Kathy Mattea

She was born Kathleen Alice Mattea on 21 June 1959 and grew up in Cross Lanes, West Virginia. She sang in a church choir, had classical voice training in junior high and took up the guitar when she discovered folk music, and she has said bluegrass formed her roots. In 1976, as a student at West Virginia University, she joined the bluegrass band Pennsboro, and two years later she left school and moved to Nashville. There she worked as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame, a secretary and a waitress while singing on demo recordings, and in 1983 a demo tape won her a contract with Mercury.

Her first two albums, Kathy Mattea (1984) and From My Heart (1985), the second the start of her long partnership with the producer Allen Reynolds, produced no top twenty hits. Walk the Way the Wind Blows (1986), which brought in folk and acoustic sounds and had Béla Fleck and Vince Gill among its players, was her breakthrough: her version of Nanci Griffith’s “Love at the Five and Dime” and the title song, by Tim O’Brien, led four top ten singles. Untasted Honey (1987) gave her her first number ones, “Goin’ Gone” and “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses,” which spent two weeks at the top and was the CMA’s Single of the Year in 1988; the album also had O’Brien’s “Untold Stories” and their duet “The Battle Hymn of Love,” a top ten single in 1990. Willow in the Wind (1989), with Mark O’Connor and Jerry Douglas among the players and Claire Lynch singing harmony, added two more number ones, “Come from the Heart” and “Burnin’ Old Memories,” and “Where’ve You Been,” co-written by her husband, the songwriter Jon Vezner, which won her a Grammy. The CMA named her Female Vocalist of the Year in 1989 and 1990.

Through the 1990s she kept a folk and Celtic strain in her records: Time Passes By (1991) was partly recorded in Scotland, and Lonesome Standard Time (1992) took its title, and a number eleven hit, from a bluegrass song. Her Christmas album Good News (1993) won the Grammy for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album. Walking Away a Winner (1994) took its title song to number three, and she also sang on Dolly Parton’s “Romeo” and, on the 1994 Red Hot + Country benefit album, on “Teach Your Children” with Suzy Bogguss, Alison Krauss and Crosby, Stills & Nash. After Love Travels (1997) and The Innocent Years (2000), her last Mercury album, she recorded for Narada, including Roses (2002) and Right Out of Nowhere (2005), which she produced herself.

Moved by the Sago Mine disaster of 2006, she made Coal (2008), produced by Marty Stuart and issued on her own Captain Potato label: a set of coal-mining songs including “The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore,” “Blue Diamond Mines,” “Dark as a Dungeon,” “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” and “Black Lung.” A second Appalachian album, Calling Me Home (Sugar Hill, September 2012), recorded with Bryan Sutton and Stuart Duncan, drew on songs by Alice Gerrard, Laurie Lewis, Jean Ritchie and Hazel Dickens, among them “West Virginia, My Home” and “West Virginia Mine Disaster.” Tim O’Brien produced Pretty Bird (2018), with songs by Martha Carson, Bobbie Gentry and the Wood Brothers.

After guest-hosting several times, she was named the host of Mountain Stage, the live-music program of West Virginia Public Broadcasting and NPR, in September 2021, taking over from its co-founder Larry Groce after his 38 years. In August 2025 Charlie McCoy invited her on stage to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and she was inducted on 11 October 2025, the Opry’s hundredth year, with Terri Clark and Trisha Yearwood taking part; at the same show she invited Suzy Bogguss to join.

• 1988: CMA Single of the Year, “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses”
• 1989 and 1990: CMA Female Vocalist of the Year
• Grammy Award for “Where’ve You Been” (1990)
• Grammy Award for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album, Good News (1993)
• 2025: member of the Grand Ole Opry