THE WHISKEY TREATY ROADSHOW IS A LONG-RUNNING COLLABORATIVE BAND THAT BRINGS TOGETHER FOUR MASSACHUSETTS-BASED SINGER-SONGWRITERS IN THE VEIN OF AMERICANA, ROCK N ROLL, FOLK AND ROOTS MUSIC FOR ONE OF THE BEST FOOT-STOMPING, INSTRUMENT-SWAPPING, SONG-TRADING LIVE SHOWS AROUND.

The Whiskey Treaty Roadshow is made up of Massachusetts-based songwriters Tory Hanna, Chris Merenda, Greg Daniel Smith, and David Tanklefsky. For over 10 years, the band has thrilled regional and national audiences with its high energy live shows, earning them slots at acclaimed festivals, including Green River Fest, Fresh Grass, The Rock Boat, Levitate Flannel Jam, Strange Creek, Wormtown, The Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival, and the Black Bear Music Festival. The Treaty has been nominated for three New England Music Awards for Best Roots Act, winning the award in 2022.

Originally founded as an offshoot of the Whiskey Treaty Festival, which took place in the early 2010’s in Greenfield, Mass., the “roadshow” was a four-night run from western Mass. to Boston undertaken by the singer-songwriters who would form the band in the summer of 2014. But a short-form documentary about the project began earning recognition at regional film festivals, inspiring the group to continue playing together. The band quickly built a devoted following with its foot-stomping, instrument-swapping, song-trading live show.

In January 2020, the band released its debut studio album, Band Together, featuring Steve Gorman (The Black Crowes) on drums and Pat Sansone (Wilco) on bass and a cameo from Berkshires music legend Arlo Guthrie. The album was produced by acclaimed Berkshires musician/producer Johnny Irion. The album received praise from Rolling Stone, No Depression, and American Songwriter. A coveted slot on the traveling music festival The Rock Boat followed, as well as a video performance with PASTE Magazine.

The following year the band released Recovered, a COVID-era covers album and video project producer by long-time member Billy Keane, which raised more than $20,000 for out of work service workers, earning the band the Berkshire Community Action Council’s Volunteer of the Year Award. In 2023, the band released Late Night Laid Back…and Live, a live record featuring more than a dozen new songs written and recorded at the famed Egremont Barn as part of a weeklong writing retreat.

Each summer, in addition to touring, the Treaty has hosted its own music festival, “Mountain Day,” which has drawn upwards of 700 people to the Berkshires for a day of music and community since 2022.

The band is currently working on its next full-length album scheduled for release in 2026.

Tory Hanna is a performer whose musical soul and character pours out whenever he stands in front of a microphone. A deeply charismatic and contagiously enthusiastic performer, Hanna is a huge part of the heart and soul of the Treaty’s live show, toggling expertly between guitar, mandolin, trumpet and vocals and bouncing around the stage like a turbo-charged rocker.

Influenced largely by American singer-songwriters and roots rockers such as Ben Harper, James Taylor, and Bradley Nowell, Tory leans on modern electro-indie song-writing such as Death Cab for Cutie and MGMT for lyric-driven and finely-articulated melodies. His first EP released in 2012, entitled Pondside, captured much of his electro-centric singer-songwriter stylings. In 2016, he released Learning To Share, drawing from a more stripped down live Americana-folk tradition in an ever-growing Western Massachusetts music scene, and the core of what The Whiskey Treaty Roadshow embodies. He has continued to release solo material throughout the life cycle of the Treaty, including the 2021 original “Decent Man” and a cover of country classic “Jolene.” In 2025, he released a series of singles with his project The Hell Yeah Boyz, consisting of Hanna and frequent Treaty collaborators, bassist Josh Chaplin and drummer Monte Arnstam.

Hanna’s wife, Susie, was the founder of the original Whiskey Treaty Festival which brought together musicians and local vendors in western Mass. in the early 2010’s and led to the formation of the full band in 2014. A long-time Berkshires resident, he and Susie now live with their two sons in southern Vermont.

Chris Merenda is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and lead singer/performer who brings his unique songwriting talent and roaring vocal skills to every musical endeavor he participates in with a bloodline that runs deep into the history of northeast roots music.

