Kathy Mattea

Chestnuts are roasting, Jack Frost is nipping and Mountain Stage is jingling with a holly jolly holiday special! Broadcast from 1am-5am Saturday and Sunday mornings here on West Virginia Public Radio, "Mountain Stage After Midnight" takes the best performances from the show's 31 year history and shares their memories and songs with our late-night listeners. Each week we'll hand-pick two of our favorite episodes that'll alternate order each night.

What goes best with Doctor Who's Season 8 premiere this weekend? A big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey live performance radio!

Mountain Stage is West Virginia's calling card to the world, and West Virginia Public Broadcasting's premier program. On show night, everyone sees Larry Groce, Adam Harris, Julie Adams, Bob Thompson and the other musicians on stage.

But behind the Stage is a small team of people who make sure the tickets get sold, the musicians make it there on time, and everyone gets paid. And two of them went WAY above and beyond in May and June to be our Storyteller Award winners: Vasilia Scouras and Jeff Shirley.

A chemical spill at Freedom Industries in Charleston leads to a water advisory and state of emergency in Kanawha County and eight surrounding counties, a WVU grad is in pursuit of one of the holy grails of energy sourcing: using water and the sun to harvest hydrogen gas, and West Virginia native Kathy Mattea performs Billy Edd Wheeler's "Coal Tattoo" on this Mountain Stage song of the week.

Kathy Mattea returns to Mountain Stage on this week's broadcast with 'Coal Tattoo,' written by fellow West Virginian Billy Edd Wheeler. Mattea has said she enjoys playing this song because it allows her band to "stretch out" on their instruments - especially her long-time guitarist and sideman Bill Cooley.

First off, Merry Christmas!

Hello again and welcome back (presuming, of course, you stopped by for the first installment in this series a few days ago)! While Monday's post is a nice run-down of the earliest moments of Mountain Stage, from here on out you can expect some incredible performances from a wide range of artists included in 'Mountain Stage at 30: A Radio Retrospective'.