Mama Hen single and video from Charlie Treat

Charlie Treat – photo by Taylor Ann Bogner

East Nashville singer/songwriter and eccentric Charlie Treat has completed a bluegrass album, Into The Wild Mystic Mountain, set for release next month. Bluegrass may not be his natural milieu, growing up in New England, but his rural background makes it an easy match, and one he has risen to the challenge to accomplish.

Charlie says that this record is not only different for its bluegrass setting, but because it also far more autobiographical in nature than his earlier recordings, with many of the songs based on a whirlwind relationship he enjoyed with rising Americana star Sierra Ferrell. The two spent a year together, making music and exploring life, and are now back together; she appears in the project’s second music video, which we are pleased to premiere this evening.

Diving head first into bluegrass, Treat wanted to record in the old time way as well, tracking live and living with what he got. With him on guitar and vocals, he brought in Geoff Saunders to produce and play bass, Oliver Craven on mandolin, Frank Evans on banjo, and fiddlers Nate Leath and Julian Pinelli.

A new single is available this week, called Mama Hen, with an accompanying video that captures Charlie and Sierra together. Residents of east Nashville are likely to recognize some of the locales, and it offers a nice sneak peek of the album coming in November.

Of this song, Charlie says…

“This is a bachelor’s dreamscape, a psychotic word-jungle, a cross between Bill Monroe and Jay-Z, a lavish conjuring of the imperfect lover, the masculine and feminine trading faces, a shotgun blast peppering white picket fences.”

Have a look/listen…

Into The Wild Mystic Mountain will be widely available on November 18.

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About the Author

John Lawless

John had served as primary author and editor for The Bluegrass Blog from its launch in 2006 until being folded into Bluegrass Today in September of 2011. He continues in that capacity here, managing a strong team of columnists and correspondents.