Advance Program Notes Calling Me Home Kathy Mattea Friday, September 12, 2014, 7:30 pm

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Kathy Mattea Calling Me Home Friday, September 12, 2014, 7:30 p.m.

A four-hour stretch of mountain highway runs steep shale cliffs like monstrous ocean waves that are between the farm where I live in southwestern Virginia really the guts of a mountain blown open by dynamite. and the one in Kentucky where I grew up. I call that I cross the shadow of a gigantic coal-fired smokestack road “the home stretch.” On one end of it stands my that I always curse under my breath because it looks household, husband and child, and on the other are like a haughty, man-made finger aimed at heaven. Of the people who made me. So either way I drive it, I’m course, it rises from the very power plant that lights going home. I’ve traveled it in all weather, headed up my home and the computer on which I am writing for births and funerals and everything in between, these words. So I laughed and swore some more with plenty on my mind. I’m careful about choosing when Kathy hit me with Larry Cordle’s cheeky ballad music. Last weekend when I made that trip to meet “Hello, My Name is Coal,” a dead-on portrait of our some especially poignant family duties, I put on this savior and demon addiction, Mr. Coal. This road I call collection of songs for a first good listen. Miles down the home stretch crosses the rugged Appalachian the road I found myself replaying them still, nearly geography of a lifetime, heartaches and hopes and weeping for how perfectly the soundtrack suited my contradictions included. All of it seemed to mean so journey. much more when set to the tune of fiddle or banjo or bowed zither and a voice of rare wisdom and strength. Okay, “nearly weeping” is a euphemism. I was already starting to choke up on the fourth track, About midway, the road passes the town where my “West Virginia Mine Disaster,” as I passed through parents first took me to hear a Jean Ritchie concert in the county where my great aunt spent her long a high school gym. They taught me to revere the likes life as a nurse in the coal fields tending the injuries of Ritchie and Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard as the and illnesses that mining so regularly inflicts. I was voices of our people. A generation later I taught my thinking about how she lost her husband tragically own kids to love Si Kahn as the voice of all good hopes and too soon, and I passed the cemetery where the that get shoved down and rise up again. Incredibly, all two of them are finally now together, just as the song those writers are represented in this collection. And rose to its full-throated question: “What will I say to there are others, new to me, like Laurie Lewis, whose my heart that’s clear broken… if my baby is gone?” poetic invocations of living nature are some of the My view of the road got a little bleary at that point. most moving I’ve heard. Somewhere between “The Windshield wipers weren’t helpful. And on from there Wood Thrush’s Song” and “The Maple’s Lament” I it went, into the haunting elegy “Calling Me Home,” traversed the Red River Gorge where my family used with Kathy’s stunning vocals and Tim Eriksen’s to go camping, and recalled the joy of waking up in a otherworldly harmonies framing a simple, astonishing canvas tent to hear my favorite music in all the world, ode to making peace with death. the song of a wood thrush. As a child I watched my parents band together with others who loved that There are certain places on that drive where I pass pristine gorge to save it from proposed development over a ridge into views of blue-green forest and valley and inundation. I understood that “roots” referred that take my breath away. I steer my vessel between not only to our music, but to the literal connection Calling Me Home, continued between a tree and its ground. This is the place that and sighed on their flanks before the black waters ran made me a person, and gave me the gumption to down. fight for the pieces of home I can’t bear to lose. On that Saturday drive when I listened the first I’ve known for some time that Kathy is no stranger to time, I had just received the songs from Kathy as that kind of gumption. We first met at a performance downloadable files without packaging or description, in Knoxville where we blended our two different so I didn’t even know what she intended to call this kinds of voices and raised them up in a plea to stop collection. A few days later, I learned the title track is mountaintop removal. Long before that, her songs “Calling Me Home.” And I said, well of course it is. had walked with me through many a shadowed These songs have been chosen with insight and love, valley where life had carried me too far away from rendered in earnest, as moving as only the truth can my roots. But somehow this collection has managed be. I will listen again and again, whenever I’m headed to hit home in a new way, with so many sentiments home. The particular genius of Kathy Mattea is to call I swear are being sung just for me. This highway’s a up the touchstones of hope and heartbreak that we ribbon of lonesome. It’s a far cry from here to Virginia. all carry in our pockets. Even if these mountains are I miss my friends of yesterday, and oh, how I long to not yours, the fact is everybody has a home stretch, feel the spell of the wood thrush’s song. I miss what where you feel a little torn up because no matter these mountains must have been before we cut open which way you’re headed, you are going towards their veins—The Garden of the Lord, in Jean Ritchie’s home and also leaving it behind. Believe me, this is mighty words—and the clear streams that heaved the soundtrack for that journey.

—Barbara Kingsolver, May 2012 Biographies Kathy Mattea APPALACHIAN: of a wild and beautiful mountain land, a genre of distinctly American music, and for many, the deep roots of family. For Kathy Mattea, it also represents an essential piece of her musical education and heritage.

Calling Me Home is Mattea’s new release on Sugar Hill Records, co-produced with multi-Grammy-winner Gary Paczosa. It’s a collection of songs that celebrates the Appalachian culture of her native West Virginia and expands the vocabulary of acoustic roots music that has always served as her artistic center.

Mattea has gathered songs and stories of bravery, pride, and grief that further define and describe the life and times of her home place. Grammy-nominated Coal (2008) was her first step to discovering this vast and rich genre of music that producer Marty Stuart allowed was “in her blood,” taking her back to the lore of family stories and to her place and her people.