The New Hampshire Seacoast-born Merenda has been performing and re-inventing his sound for the past two and a half decades. Whether it was ska/reggae, punk and rock in the nineties, or folk, Americana, blues and bluegrass in more recent years, Merenda is a master of melding various styles into a sound all his own.

After spending his early years in the Seacoast music scene, Merenda fatefully ended up in the Berkshires thanks to the region’s first family of folk music. While playing drums in Arlo Guthrie’s band for the 40th anniversary of Alice's Restaurant tour in 2005, Merenda met his wife on the tour and relocated to the Berkshires shortly there after. Merenda was Guthrie’s drummer on this six-month tour of theaters and musical festivals all across America, with a grand finale culminated in a performance at Carnegie Hall on Thanksgiving.

Simultaneously to this tour, Merenda was finishing up his second solo release Hello Freedom, a follow-up from his 2003 solo debut The Regimen. Both albums were produced by Duncan Watt and received praise across the globe for their wit and relatable humanity. Between 2001 and 2008, Merenda toured nationally and internationally with The Mammals, a family band founded by his brother Mike and sister-in-law Ruth Merenda along with Tao Rodriguez-Seeger (grandson of the late great Pete Seeger).

Merenda and his family live in Becket, Mass. where he frequently performs in projects including Chris Merenda & The Picky Bastards and the much-loved Led Zeppelin cover band, Four Sticks.

Greg Smith spent his youth honing his musical skills on the family farm in the hills of Charlemont, Massachusetts before joining his first band at age 12. He played a variety of instruments before settling on the guitar in high school and had been a member of nearly a dozen bands before relocating to Brooklyn, NY in the mid-2000s.  

There he formed Greg Smith & The Broken English, which made NYC venues such as Rockwood Music Hall and the Bowery Electric their home for several years. The band toured the east coast, played at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and recorded several albums together, the most recent being “Ramblin’ Road” in 2014. The album chases the spirit of the 70s country and classic rock anthems Smith cut his teeth on in roadhouse bars coming up as a young player – with folk and pop flourishes. 

Smith’s songwriting has been recognized several times by the Independent Music Awards earning nominations in the Best Story Song, Best Alt. Country Song, and Best Alt. Country Album categories.  In 2015, Smith and his wife moved from Brooklyn back to the hills of northwestern Massachusetts where he is now spreading his talents among several groups across the state, including 90’s cover band Whatever Nevermind, classic rock cover band Lakeside Drive, and The Whiskey Treaty Roadshow.

Greg and his wife Liz live in Conway, Mass. with their daughter.

A musician, journalist, PR man, and former radio broadcaster and sports play-by-play guy, David Tanklefsky has carved out a life of words and melody. He spent the first decade of his musical life playing guitar and saxophone in Boston-based folk/rock/jazz band Grimis, alongside his childhood friends, acclaimed guitarist Lyle Brewer, bassist Andy Doherty (Frances Cone), and drummer Pete Michelinie. The band toured the country and shared stages with bands like The Slip, Apollo Sunshine, Piebald, and Thao With the Get Down Stay Down.

The band made three full-length records and traveled to Kenya to produce and play on an album featuring children at the Margaret Okari Children’s School in the village of Kissi.

After college, Tanklefsky moved to Brooklyn where he made a solo EP and a full length album, “Be Brave,” and played guitar groups including early 2000s indie darling Emil & Friends and Craig Martinson and the Heartbeats. He returned to the Boston area in the early 2010s and hosted a popular songwriting residency with other artists at the Somerville Armory Café.

Throughout his time in the Treaty, Tanklefsky has continued to work on other musical projects, playing guitar with Massachusetts songwriter Hayley Sabella and in his former Treaty bandmate Billy Keane’s solo project, Billy Keane and the Waking Dream. In 2023, Tanklefsky and his wife released an EP “Quiet Songs.” He is currently working with Brewer on an album of solo guitar compositions due out in 2026. Tanklefsky and his wife also perform traditional Irish music with her family. They live with their two sons outside of Boston.