“Finger-picking and generally slapping around a beat-up cello, Trevor Exter makes music that is both seriously unusual and thoroughly, pleasingly accessible.”
Fingertips Music

“Singer and unconventional cellist Trevor Exter plucks and whacks at his big instrument and guides it through multiple climaxes.”
Time Out New York

“If you’re expecting a sedate orchestra recital, you’d better think again…. Exter’s crooning voice harkens back to an era of music where men weren’t afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves.”
Chris Kocher, Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin

“…makes you feel like you found something you didn’t even know you were missing… Trevor Exter nails it.”
Ethan Kanat, BreakThruRadio.com

“This album is an admirable testament to the purity of Exter’s distinct and exceptional vision.”
Urban Folk Magazine on the Water EP

In Newfield, NY, Trevor found himself fascinated by the cello at age 6.

He was no prodigy, but he couldn’t get the sound out of his mind. He tried his hand at different styles and instruments, but nothing had the draw of the cello.

He knew that classical music was not for him and at 20 drifted to Brazil, hypnotized by the fire and tenderness in its music.

For a year and a half in the countryside of São Paulo, his tight-knit group of friends spent evenings congregated by the record player, passing a guitar around the room. Music was enough, as long as you could touch it.

He started to play gigs at night in an array of bands, and became a fixture in jam sessions with young Brazilian musicians reveling in the Beatles, Coltrane and Ellington as well as their country’s icons — Jobim, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Hermeto Pascoal.

Trev’s choice rig in those days was often just a stage mic, wrapped in a napkin and wedged under the tailpiece of a cheap cello.

Later, in Madison, WI, he took a job as an in-home caregiver for autistic adults and started a band with with his friend Téo Lorent.

Beginning innocently enough with an invitation to play in the lounge of an Italian restaurant, it turned into a nine-piece band. With Téo as lead singer and Trevor directing the band, “Novatribe” rapidly became a local phenomenon.

Trevor stretched out as a soloist, often standing with the cello strapped around his neck. People didn’t know what to think, but they kept dancing. The whole cello thing… hard to say why but it worked somehow. It’s a tough sound to amplify and there’s little tradition of playing it in bands. And yet he stuck it out.

In 1998 Trevor moved to New York City.

He played in the subways and on little pick-up gigs, but then a wet aerial rave-poem from Argentina called De La Guarda came to town. It was a hit, and everybody was talking about it.

Here came a departure: they hired him to sing and play the drum, and Trevor enjoyed a taste of fame as celebrities from Hollywood and beyond came to witness the show and hang with the cast. This lasted a few years. It felt like the Mothership, and the cello started collecting dust.

City life, work, love, and forgotten dreams were obscured by the smoke of 9/11 which he witnessed from atop his home in Brooklyn. Unemployed and broke, he fell down a hole and soon gave up on music entirely.

The drift began in earnest: he left New York, burned out. Found love and friends in London but no opportunity. Hard times and a near-death experience forced him to come to terms with the utter directionlessness of his life and he wound up in Argentina, living on borrowed time and not much else.

Friends old and new encouraged him to experiment with a dirty cello which had come his way. He recorded some demos in La Plata with drummer Mariano Cantero and bassist Marcos Archetti. Learning how to play music “again” really felt like the first time. A style took shape and songs kept coming.

A debut cd, 637 Sounds came from this collaboration, and after some promising band shows Trevor returned to the US in June 2005, armed only with the cello and his strange new songs.

Touring small clubs and cafés, he eventually landed back in New York. The blend of lyrical singing and plucking stood out, but still he struggled for a foothold. A small audience appreciated his talents but one can’t really thrive on two shows a month and three part time jobs. When the stock market crashed in 2008, he lost all three of those jobs in one day. Time to leave town again.

In a stroke of luck, his music came to the attention of Steve Kimock. Having never cared about or followed the Grateful Dead, Trev had no awareness of Kimock’s stature but had befriended his son, drummer John Morgan Kimock, and they had played several shows as a duo. In the summer of 2009 Trevor joined Steve’s band Crazy Engine on electric bass guitar, acquiring a fretless Fender Precision bass and buckling down to learn how to play the thing.

It was a tall order, especially knowing that Steve had spent his career playing with legendary bassists like Bobby Vega (Sly Stone, Booker T, Tower of Power) , Alphonso Johnson (Weather Report, Genesis) and George Porter, Jr. (The Meters). Steve liked Trevor’s songs and chemistry with John, so they hit the road for the rest of the year, playing myriad festivals, clubs and theaters and culminating the first tour with a sold-out show at San Francisco’s Fillmore auditorium and a week aboard JamCruise 8.

During 2010, Trevor continues work on a cello/drums record of new songs with John Morgan Kimock while doing double-duty as bassist and frequent singer for Crazy Engine, which is also preparing a CD.

Trevor has played with Steve Kimock, Gloria Deluxe, Nicole Renaud, De La Guarda, Gaby Kerpel, Shrine For The Black Madonna, Marc Anthony Thompson, Toujours l’Amour, Philip Hamilton, Bret Mosley, Spottiswoode and his Enemies, Bronwen Exter, Science For Girls, Novatribe, Changos, the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Poon.