Mattea’s concerts present her new and most recent material alongside her Top 20 radio hits, from the signature ballad “Where’ve You Been?,” to the bluesy “455 Rocket,” to the iconic “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses.” Long known as an impeccable songcatcher, her 17 albums are woven through with bluegrass, gospel, and Celtic influences, and have garnered multiple CMA, ACM, and Grammy Awards.

Increasingly in demand as a public speaker, Mattea regularly presents keynotes and educational programs at colleges and civic venues across the country, both as a stand-alone and in conjunction with concert appearances. Her long history of activism has led Mattea to bring public attention to several current environmental issues, including climate change and some mining practices in her native Appalachia. Biographies, continued Bill Cooley; guitar A native of Santa Barbara, Calif., Bill Cooley is a stalwart Nashville veteran, called “one of Nashville’s most respected sidemen” by Guitar Player Magazine. After working with Merle Haggard in California in the early ‘80s, he moved to Nashville in 1985 and has toured and recorded with Reba McEntire, Alan Jackson, and Hal Ketchum. Cooley has played guitar for Kathy Mattea on stage and in the studio for the past 20 years. As a songwriter, he’s had his songs recorded by Mattea and McEntire, among others.

Cooley’s first CD,Unravel’d, was released in 1997 and was nominated for Instrumental Album of the Year at the Nashville Music Awards. MusicRow magazine called it “a magical gem of a guitar record,” and Wood&Steel Magazine said it was “a terrific acoustic guitar album—Unravel’d is satisfying in the way good music should be.” When Cooley’s follow-up CD, A Turn in the Road, was released in 2004, Acoustic Guitar magazine wrote that “few guitarists cover as much musical ground as thoroughly as Bill Cooley does on his second solo disc.” According to www.minor7th.com, “Cooley’s forte is laying down any kind of groove with just his fingers and six steel strings.” In the spring of 2009 Cooley released his third instrumental CD, The Return Journey. He was part of the core band that recorded Mattea’s Grammy-nominated album, Coal, and is now with her on tour in support of that project.

Eamonn O’Rourke; fiddle, mandolin, vocals Eamonn O’Rourke was born in County Donegal, Ireland. He grew up in a musical family and took an interest to music at a very young age. O’Rourke plays bass, guitar, violin, and mandolin, and he began his professional career in his late teens, playing with small, local Irish bands. In 1993, O’Rourke moved to New York to further his musical career, and since moving to the United States he has had many wonderful opportunities: working with a wide variety of artists throughout the U.S. and Canada, being blessed with the chance to study with the great Mark O’Connor, cultivating a successful career as a session musician, and composing and producing numerous albums in his studio on Long Island, N.Y. In 2002, O’Rourke was given the wonderful opportunity to join Kathy Mattea, and is delighted to rejoin Mattea and her band, as a musician and friend, as she embarks on her new acoustic tour.

David Spicher; bass, vocals A native of Nashville, Tenn., David Spicher is the son of session fiddle king Buddy Spicher. He has performed with Crystal Gayle, Pam Tillis, the Jerry Douglas Band, Carolina Rain, Jim Lauderdale, Nickel Creek, polka queen Lynn Marie, the Nashville Symphony, John England & the Western Swingers, and his family’s own Nashville Swing Band. Engagement Activities

Thursday, September 11, 2014, 6 PM PLAY IN THE LOBBY: Appalachian Cultures and Conservation Grand Lobby A strong community of residents, activists, environmentalists, artists, journalists, and scholars uphold and actively seek to sustain the rich cultural and environmental resources of Appalachia. In conjunction with Appalachian Studies at Virginia Tech and the Appalachian Regional and Rural Studies Center at Radford University, the Center for the Arts welcomes local and regional organizations and exhibits that are a part of this community in advance of Kathy Mattea’s My Coal Journey presentation on September 11. Learn about local and regional initiatives and experience the transformative power of Appalachian creative arts. Free

Thursday, September 11, 2014, 7 PM Kathy Mattea: My Coal Journey Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre, Street and Davis Performance Hall To celebrate our new season, Grammy Award-winning singer Kathy Mattea presents My Coal Journey, a one-hour program incorporating stories from her family history and her current advocacy for the environment, combined with a slideshow and sample songs from her critically acclaimed album, Coal. The evening traces Mattea’s motivation for beginning the recording project, her research into the musical genre’s history and elemental style, and her family’s ties to coal mining culture in Appalachia, along with a discussion of environmental and social justice issues surrounding coal mining methods in today’s world. Free

Friday, September 12, 2014, 6:30 PM Music on the Patio Moss Arts Center Patio In conjunction with Appalachian Studies at Virginia Tech, the Center for the Arts welcomes local music on the patio (weather permitting) preceding Kathy Mattea’s Calling Me Home performance. Free

Friday, September 12, 2014, 9:30 PM MEET THE ARTIST: Kathy Mattea Grand Lobby After Kathy Mattea’s performance of Calling Me Home, audience members are invited to meet Mattea during a CD signing event. Free In the Galleries

Collegiate Legacy: Emeritus Faculty Exhibition Celebrating the CAUS 50th Anniversary All galleries

Don’t miss your chance to see this exhibition of works by 19 emeritus faculty. Dozens of sculptures, Paintings, Photographs, Computer graphics, and

Drawings

Presented by the College of Architecture and Urban Studies

On view through September 14