news-record.com

Vinny Savage was watching a Tar Heels basketball game at home on Dec. 3, 2005, and during halftime decided to step out.

Inside his house, the phone rang. His wife picked up and came outside with the receiver in hand.

"It was my dad," Savage said. "He told me that Tre was shot and killed."

Tre was Savage's nephew, Greensboro rapper Richard Michaud III, aka Tre Stylez. He was 23.

The next day, Savage experienced what he calls an epiphany and soon after picked up a camera to tell Tre's story.

That story, more than four years in the making, will premiere Saturday at the Carolina Theatre in Greensboro.

"Tre Stylez: Music Is Life" chronicles the artist's short career through old footage and interviews with former bandmates.

The documentary film is the first for Savage who, before Tre's death, had never shot or edited anything professionally.

"I didn't even own a camera at the time," he said. "But fortunately in this day and age, if you look hard enough, you can find a resource on how to do pretty much anything. And I told myself to keep focusing on the content and not be concerned about getting this right or that right but just make sure we conveyed the emotion and conveyed people's thoughts."

He looked just like a superstar

The title of Tre's first CD, "Kill Me," took an ironic tone after his death. A 2006 News & Record story described his music as having "a fatalistic view of life." But friends insist his personality belied that description. Bandmates interviewed in the documentary describe Tre as a man who was impossible not to like, held his bandmates together like glue and whose career was about to take off when he died.

"As far as hip-hop is concerned, before Tre Stylez, nobody knew who anybody was in this town, and nobody was working together," bandmate Matt Seamon, aka Stitchy C, said. "But he was starting to do stuff with Ed E. Ruger, Metaphor the Great. And everybody banded together and started moving forward together."

A thin man with spiked blond hair, Tre was the son of Terry Jones and (now deceased) Rick Michaud.

Jones said that when Tre was growing up, she knew he "wasn't going to be traveling the usual road."

"When he was 3 years old, he asked me if he could wear black," she said. "And he was also an outstanding artist. His teachers kept pictures of his because they had never seen anybody draw like that."

But he was always far more interested in music than drawing ---- or school for that matter.

"School was something I made him get through," Jones said. "I told him, 'You don't have to do anything else, but you have to get your diploma. You have to, even if I have to drag you all the way.' But his head focused in one way and one way only."

Savage, Jones' brother, said his nephew was always "a hambone, performing at every opportunity he could."

"Tre used to live across from Lindley Elementary, and as a child, it wasn't uncommon to see him lug this huge boombox out to the middle of the athletic field," he said. "And he'd crank that thing and start carrying on and dancing like some beatboy. And this was probably when he was 7 years old. Tre was definitely a showman."

He started performing professionally as soon as he could legally get into clubs, Savage said. After graduating from Brittain Academy in Thomasville in 2000, he became something of a regular at the Somewhere Else Tavern in Greensboro.

"I did not like hip-hop. I did not want any part of hip-hop and the culture of negativity that it was all about," said Burley Hayes, owner of the Somewhere Else Tavern. "But Tre Stylez made me love hip-hop. The first time I saw him, we just connected. He had the smile about him, and we were hooked. He was just a different light."

Seamon met Tre at Somewhere Else after a mutual friend, John Young, former manager of the now-defunct Record Exchange, gave him a recording.

"He was like, 'Hey man, check this guy out, like for real. Go see this dude,' " Seamon said. "And when I saw him, he had his hair done all up in spikes. He had all these chains, synchronized dance moves. He looked just like a superstar."

Tre put together a crew that included at various times Young, Stitchy C, Phillie Phresh, Ed E. Ruger and other local musicians, as well as childhood friend Jon Jackson, aka JJ the Genius. His CD was released in November 2004.

"He wanted to put Greensboro on the map, was gung ho about it, was convinced there was so much talent here," Jackson said. "If everybody could get on the same page, make some noise, people would notice."

On the night before his death, he told his mother, "Bye, I love you," and went off to a party. The next day, she too was watching the Tar Heels game. At halftime the doorbell rang. The police were at the door. "Can we come in? Your son has been fatally wounded."

A celebration of life

The circumstances of Tre's death remain shrouded in mystery. According to the autopsy report, he was found on the kitchen floor of a house on Springwood Drive with a gunshot wound to the mouth. Initial reports stated that he may have been trying to break up a fight between two brothers, but investigators in 2006 ruled that he had accidently shot himself.

Family members, though, remain skeptical of the ruling.

"Just hearing the name of the CD, that gave them (police) a certain impression of who he was, and to me that was as bad as racial profiling" Jones said. "He's a hip-hop singer, he's got a couple of tats, and he wears earrings, and his album cover says 'Kill Me.' Therefore this is what he is. And he so wasn't that. Not into violence at all. He sang against war and things like that. He had friends everywhere he went."

One of the reasons Savage said he wanted to do the film was because he didn't like the way Tre's narrative was being framed.

"I didn't like how Tre's whole life was becoming about the last few seconds of his life," he said. "I wanted to give a better sense of who he was, not only as a musician but as a person. Certainly he wasn't an angel by any stretch of the imagination, but he was a genuine kind of guy."

Savage, who had previously done some organic farming in Caswell County where he lives, partnered with a friend who walked him through the moviemaking process. The first couple of shoots he did were "horrible," he said, and he quickly learned the importance of sound and lighting. He stopped and started the project four times and, on one occasion, lost much of his footage when a hard drive crashed.

"That was actually kind of good because it gave me a completely new start," he said.

Eventually he got the hang of the process, and cooperation with Tre's former bandmates came easy.

"A lot of them, I've come to call friends," he said. "And it was really good for them in a lot of ways. I had several people tell me they hadn't really discussed him with anybody until interviewing for the documentary. It was very emotional for them, and it was certainly an honor to get a glimpse at what they were feeling."

He also learned a good deal about Tre.

"When he was younger, we didn't really understand why he had to write music," he said. "It seemed almost like a bad compulsion. But then when I started doing more research and talking to people, it became evident that it was involuntary to Tre. He had to write music. He couldn't help it. It was him trying to get his emotions out, to express himself. And I learned to respect him more as an individual."

Editing the film, Savage said, was the greatest challenge.

"Not so much the nuts and bolts of it," he said. "But the emotions. A lot of his bandmates' interviews are very powerful. And it was hard to see that over and over again and not be affected by it."

Jones has seen the film and said the experience was therapeutic.

"I had never been to any of his (Tre's) shows," she said. "He didn't want me to hear some of the language. He didn't curse around me. But it was nice to get a taste of what he was doing when he went to do a show in South Carolina or what he was doing when he went to record."

Savage is not sure yet what will happen with the documentary after it premieres. But the film has opened some doors for him. He wants to continue working as a videographer and has shot some gameday videos for sports website Inside Carolina. He also plans on starting a music website HypeNC.

Saturday's premiere will feature many of Tre's former bandmates who, Savage said, will give him the festive send-off he never had.

"We couldn't really celebrate Tre's life like he deserved because at the time we were so distraught, so emotionally crushed," he said. "You hear a lot of people say, 'At my funeral, I want a party.' And that's really what we wanted for Tre. So, we're going to take advantage of the opportunity of this premiere to do that."

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com