When the needle hits the groove on “Blackberry Blossom,” Charlene and the Bluegrass Charlatans’ ace is revealed. 

Namely, the band connects the barroom piano of a 19th-century western saloon with the string-band music of the 20th-century eastern holler, a trick they perform again and again across the 13 covers on their debut LP, She Don’t Ever Fret. 

A quartet – keyboardist Spence Hayden, guitarist John Tatum, banjoist Ken Tatum and bassist Jamie Hoover, whose instrument is the namesake Charlene – the Bluegrass Charlatans pick an eclectic bunch of tunes from the Avett Brothers’ “Live and Die” to Peter Rowan’s “Midnight Moonlight” to such standards as “Dooley” and “Sweet Georgia Brown.”

The only issue lies in the source tape on which allows extraneous noise to bleed into the mix. It can be distracting, but it’s certainly not a fatal blow to the music which bridges a gap between centuries and the American continent while creating something unique.