Why the War and Treaty keeps blowing the roof off every awards show in country music

Is Michael a big wrestling guy?

"He's a fanatic," Tanya says.

"All the way," Michael confirms. Then he warns me against delving into the topic if there's anything else I'd like to leave time to discuss with him and his wife. "Trust me, we need to move on now," he says, smiling.

Adds Tanya: "Please, let's not open this box."

The Trotters, who've been married since 2011 and have a 13-year-old son, sing and write with the familiarity of longtime partners.

In "The Best That I Have," a simmering slow jam from "Lover's Game," Tanya joins a lover on the couch with ice cream and reruns of "The Golden Girls." And onstage, the two communicate with an unspoken intimacy, signaling each other to take a vocal line or to hold back with just a look or a touch on the wrist.

"Me and Tanya, we share time and space in every way," Michael says.

The two formed the War and Treaty in 2014 after each had learned to play on their own. "Freaked out," as he puts it, by the brutal reality of the war in Iraq, Michael would soothe himself by playing a piano his fellow soldiers had found in the basement of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces; eventually, he started writing songs to memorialize fallen members of his unit. "And that brought so much healing and resolution to the troops that they decided that would be my new role," he says.

At one point on Stagecoach's main stage, Michael asked how many veterans were in the crowd; not many folks made their presence known — fewer, certainly, than would have, say, two decades ago. Does he think about that?

"I do, and I know why," he says after the performance. "In the past 20-something years, we've gone through a strong love-hate relationship with the military. Our leaders have done a poor job in protecting service members, because now Americans look at service members as based on who's president at the time. We forget that men and women are raising their hand to fight for freedom — losing their lives and their limbs and their sanity. There's no emphasis on their service. Artists don't give a s— anymore.

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