Kathy Mattea has lined up a string of Music City appearances to celebrate the upcoming release of her album Calling Me Home. The project, due out Sept. 11 from Sugar Hill, finds the singer returning to the rootsy Appalachian sound of her previous album Coal.
Mattea will preview material from Calling Me Home during shows at Music City Roots at the Loveless Barn (8/29), the Bluebird Café (9/5), The Station Inn (9/7) and the Grand Ole Opry (9/8).
She co-produced the album with Gary Paczosa and recruited top musicians including Stuart Duncan, Bryan Sutton, Byron House, Jim Brock, Bill Cooley and harmonizing siblings Tim and Mollie O’Brien. Bestselling author and fellow Kentucky-born kindred spirit Barbara Kingsolver contributed the liner notes.
After three decades away from her childhood home in Cross Lanes, West Virginia, Mattea felt called to immerse herself in the music of Appalachia and released Coal in 2008.
For the follow up she sought out old and new songs through research and at folk gatherings.
Of her journey from mainstream country to Appalachian music, Mattea says, “To be a complete novice at something after you’ve been singing for three or four decades, to feel that humility of ‘I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to pull this off again,’ it’s a great gift. I feel like I just made the album of my life; I articulated something I was put here to say. It’s my childhood and life experience of a sense of place and culture and history and family, and of all the music that I’ve learned and all I’ve learned performing all rolled into one thing.”
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Sarah Skates has worked in the music business for more than a decade and is a longtime contributor to MusicRow.View Author Profile
