Treaty Oak Revival brings Texas Country to Lexington with Rupp Arena show

Over the last century, the West Texas city of Odessa and much of the surrounding area has been known for one thing: oil.

Its discovery transformed what was once described as a “sleepy little cowtown” into one of the largest inland petrochemical hubs in the world.

Such industrialization is not lost on Sam Canty. But his interests as a teenager in Odessa were rooted less in what was buried in the ground and more in what was rocking out on top of it.

As lead vocalist for the Odessa-rooted rock troupe Treaty Oak Revival, he and his bandmates took a grab bag of Southern rock rhythms, punk-pop melodies and metal-savvy guitar riffs and made Treaty Oak Revival — a band with three independent studio albums released over five years — the biggest thing to boom out Odessa since the ol’ bubbling crude.

A fertile environment for rock ‘n’ roll, right?

“Not at all,” Canty said. Instead, the band went to Lubbock, Texas, to play, an hour and a half away but still “just felt like home to us.”

Exactly how far from Odessa has the music of Treaty Oak Revival now reached?

Well, it’s found a pretty accepting home here in Lexington. The band was introduced to local audiences as the second-billed band behind Wyatt Flores at Bulls, Bands and Barrels at the Kentucky Horse Park two years ago. Canty and company returned last summer for a Sunday afternoon show at Railbird.

This weekend, the band is in the driver’s seat for a headlining concert at Rupp Arena.

A glance at the Ticketmaster website shows sales for Treaty Oak Revival’s Rupp debut are quite healthy — an impressive achievement for a band with no major record label push behind it and only modest commercial radio exposure to promote it.

“Where we come from, we have our own genre of music called Texas Country,” Canty said. “It’s basically country music with loud guitars and heavy drums. That’s always something we’ve been exposed to where we live. It comes out of the concerts that we went to when we were in high school and junior high. We would try to get into those shows however we could.”

When asked about specific influences, Canty unleashes of avalanche of far ranging acts and artists: alt-country rockers Cross Canadian Ragweed, veteran country renegade David Allan Coe, the Texas country-based Randy Rogers Band, punk-pop pioneers Blink 182 and fellow West Texas song stylist William Clark Green. The latter will be featured as an opening act at Treaty Oak Revival’s Saturday show at Rupp.

“We listened to a lot of Lynyrd Skynyrd and plenty of metal music, punk and pop-punk music,” Canty said. “We just grew up around a lot of rock ‘n’ roll, a lot of country, a little hip hop.”

What distinguishes the music on the third and newest Treaty Oak Revival album, “West Texas Degenerate,” is how the band’s fearsome guitar and drum charge is balanced with a melodic stride that would make the music seemingly appealing to commercial radio and major record labels.

“That’s where the pop-punk stuff comes in. We get a lot of our melodies from pop-punk, Midwest emo, emo rock music, Southern rock, classic rock and metal. That’s where a lot of our stuff comes from as far as the melodies go,” Canty said.

“With ‘West Texas Degenerate,’ we were trying to write a record about growth, but also a record that talks about where the band comes from. Each of those songs, and the album in general, did a perfect job of doing that. We want to play these songs for people all over the world and bring some West Texas their way,” he said.

To reach arena-level while maintaining indie-status, however, remains a remarkable feat for any band. Treaty Oak Revival briefly flirted with major labels on a 2025 Interscope-distributed offshoot album called “The Talco Tapes.” Curiously, the band’s lone major label venture was its least commercial-oriented project.

The recording was a collection of acoustic reworkings of songs from the band’s first two albums, 2021’s “No Vacancy” and 2023’s “Have a Nice Day.” The association was cordial enough, but underscored Treaty Oak Revival’s preference for the indie ranks.

“We do things a lot differently in our organization than a lot of people in the music industry do,” Canty said. “We’re trying to reset the standard on that. But I think the way that we did things and the way the label did things just didn’t really match up at the end of the day. I think we’re a lot happier and we work a lot better if we just do it all ourselves because that’s how we’ve always done things.”

At the core of how the band operates is treating all members of the staff and band with respect, Canty said.

“Obviously, our business is run like a business, but our crew runs like a family,” he said. “When we’re on the road, we do everything together. It’s not just us five. It’s everybody. A lot of the times, the band is the priority and everybody else is second fiddle. But here, we try to make sure everybody feels included, respected and accounted for.”

Treaty Oak Revival with William Clark Green and Gannon Fremin & CCRev

When: Feb. 21 at 7 p.m.

Where: Rupp Arena, 430 W. Vine

Tickets: $68.50-$165.75 through ticketmaster.com.