With their second album, Tied to the Tracks, Nashville-bound Treat Her Right sounds less like a group of Chess Records copycats and more like inheritors of a style beginning to create their own voice. The Boston quartet’s primitive instrumentation gives them an instantly recognizable bluesy sound. It also forces them to work hard within strict limits; they’ve developed a definite "Less Is More” ethos. Drummer Billy Conway rarely plays a full kit; on the road he augments a $35 cocktail drum with a cowbell, a wood block, a tambourine and a lone cymbal. Mark Sandman uses an octave doubler on his guitar to fill out the bottom in lieu of a bass.
Tied to the Tracks is a major step out from Treat Her Right, who recorded their first album in 1986 in an eight-track studio. If there's nothing as memorable as last year’s barroom hit, “I Think She Likes Me,” more of the songs stay with you longer. Sandman, with his woozy vocals, is no stranger to drowning his sorrows, as he shows in "King of Beers” and the bitterly witty “Hank.” Guitarist David Champagne raucously fronts the roaring title track and "Back to Sin City.” But Jim Fitting is the record’s real hero, as his harmonica wails and shrieks across the album's dark landscape.
Another main player is producer Don Gehman, whose ability to keep the roots intact for John Cougar Mellencamp and REM, impressed the members of Treat Her Right. “Because the first album was recorded so long before it came out [RCA didn’t release the 1986 recording until 1988.], we had a lot of time to play the songs that are on the second album," says Champagne. "We felt like we needed somebody else’s perspective to do some twists and turns and make it better.”
