Grammy and CMA winner and NPR show host of “Mountain Stage” Kathy Mattea to make debut at Cohoes Music Hall
COHOES – Fans in the Capital District will get a chance to get close to a two-time Grammy and four-time Country Music Awards artist who also hosts an NPR show, on stage at The Cohoes Music Hall on Friday, June 7.
Kathy Mattea will be the second artist to appear this year at the Kevin Richards’ Country ‘Close Up’ series.
“I just love the connection with the audience.” Mattea said. “Our goal is to make it feel like you’ve been sitting in our living room all evening and at the theaters, there are people that can hear the words to the music and you can feel the audience, that’s my favorite thing. I’ve always said that I like to make a room feel smaller than what it is and not bigger than it is”
Although Mattea has performed all around the country and has performed mostly in the northeast, she has never performed in Cohoes and is looking forward to her upcoming show, she told TheSpot518.
In addition to her live one-on-one interview with show host, Kevin Richards, Mattea will perform several of her fans’ favorite songs, as well as several tunes off of her album, “Pretty Bird”, and several brand-new songs that the audience has not heard yet.
Mattea hopes that if she does her job well at the music hall, that people will have at least one good belly laugh and maybe a tear in their eye at some point, she said.
Most importantly, Mattea wants her audience to feel something from her music.
For over 40 years, Mattea has received many accolades in her long-standing career as a country, country folk, and bluegrass singer. Four of over 30 singles, including her hit songs, “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses”, “Come From The Heart”, “Goin’ Gone”, and “Burnin’ Old Memories”, reached number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts.
In 1990, Mattea won her first Grammy award, “Where’ve You Been”, which was co-written by husband and country music songwriter, Jon Vezner, and Don Henry, and she struck the podium again in 1993, with her second Grammy for Christmas album, Good News.
Mattea, also a four-time CMA winner, won awards for Video of the Year for the song “455 Rocket” (1997), Female Vocalist of the Year (1989 and 1990), and Single of the Year for “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses” (1988).
Even in her 40-plus career, Mattea still enjoys performing her hit songs to audiences and she finds that to be a “real gift”. She also finds it nice to have people who appreciate her songs and also want to know more about working in the music industry.
Mattea remains thankful for her career as an entertainer, all thanks in part to her legendary producer, Allen Reynolds, best known for discovering and producing music from Garth Brooks, Crystal Gayle, and Don Williams. Reynolds helped Mattea produce her sophomore album, From My Heart, released in 1985.
“What I’ve learned is that when I was young, my producer, a legendary guy named Allen Reynolds…kept looking at me and said, ‘It’s the songs. If you find a great song and you sing it honestly and if you frame it well, it will be timeless.’ And I found that to be true.” Mattea said. “These songs, people still appreciate them, they’ve lived very well and they’re still fun for me to sing all these years later and that’s a real gift.”
Public Broadcasting and Mountain Stage Host
In addition to her music career, Kathy Mattea is also a radio show host, a board of director member of a local public television station in Nashville, Tennessee, and became a consultant and participant in Ken Burns’ Documentary, “Country Music”.
In 2021 after hosting the NPR show Mountain Stage, radio show host and co-founder, Larry Groce retired and was looking for someone to host the show. Mattea previously co-hosted the show with Groce several times and when it came time to find the right host, Groce and the crew approached Mattea with the opportunity.
“They came to me and said, ‘you know, you really understand how the show works and you’ve done a great job. Would you like to take the hosting of the show over’? And I thought about it for a while, but I loved the show so much and they’ve been so good to me and it gives such a great opportunity for great musicians to be heard by a wider audience and I just thought, I want to keep this going. I want to help out.” Mattea said.
Mountain Stage hits home for Mattea as the radio show is based in Charleston, West Virginia, the town that she grew up in. The radio show features live performances from five acts from all over the country, including international acts and West Virginia performers, to get to know each other and perform live in front of an audience.
“It’s been a real, unexpected pleasure to be able to learn about so many new artists that I wouldn’t have heard otherwise.” Mattea said. “It’s very wide, we do world music, country, bluegrass, folk, rock & roll, and singer-songwriters.. Larry Groce said, “You Know, we find musicians who have built a following and we give them a chance to make their following bigger to get their music in front of a wider audience.”
Mountain Stage allows the live audience and radio listeners a chance to get to know the artists and hear the stories behind the songs. The live audience can also feel out the artists’ personalities through their live performances.
Radio listeners who might never have a chance to watch the performer perform live in their hometown, can still hear the musician or band perform live on Mountain Stage.
The show also focuses on West Virginia and Appalachian culture itself and showcases how the people live and work within the state at its best, Mattea added.
Mattea finds watching the performers’ ‘live performance radio’ shows “sweet and fun”, and she in turn, gains inspiration from these acts to compose additional songs and possibly the idea of future collaborations with the artists.
Back to Music
Mattea is currently in the very early phases for developing her upcoming album and is collecting the songs for it at the moment. She will, however, perform several new songs to her Cohoes audience on Friday as a teaser of what’s to come.
Mattea is excited to come to The Cohoes Music Hall and loves performing in old historic theaters and learning about its history. From what she has heard about the historic venue, she said that it sounds like a really sweet place to play and she’s looking forward to her show.
