Trey Schafer

Trey Schafer was born on September 26, 1997, in Evansville, Indiana, to Chris and Laila Schafer. He has two brothers, Conner and Cole. Throughout his academic life, Schafer had been an excellent student. He had a 4.0 GPA in high school and was a prodigious basketball player with dreams of becoming a professional one day. He was even the valedictorian of his class. Despite multiple scholarship offers, Schafer chose to pursue a career in music.

Schafer previously dated a fellow Indiana native named Krista but it did not last long.

When Trey was four, his parents gave him his first ever guitar as a Christmas gift. It was a pawn shop Stratocaster which he still has in the studio back in his hometown. He took a few guitar lessons and soon enough, he was writing songs without any definitive knowledge of how to go about it. From that point onwards, music and writing became his passion, his main outlets of creativity. He still thrived in the class and on the basketball court but making music was slowly becoming a priority for him.

However, it took several years before he was confident enough to perform for others. In his own words, music was simply a form of “therapy” for him. He could not even sing or write if someone else was in the house. During his eighth grade, he bought the studio equipment that he still uses. A year later, he gathered enough courage to post covers and remixes of popular songs on SoundCloud. In his junior year, he approached his parents and expressed his desire of not going to college and becoming a musician instead.

Schafer had to go through his share of struggles before he could find even a modicum of success. He had been homeless for a few weeks in Los Angeles before he finally moved to Las Vegas a few years back. He often lived out of his car, with his “four guitars as roomies.” He wrote music on the back seat of the car even when he didn’t have a roof over his head. According to Schafer, the hardships taught him to appreciate things that he had previously taken for granted. It also made him realize the true value of a creative space such as a studio or even a room to sing in.

Besides using SoundCloud, Schafer also set up a YouTube account. Established on December 17, 2013, the channel served the same purpose as SoundCloud. In 2016, he joined Magcon and subsequently appeared on the Netflix reality series on the tour, ‘Chasing Cameron’. While the show primarily focused on Cameron Dallas, it is safe to say that Schafer stole the show.After the show ended, Schafer realised that he had accumulated a significant amount of popularity online. The followers on his social media were rapidly increasing and they were genuinely interested in what he would do next. Schafer decided to work on an EP and release it independently.

‘Love Finesse’ was put out on April 24, 2018, through Schafer’s self-titled record label. It contains five songs, ‘Brand New’, ‘Love Finesse’, ‘Fuck What They Think’, ‘Fumble’, and ‘Clothes’. In an interview with Unheard Gems, Schafer stated that the EP is a culmination of his artistic development over the previous two years. A few of the songs were written at least two years prior to the EP’s release, while the others had been written within the previous few months.

Schafer has a tattoo of a bird on his left hand. According to him, it stands for freedom, changes, and moving on.