The last time Oliver Tree walked on stage in Austin, at the 2019 ACL Fest, the injured performer whirled around in a gold-painted wheelchair. Now in full swing, with a new cowboy persona, the “Life Goes On” singer returns to perform a sold-out concert at Stubb’s.

Before the gig, Tree took a phone call to discuss what makes him cry, what kinds of movies he eventually wants to do, his role in country music and what he needs to get on stage.

Austin Chronicle: For this tour, what’s on the rider Oliver Tree?

olive tree: There are a lot of things on it: different colored shirts – I must have seven different colored shirts, so: red, green, blue, orange, yellow, black and white. I want to make sure I have different options, depending on my mood that day. I make sure people have at least one framed photo or painting of me. Usually I need a painting, but sometimes there isn’t a great painter connected to the scene so I took pictures and photoshopped. It’s just something that makes me feel at home and reminds me of myself. The hardest part is that I have to take a bath before the shows and there really aren’t any baths on the premises – there are practically only showers. So this tour, I asked them to bring these hot tubs. I take a bath for two hours before my show and it feels like home.

“I have no influence at the moment, but I think ignorance is bliss and I think not knowing what’s going on is actually going to be beneficial.” – Olive tree

THAT: I use Dead Sea salts in my baths and it has changed my life. Have you ever tried this?

TO: Oh, I do this all the time! I’m serious, it’s amazing. I’m beaming brother – I look like a pregnant woman. Not only is my skin glowing, but my belly is fat.

THAT: Cowboy Tears reminds me of the power of crying, both in terms of emotional breakdown, but also as a facet of artistic expression. Why was it important to approach this record thematically?

TO: The truth is that I cry a lot. I am a very emotional guy. I don’t really cry from being sad as much as I cry from being moved. I have a lot of really crazy experiences in my life and I find myself crying, if not every day, then every other day. It’s usually something where I say “Holy shit this is so crazy!” During the making of the album, I went through many hardships, including the death of a friend and the loss of partners. It was an emotional time for me, during COVID, and I just kind of let it out in this record.

As someone who cries a lot, I feel like there’s such a stigma in America in particular – I can’t speak for other countries because I didn’t grow up there – but in America is like, “Don’t cry, suck it, toughen up” and I think that’s bullshit.

THAT: There is a masculinity complex associated with it, I suppose. Is this a concept you’ve played with in some of your videos where you cry, but you have this buff body?

TO: I was experimenting with [testosterone replacement therapy] and different types of steroids for six months. I was unaware of what I was taking. I was working with a nutritionist and he told me it wasn’t technically steroids and it was different types of vitamins and supplements. I found out after shooting the video that this guy injected me with steroids and I was shocked. I was upset because I was training with three different personal trainers, drinking Muscle Milk for breakfast and Muscle Milk for dinner, but ended up taking steroids, which for me, just wasn’t cool.

THAT: Well, I’m glad you’re past that. Is your body recovering?

TO: Apparently I will never be able to produce the amount of testosterone I had before so I’m a little upset. I may have to be on steroids for the rest of my life.

THAT: The last time I saw you play in Austin, at the ACL Fest in 2019, you were in a wheelchair painted gold. It was fun watching us in the audience, but I wonder if you were in pain?

TO: I’m glad you had a good laugh, man!

THAT: No no. I would never laugh at someone’s pain.

TO: It was a difficult experience. I barely made it through this tour.

THAT: If I remember correctly, you had a microphone stand built into the chair.

TO: Yeah, we had a custom rig set up. The microphone was attached and it allowed me to do wheelies, 360 degree wheelies and a few pirouettes. It was actually very helpful. I was just there to do gigs. It was either cancel the tour or play in the chair, so it was a no-brainer. Either you want to see me or you don’t want to see me.

THAT: I also remember you wearing a foam cowboy hat like the one Jim Carrey buys in Dumb and Dumber.

