TREY HENSLEY
I do. Specifically, the Stone Temple Pilots. Robert and Dean reached out to me on Instagram. They were fans of my playing. Robert sent me a bunch of their tour dates and asked if I could come out and hang with them. It just happened they were playing Atlanta, and I was like, that’ d be great. They changed their set around for me and added a little bluegrass section and had me come out and play acoustic guitar. Robert and Dean are both great at everything, and they were crushing the bluegrass stuff. And obviously everybody knows them in the rock world, and they’ ve written these amazing songs that have stood the test of time. And the same for Taj. Whenever we would play with Taj, he would carry around a little Bluetooth speaker and he’ s constantly listening to music. Taj knows more about bluegrass than I do, and it’ s my genre! He is just a great musicologist. He knows all of Bill Monroe’ s stuff, all about the band members, the Bluegrass Boys, and it’ s just amazing. I feel like that love of music, no matter what, is still there. And I’ ve been very fortunate to have aligned myself with people like that. I don’ t think the people I’ ve associated with have ever been music business types where they’ re in it for the business side of it. It’ s always just been these people that still love music— all kinds of music: hip-hop, metal, blues, whatever. It’ s genre-less, it’ s just music. There’ s good and bad, and it’ s harder to find the bad.
What did you learn from working with Taj Mahal? I don’ t think it could have been a better situation for me to learn from him as a guitar player. For the runs of shows that we did with him, he wasn’ t playing guitar, so I was playing all his guitar parts. He never sent any songs or a set list. He just said it was me and [ my longtime musical partner ] Rob Ickes, and he wanted us to do our thing over his music—” just bring what you do to my sound.” And that was already inspiring. It was nerve-wracking for me because I’ ve always wanted to be a perfectionist my whole life. And if you give me a set list, I will overthink it and practice it to death. Another big thing with him is how to treat people.
“ MY FAVORITE ARTISTS— PEOPLE LIKE MERLE HAGGARD, TONY RICE, OR TAJ MAHAL— THEY NEVER STUCK TO THEIR LANE, AND I DREW A LOT OF INFLUENCE FROM THAT.”
50 | SPRING 2026