Pre-Show: Tre. Charles

Saxapahaw, NC (pop. 1,088) isn’t exactly known as a hip-hop hotbed. And the Durham singer/songwriter Tre. Charles isn’t really a hip-hop act — at least, not in any kind of traditional sense. So to make a drive out to the former for the express purpose of interviewing the latter, well… it’s the kind of thing that might have trouble getting sign-off from the mature, serious, higher-ups at a hip-hop publication.

It’s a good thing, then, that this hip-hop publication has no mature or serious higher-ups to speak of, because this week’s simple yet beautiful, poignant email featurette — piloted by my friend and SE compatriot Jeyhoun Allebaugh — is well worth a bit of infidelity to the stuffy boundaries of genre.

For what it’s worth, the departure isn’t all that extreme, anyway. In the first major profile that Charles garnered as a musician, almost exactly two years ago, Indy Week’s Brian Howe listed “‘00s hip-hop” among the core influences he heard on the singer’s debut EP, Currently. (the others: “emotional ’90s rock… neo-soul and alternative R&B, choral music and canons”). Taking it all in sum, Howe landed on the apt label, “ambient soul.”

Reasonable minds can disagree on classifications and sounds, but what can’t be contested about Charles’ evocative, emotionally arresting music is the clear resonance it’s found among audiences far and wide — the 34-year-old performed at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island last summer, and has already toured throughout the western United States this year.

With him performing as part of the summer live music series Saturdays In Saxapahaw last month, and on the heels of another excellent EP, Here We Are., it seemed like a perfect opportunity, and a perfect candidate, for us to try out a new bit of text-and-photos portraiture for the newsletter. So before he went on stage, Tre. took a moment with Jeyhoun for a quick series of photos, and a couple questions about what’s on his mind.

“The beginning of the year, I went to the West Coast and toured with this band called Lo Moon… we played Denver, Salt Lake City, Portland, Seattle. [It was] my first support tour with a major artist situation — they’ve played Tiny Desk, the whole thing. It was cool to see now my peers and colleagues that respect me in this industry, because I still feel imposter syndrome all the time… when I'm around people who've done it for a long time, I still get that little twinkle in the back of my head that's like, ‘Are you sure you're supposed to be doing this? Who do you think you are?’

And it's always a daily battle to fight that voice. So you like, you [have to] know who you are.”