrawal. He knows that other peo- ple are going through the same thing, as evi- denced by the song he wrote about trying to stay clean on the album. That being said about West Texas, with the good comes the bad. Canty and Vanley noted that, even though there are trials in life on the plains, there is still beauty and good in their hometown. The good and the bad give you the whole picture of living in West Texas. The idea for the album title, West Texas De- generate, came from one of the songs on the al- bum, which started with just a hook. “I could hear people singing it in the crowd at shows. So I was like, ‘Man, I need to write a song about this,’” Canty says, adding, “West Texas Degenerate is the perfect thing to describe my twenties. In my teenage years, all we were do- ing was just drinking, working, partying, hav- ing a good time, getting in trouble.” He even turned to one of his good friends, fellow West Texas country artist William Clark Green, for help with the song “West Texas Degenerate.” Canty said that though he knew the hook, he needed some help fin- ishing the song. He called Green “one of my favorite artists in Texas music” and someone whose humor and storytelling he wanted in the track. After reconnecting at Cotton Fest, Sam reached out, and Green invited them to write in the back of Billy Bob’s Texas. They finished the entire song in about 90 minutes, and Sam left feeling that “no one would’ve done that better than him.” Making this album, the creation and for- mation of it, was driven by a clear ideology in mind for the band and what they wanted the album to be. “We wanted to talk about growth in this record and maybe make a more mature record with more mature content and a more developed sound,” Canty says. The group grew up listening to a wide range of music genres, including rock, coun- try, pop, punk, jazz, hip-hop and metal. This variety of genres from their childhood is part of their inspiration for a more mature album. They want their music to be for ev- eryone, which means taking a piece of sound from all these genres and blending it to make a perfectly crafted album. The group takes pride in writing its own songs and speaking from personal experi- ence. Much of their music stems from free- styling, sharing ideas, telling stories and bringing it all together to create a song. Canty said they’re a band, and not one per- son makes the music; it’s a cohesive unit that comes together. “That’s always what we’ve wanted to do, is make our own music, real music that helps people and that people en- joy,” he says. “That our friends and family can enjoy.” Treaty Oak Revival with Slade Coulter and Austin Upchurch will perform on Saturday, Dec. 20, at 7 p.m. at Dickies Arena, 1911 Mont- gomery St, Fort Worth. Tickets are available starting at $75 on Ticketmaster.com. Paige Williams Treaty Oak Revival’s West Texas Degenerate releases on Nov. 28. ▼ Music SCAN HERE TO ENTER TO WIN A PAIR OF TICKETS