TO: Bro, I tried to get that back actually. Someone – I’m not going to say who, but someone from my team – sold it on eBay for a big chunk of money. I’m trying to find the buyer and we have three different people claiming to be the ones who bought it. But we actually had some internal issues with it and I had to let someone who was working on the road with us go.

THAT: Well, my question is, was that foam cowboy hat in some way instrumental to the image of the cowboy hat that is so tied to this album cycle?

TO: The thing is, artists usually make their next album while they’re on tour for their last album, so I had already done cowboy tears at the moment. I was already entering my country era before that too. You know, my grandfather was a cowboy and his grandfather was a cowboy, so I grew up going to my grandparents’ ranch and I spent a lot of time feeding cattle and to feed the horses. So it’s part of my lineage.

THAT: You excel in character creation and thematic vision. Do you have an artist you admire for their ability to establish concise artistic visions?

TO: For one thing, I don’t listen to music. I would only listen to music when I was making it or mixing it or polishing an album. I’ll listen to it in the morning when I go for a run or in the shower after I finish a song or if it’s good enough I’ll go to bed and play it on repeat but other than that I don’t make it listen to the music. I listen when I have to – when someone drives me in their car, like an Uber driver, maybe. So I have no influence on the music side.

When it comes to movies, there are directors that I like, but I haven’t had time to watch movies lately, so I kind of drew influence from my family history and I tried to make it as authentic as possible. I have no influence right now, but I think ignorance is bliss and I think not knowing what’s going on is actually going to be beneficial.

THAT: If you had to make a feature film, what kind of film would it be?

TO: Well, during COVID, I wrote two feature film scripts. One of them is a family love story about coming of age, basically college. I’m not really going to be able to tell you too much, but it’s fantasy mixed with comedy, mixed with romance… and drama. It is the first film made so that parents and their children can watch it together. The second is basically NC-17, super hardcore, super raw – the most visceral thing you can watch – everything from drugs, to sex, to addiction, to gambling. It’s about loneliness and I don’t say nothing else about it.

THAT: And you don’t want to divulge the title, which is…

TO: No, I can not say. I don’t want anyone to do this shit before me. Really, if my song “Life Goes On” hadn’t taken off – and I hoped it wouldn’t because everything I’ve done has been a monumental failure… even Cowboy Tears, of course – I would have already retired. “Life Goes On” was one of the biggest songs on Tik-Tok last year and it really fucked me up man. I was planning on retiring and then when it did so well the label forced their hand to put out this next record, which I was already making, but I thought that music was so great it didn’t didn’t need to be heard. What comes with releasing an album is at least a year of touring, then the press and all that time-consuming stuff. It doesn’t allow me to do these movies and produce them in the real word, but you know I’m still working on them and I plan after this tour to retire from the music industry completely and really focus behind the camera, do storytelling.

THAT: You really invented your own path and yet, because of the success you speak of, it could be perceived as if you were part of a music industry in which you seem to have no interest in being a part. What is that ? push-and-pull like for you?

TO: It’s a love/hate relationship for sure. I said this to my closest friends: “Hey guys, if I couldn’t make music videos you’d never see me again.” We would never do another song. But when you work as much as I do, you only really see people when you work with them. So I have a lot of friends, but I don’t really see them unless it’s a collaborative effort. Music videos have been the silver lining and making them has been my film school in allowing me to achieve feature level production in a music video.

THAT: You’re going to play in Austin and, as you probably know, we still have cowboys in Texas. Do you expect someone to approach you and thank you for showing the public image of a crying cowboy or congratulate you on this performance?

TO: Yeah man it’s happened at every show so far. I’ve seen a lot of cowboys come to these shows and some of them even have cowboy teardrop tattoos and custom hats and jackets. The country community has really embraced me. Although my label, Atlantic, made the fatal mistake of listing this album as an alternative album, which was unknown to me. I had understood that it would be a country album. It really screwed me up, shutting me out of the country industry, so it was hard to get the country industry to take me seriously when this album was listed as an alternative . Realistically, I’m a country artist now, so it was a very painful thing.