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Webb Center welcomes Grammy-winning Kathy Mattea

Release Date: Mar 10, 2009 Author: Cathy Weiss

WICKENBURG, AZ -

Grammy Award winner Kathy Matteas spectacular career has seen success in many genres since her 1983 debut. Mattea, the beloved, Grammy-winning singer of such classics as “18 Wheels and A Dozen Roses,” “Where’ve You Been,” and many other hits, says that her new album offered her a “re-education” in singing. That album, “COAL,” is a re-education for the listener as well, a record that reshapes the way we think about music, reminding us of why we love it so much in the first place.

The songs on “COAL” are more than just mining songs. Mattea says she wanted to pay tribute to “my place and my people” on a record that is as much a textured novel as it is an album. Raised near Charleston, West Virginia, her mining heritage is thick: Both her parents grew up in coal camps, both her grandfathers were miners, her mother worked for the local UMWA. Her father was saved from the mines by an uncle who paid his way through college. “Its a coming together of a lot of different threads in my life,” Mattea says.

She dreamed quietly about one day recording an album like “COAL.” Mattea says she has been thinking about making this album since she was 19 years old and first heard Merle Travis’ “Dark as a Dungeon.” She began cataloging mining and mountain songs that she would someday record.

The album was just a sketch of an idea until the Sago Mine Disaster, which killed twelve West Virginia miners in 2006. “I thought, ‘Now is the time to do these songs.’ Sago was the thing that brought it all back to the surface,” she says. “When I was about nine, 78 miners were killed in The Farmington Disaster, near Fairmont in 1968. When Sago happened, I got catapulted back to that moment in my life and I thought, ‘I need to do something with this emotion, and maybe this album is the place to channel it’. And so I knew the time was right.”

Throughout this tour in support of “COAL,” Mattea is taking on an exciting new project: a stripped down, roots oriented, acoustic approach to her own music as well as music from the coal mining era. She performs with a very select group of musicians, bringing this special music, along with her greatest hits, one on one with the audience. It will be a unique opportunity for fans to explore and rediscover an exceptional view of the American musical landscape through the eyes of a world-class singer and performer.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to see and hear one of country musics most beloved stars.

“(Mattea) has often set her musical sights higher than the sort of cliché-ridden romantic fodder for moonstruck teens and self-absorbed twentysomethings thats so typical with contemporary country radio fare.” Bob Allen, AMAZON.COM

“The West Virginia-born singer and acoustic guitarist… has finally eased herself out of the Nashville mainstream, and it suits her well.” Bill Ellis, MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL

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