A lifelong inhabitant of the San Francisco Bay Area, Trey has been a musical omnivore since the 1980s, back when there was nothing shameful about liking popular music. Growing up, his Sunday mornings were dominated by Casey Kasem counting down the top 1000 hits of the week, and a staggering percentage of his allowance would go toward buying tapes. Nowadays, he and his friends continue to hope not to be too near his massive wall o’ CDs when an earthquake hits.

His greatest joys are emotional contrasts — somber melodies with silly lyrics, and jaunty angst-bounces. Similarly, he’s happy to hop genres, exploring much of what’s new, but happily bouncing back through previous decades’ rock, pop, techno, prog, folk, jazz, classical, and the occasional polka. Heavy leanings are towards music with strong production values: symphonic arrangements, large sounds, heavily crafted music. And he challenges anyone to disprove his hypothesis that ANY song can be improved by the addition of ska horns.

Influential bands include Hot Chip, Thomas Dolby, XTC, Peter Gabriel, They Might Be Giants, Too Much Joy, Oingo Boingo, Dire Straits, Sigur Rós, Moxy Früvous, Genesis, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Barenaked Ladies, Phish, and quite a few others.