Trey's Parade

Powerpop / Rock / Indie
Honolulu, HI

THERESA HOUSTON // keytar

Theresa Houston has left the University of Hawaii. If you were interested in knowing her, you’ve lost your chance at doing so in a natural way.

Theresa is the type of girl who will tell you that she plays keytar simply because it is “the most awesome instrument in the world.” She is also the type of girl who knows what she’s in for if music will be the rest of her life.

Her music is ready. That’s the best way to describe it. It reaches into several different corners of genre but keeps its feet to its morals. There are several bouts with clean pop music, but, like most female singers with a message, comes down to that one acoustic (or nearly acoustic as the case may be) number about all of the secrets in their universe.

Theresa says she doesn’t really listen to music, though. She used to, but that’s a far off thought now that her efforts are being focused on helping her friend Nic Westlake tour the American Continent with his band, The Blinking Project.

After making a pact with her friend Nick, Theresa found herself picking up life and moving back to South Dakota to begin her career as a musician.

“We made a pact, me and my friend Nick,” said Houston. “Whoever made it first would abandon their own project and help the other.”

Nic’s sound is different. He’s obviously culturing the posthardcore message of masses. His sound is a sure thing. On songs, Theresa is caught in the chorus’ singing as saintly as she can muster; this is the girl who told me that girls in music don’t get the chance to really control a stage.

So now Houston’s pushing up dust thousands of miles away from the place that she came to get a degree in Fine Arts. “Before I moved to Hawaii I had never done anything with music before. I went there as an art major and realized that I really hated art.”

Houston spent the last two semesters, her first two semesters, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She wrote an entire album of music in her dorm because she “had no friends.”

“When I moved, all the stupid boys played guitar, and, quite frankly, I thought that they sucked at it,” Houston said. She goes on to explain the problem with girls in the music industry. She never refers to them as women, only girls. She seems mildly offended when I call her a feminist and ask about girl bands like Sleater Kinney and Eisley.

“Girls would try to start bands with me. They only wanted to be in a chick band. I was left writing everything and teaching them how to play their own instruments.”

After proclaiming her new view on music, and her rightful spot in the world of it, she got down to business and signed up to be on the bill for Battle of the Bands at UHM.

She, of course, killed the competition.

But before killing said competition, she had hopes to finish up her album in time to give to people watching. She spent two weeks recording and mixing her album in the home of her friend Nic’s landlord. She played every instrument and sang every song. She wrote every lyric and every melody. That is how she gave birth to her one-woman band, Trey’s Parade.

There are talks of stage fright. There are talks of Houston’s legs splayed across the pages of Ka Leo last fall. Even through her monologue on what a good musician really does for her, she projects the sort of coy nature you find in field mice or other furry woodland creatures. Not that she’s a woodland creature; actually, quite far from it (although she’s quite aware of her own nature to be a bit timid).

The voice she uses for her music is nothing like her speaking voice. The voice she uses on each song is different from the next, trying out the different styles as if to set parameters for herself.

“I have the most severe case of stage fright,” says Houston as if she’s been to the psyche ward and back with her mauled esteem. “It really kind of sucked when I realized that I wanted to be a performer.”

She cites Yellow Hearted as one of the 7 and a half songs that she could care less about. When asked what she meant, she said that she only really cared about two and a half of the songs.

“I want for people who actually want to listen to the album for really understanding, not just to hear a catchy rift, but to come across that song and really think about it,” said Houston of her song “My June.”

“The pop world is entirely filled with meaningless lyrics,” she said. “It feels like people aren’t even trying.”

She goes on to talk about her song Mary that describes a ghost that she was told about in her dorm at UHM, Mokihana.

“I’m so scared of supernatural things and it completely controlled my life,” said Houston. She wrote the song after getting so scared that she couldn’t even stay in her dorm room by herself. “I used to make people stay over if my roommate was gone.”

Despite the unnatural odds of people staying in Hawaii, Theresa has gotten out. She is taken her interest on the road, touring with The Blinking Project. And all she wants to do is be heard.

You can hear Theresa’s music athttp://www.myspace.com/treysparade orhttp://www.myspace.com/theblinkingproject.