The Band
Relax, get a drink, hit the dance floor.
The Whiskey Treats played the kind of music you put on when you want to go out with your people, drink pints at the bar, and get a little rowdy.
A high-energy infusion of bluegrass, punk, folk, and rock, the band never fit a single mold and never tried to. You could hear the tradition in the fiddle, mandolin, banjo and upright bass, and you could feel the punk rock underneath it, loud, fast, and grinning. It was raucous, danceable, and built for a crowd.
The Treats started in Phoenix in 2011, led by frontman and songwriter Brett Dooley, who had cut his teeth years earlier singing and playing guitar and bass in punk and hard rock bands. What he really loved was getting a whole room rowdy, and the Whiskey Treats were where that finally came together.
The band moved to Denver in 2014, then landed in Tucson in 2017, spending more than a decade in the deserts and mountains of the Southwest perfecting the show. They wrote their own songs, from upbeat drinking tunes to songs about home, with maybe a slow one or two when everyone needed to catch their breath. Between the fast picking and the whiskey-fueled sing-alongs, audiences connected with them at a primal level, and the band had just as much fun as the room did.
Over more than a decade, the Whiskey Treats revolved around Brett Dooley's songwriting, with a rotating cast of players passing through the ranks, upright and electric bass, mandolin, banjo, accordion, fiddle, dobro and slide guitar, and drums. Sixteen-plus musicians left their mark on the sound.
