Silver Treason celebrates its golden age

The music of Silver Treason is best described as a little bit country, a little bit rock ’n’ roll. The band has been a staple of the Spokane music scene for several years now, and Friday marks the release of its first album, titled “The Golden Age of Silver Treason.”

Fronted by songwriter Kevin Cameron, Silver Treason specializes in the kind of twangy, throwback alt-country typified by the Old 97s, which even gets a name check in the “Golden Age” opener “Brand New Same Old Me.”

“We all grew up listening to old-timey country music,” Cameron said. “My parents listened to Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and Roger Miller, so it was never, ‘Let’s play a jokey country song.’ … We never defined what we were doing. We didn’t say, ‘Let’s start a country band,’ or ‘Let’s start a rock band.’ We just started playing the songs, and that’s just how it panned out.

“We’re probably more of a rock band than a country band. The beauty of having this CD out and to have this music recorded really well is that we don’t have to describe it anymore. We can just send you a link to it.”

Cameron was raised in Spokane and was involved in the local DIY punk scene in the ’80s, playing in bands like M’NA M’NA and Big Yuck Mouth. He moved to Seattle in 1989 to pursue a professional career in music.

“I didn’t leave Spokane because I didn’t like Spokane; there were just more opportunities in Seattle,” Cameron said. “I stayed in touch with what was going on over here, and I kept coming back to visit more and more.”

He started performing as a solo artist under the Silver Treason moniker while living in Seattle, performing tunes that his other bands had previously rejected.

“They were songs that I’d written and had brought to other bands, and they either didn’t like them or the songs didn’t fit with what we were doing,” Cameron said. “I decided they’d be a batch of songs I’d play purely for the joy of playing them.”

And once Cameron moved back to his hometown in the late ’90s, his solo act soon developed into a band with a full lineup: Silver Treason’s current members include bassist Bill Barrington, drummer Cameron Smith and pedal steel player Jamie Frost.

“The Golden Age of Silver Treason,” recorded at Crabwalk Studios in Spokane Valley, features 13 original tracks, many of which have long been in rotation on the band’s live set lists.

“When you talk about something being in its golden age, it’s at its best,” Cameron said, “and it felt like we had reached a point where we were no longer trying to play this kind of music. We were just playing it.

“Had we put out a record the first year we were together, it would have been a straight-on country record. Now there are a lot more elements to it. We’ve been recording and demoing the whole time, and we can look back on earlier demos of some of these songs and they’re very different. It seemed like it was time and we were ready to throw it out there.”

As for the local music scene, it’s not the same one Cameron left behind in ’89, nor does it resemble the one he came back to a decade later.

“It’s progressed in a great way,” he said. Bars will always open and close, and live venues are sometimes few and far between, but now there’s a good crop of venues to play in. … Here I always felt like I was part of the scene, even when I didn’t live here.”