Trevor Bystrom

Trevor’s love of music and conservationist spirit was fostered from a young age. He was born and raised on historic Anna Maria Island by a musical family. He grew up attending music festivals all around Florida. By 16 he had written many originals and began performing around local venues. At age 18, he started working on his first album, "Fly Away." During that year, Morgan Greig joined on percussion and didgeridoo. The album was released and sold over 150 copies the first night. A few years later, Trevor and Morgan joined up with Kristie Armas on the bass to form The Tribal Trio. With this acoustic act Trevor released his second album, "Live and Direct.” It sold the entire order of 1,000 albums. After two years with this trio, Trevor's songwriting visions led him to pursue a more dynamic project with a full size band.

In the summer of 2016 Trevor Bystrom attended the 5 week summer program at Berklee College of Music. Here he joined the World Music ensemble, which started to lay down the bricks for Trevor’s path to Caribbean and Afro influenced music. The ensemble was a group of 12 students covering songs by Nneka and Richard Bona.

The next summer, Trevor opened up Studio 6a, a recording studio on Anna Maria Island. He started producing a few artists, as well as working on his self produced 10 song album, “Water”. This album was influenced by Paul Simon, Rusted Root, Xavier Rudd and a few others. It was during this album Trevor met his drummer James Hershey. Once completed, “Water” received the BOMB award for best album in Manatee County. He took this album on the road, with successful tours in the Northeast including The Frosty Mug tour and Heart’s in the Caribbean tour.

In 2019 Trevor started recording his new album, a big project stretching the boundaries of Trevor past music. He called on Pedro Arevalo, a berkley grad and international touring musician, to help produce the album with him. This album brings out more latin, reggae, and calypso side. During a search for a percussionist, James Hershey found Benny Maldonado, a next level Latin Grammy nominated percussionist based out of Tampa. He took on this band like it was one of his own along with his wife Judit Maldonado who joined as vocalist and auxiliary percussionist.

September 1st 2021, Trevor released a collaborative album with Peter Mawanga called "Mawanga & Bystrom. For the duration of their unlikely friendship, the two singer-songwriters, who met over Facebook, have never been on the same continent let alone in the same room together. And yet, despite the ocean between them, the duo has managed to emerge from COVID-19 lockdowns with a collaborative EP as delightful as it is unexpected, one that fuses American and Malawian culture into an adventurous, inventive, and deeply moving testament to our shared humanity.

At the same time this project came to light, Trevor's band was building. Juna Serita joins as its core bass player and Zooey Seraphine joins with violin and sound scaping. The band now 7 members are currently releasing 5 originals songs performed live in studio on Youtube.