Treaty Oak Revival Are The West Texas Degenerates You Were Warned About. They’re Proud Of It, Too.

It’s easy for the mind to conjure up West Texas.

There are land rigs and pumpjacks as far as the eye can see. Metal beasts slouch and heave against a heat-warped country, where larger-than-life figures leach wisdom like oil from the barren expanse.

That’s because, for decades, West Texas has been given the Hollywood treatment. Films and television series so often cast hardened oilmen as abrasive heroes and starry-eyed high school athletes as hometown gods against its sparse scenery. West Texas itself has become just as much a character. Here, dreams live and die in its oil fields or under its Friday night lights. Here, you’ll find either endless riches or just enough to get by.

“What they're showing in the movies, we're no stranger to,” Sam Canty, the lead vocalist and chief lyricist of Treaty Oak Revival, tells Holler. The country rock outfit – also comprising guitarists Lance and Jeremiah Vanley, drummer Cody Holloway and bassist Dakota Hernandez – know West Texas better than most.

Forged in the town of Odessa, the band came of age in the bosom of this region, toiled away in its blue-collar industries and became well-acquainted with its underbelly. That’s the side they showcase on their new album, West Texas Degenerate.

This 14-track project isn’t planting listeners in the nipped and tucked versions of their home that are portrayed on shows like Landman and movies like Friday Night Lights. They’re shining a spotlight on reality – grease-stained, liquor-soaked, wholly unpretty and still undeniably beautiful reality.

“We've always made music that harkens back to where we're from,” Canty states. The band’s 2021 debut, No Vacancy, and its 2023 follow-up, Have A Nice Day, introduced the five-piece as a group of proud, working-class musicians who make music for the everyman. Only now are they truly bringing it all back home. As a result, their third studio effort plays like a kind of origin story, offering insight into who and why they are.

“It's not the greatest place in the world, but we're proud to be from it,” the frontman says of Odessa and the West Texas region as a whole. “It's made us who we are, and I think it's a big part of the reason for our work ethic and why we've come this far in an industry like this. We come from the oil and gas industry, where it's just as cutthroat and corrupt as the music industry can sometimes be.”

Throughout the album, the claws of circumstance sink deep, often detailing a dead-end destiny of shift work and shaky hands. There are examples of hard work, but according to the anguished ‘Bad State of Mind’, it often comes at the expense of the body and spirit. There are high times, but like in the rowdy ‘Port A’, they’re never without their lows. There is love, but as it goes in the desperate ‘Stay a While’, it doesn’t exist without its strains. Each track, like life, seems to come at a cost.

From these narratives, however, the band exhumes its share of lessons. They find purpose in the brutal destruction of ‘Naders’ and learn to smile through the bitter longing of ‘Happy Face’. But, more than anything, they master the art of being exactly, unabashedly, who they are.

“If you think that we're just a bunch of degenerate guys from West Texas, well, here's a whole fucking album about it,” Canty says. “You can call us whatever you want, but we're here. We ain't going anywhere. We're just gonna keep on making the best music that we can for our fans.”

More than through words alone, that staunch conviction is reflected throughout the album’s sound. West Texas Degenerate finds Treaty Oak Revival turning their hellbent country rock style up a few notches. The entire collection is even louder and more alive, bolder and impossibly more relentless.

The band drives home their angsty pop punk influences on the sucker-punching ode, ‘Blue Star’, and flexes the arena-quaking finesse of their Southern rock roots on the powerful anthem, ‘Dosin’. They never let their foot off the gas, not even for the endearing ‘Sunflower’, a wedding song for Canty’s wife that gets propelled by thundering rhythms and searing electrics.

Where the group unplugged earlier this year for the release of The Talco Tapes, an acoustic reworking of some of the songs from their first two albums, they found release with West Texas Degenerate and were allowed to let all that pent-up power loose.

As Canty shares, “When we got done with that record and it was time to make the new tracks, we were even more hyped up about it, because we had a muzzle on during that last record. Now, it’s like we got off the leash and we made what we made.”

West Texas Degenerate is set to achieve Treaty Oak Revival’s mission: to do their hometown justice while also reaching people who are just like them. It’s apparently already beginning to.

“I've shown the record to quite a few of my old pipeline buddies,” Canty says. “They were like, ‘Man, every welder is going to have this blaring out of their truck in the country.’ I hope it gives those people a song that they can connect with and that they can relate to. I hope West Texas feels seen by this record.”

West Texas Degenerate, however, won’t stop there. The album and its songs aren’t bound by county or state lines, and anyone who stumbles upon this record is bound to find something they can connect with.

“You ain't got to be from West Texas to relate to what's on here,” the frontman shares. “It's supposed to be for those people who are like us, who come from a town where it is very blue collar and there's not a whole lot to do. Maybe it's not the best place in the world, but it's your city, it's where you grew up, it's what made you who you are.”

While many of the themes are regional, they also feel universal. Songs offer a salve through the everyday pains of being and a helping hand when life’s woes become too heavy to carry alone. Canty, who celebrated three years sober this past September, crafted the album’s ‘Withdrawals’ and ‘Shit Hill’ from his own personal struggles with alcohol. What resulted are two songs that commiserate with the heart just as much as they please the ear.

“I think that's one thing we want in our music,” Canty shares, “is to let people know that they're not the only ones going through stuff like that and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

That commitment garnered Treaty Oak Revival a loyal cult following early on, and over the last five or so years, that number has only increased. Today, the band and their music resonate with over six million monthly listeners on Spotify.

“We pride ourselves in taking care of our fans and connecting with our fans,” Canty says of the group’s growing success, “and I think doing that helps create an even bigger bond between you and your base.”

In 2025, especially, that’s paid off. Their draw has landed them on massive festival stages and in the running for a number of major awards throughout the year. Most recently, their rising notability took them all the way to Australia, the first international outing of their career.

“That's a place that I wanted to go my entire life, let alone sell over 10,000 tickets there,” the lead singer shares of the band’s voyage Down Under. “It’s pretty insane that we can go all the way to the other side of the world and still see that kind of attendance at our shows. It's really awesome.”

Since their inception in 2018, Treaty Oak Revival has been staunchly independent, which is something else their fandom largely appreciates about the grassroots group. For years, they’ve grown their audience organically, releasing music on their own terms with no assistance from major labels.

Back in May, The Talco Tapes marked the band’s first foray into the world of major labels, with Interscope Records taking charge of the record’s distribution.As Canty describes, “It was an interesting experience. It was a learning experience, as well.”

Treaty Oak Revival wanted to test the waters, see what it was like to make music and exist as a band under a big name, like Interscope.

“We took that opportunity and we formed some good relationships, met a lot of cool people and learned a lot of things about the business that we wouldn't have normally learned,” Canty describes, adding that, in the end, the experience only solidified their desire to remain independent. “It was a good experience to have, and we're glad that we tried it out when we did, but I think we're better off doing things our own way.”

West Texas Degenerate is that to a tee: a masterful album from an immutable band determined to make music their way.

Photography by Paige Williams

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