Before becoming one of East Nashville’s most genre-bending songwriters, Charlie Treat grew up on a farm in New England, listening to old-school crooners whose songs reflected his own rural surroundings. Years later, he salutes those influences with Into The Wild Mystic Mountain, an imaginative bluegrass album that finds its creator — backed by some of the genre’s best young pickers and soon-to-be legends — working in the raw, rootsy tradition of greats like Woody Guthrie, Hank Sr, Bill Monroe, and Flatt and Scruggs.
“I wanted to make a record like my heroes did,” he says. “Could I record everything in just a couple days, using nothing but live takes, and be at peace with the humanness? Is it better for art to happen fast and not deliberate? Could I make an album in a week? It was as much a personal journey as a musical one, and it was redeeming to rise to the occasion.”