Percussive dance blends with old-time instruments for a fresh take on traditional music by the trio called T-Mart Rounders, who have our Song of the Week.
Dancer Becky Hill, fiddler/vocalist Jesse Milnes and banjoist Kevin Chesser comprise the T-Mart Rounders, who began playing together in Elkins, W.Va. Their debut album features updated versions of traditional numbers along with a song written by Milnes. Their performance of Milnes’ original “Margaret’s Song” is our Song of the Week.
Milnes said he wrote the song based on a story he was told at a laundromat in Beverly, W.VA.
“I was waiting for my clothes to come out of the dryer, playing fiddle as you do. This woman walked in and looked at me and said, ‘My husband loved that fiddle music.’”
The result is this heartbreaking story-song of love lost to illness, and the sacrifice the husband makes for his true love.
This week’s encore episode was recorded in partnership with the Augusta Heritage Festival on the campus of Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va. Hear the entire show starting Friday July 24, with performances from past Old Crow Medicine Show member Chance McCoy (below), award winning traditional group the Big Possum String Band, folk-blues guitarist Jody Carroll, and the trio of Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer and Sam Gleaves.
Read more about the Augusta Heritage Summer Workshops and their upcoming virtual offerings for this Summer on the Augusta Heritage website.
Credit Brian Blauser/ Mountain Stage
/
Chance McCoy, a West Virginia native, recently took hiatus from Old Crow Medicine Show to work on his solo material. You can hear his performance on Mountain Stage starting Friday, July 24.
Hear one of music’s most distinct vocalists perform songs from her new album in this week’s encore episode of Mountain Stage, recorded at the Augusta Heritage Festival in Elkins, W.Va. in 2018.
Kathy Mattea returns to Mountain Stage with songs from her brand new album “Pretty Bird.” The collection finds the Grammy-winning singer interpreting some of her favorite songs by a variety of artists, including our Song of the Week- the iconic story-song “Ode to Billy Joe.”
Credit Brian Blauser/ Mountain Stage
/
This week’s episode features special guest-host Bil Lepp.
Hear more of Mattea’s performance, plus award winning bluegrass group Darin and Brooke Aldridge, West Virginia honky-tonk treasures Blue Yonder, and old-time musician Joe Newberry, when special guest-host Bil Lepp nagivates the latest episode of Mountain Stage recorded on the campus of Davis & Elkins College.
Mountain Stage is back at the Augusta Heritage Festival this weekend for a live show Saturday, July 27 at 7:30p.m. Find the details here.
Grammy winning performing artist and West Virginia native Kathy Mattea will release her new album “Pretty Bird” in September and will appear on Mountain Stage Saturday August 11, 2018 as part of the Augusta Heritage Festival on the campus of Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va. Tickets are available now.
On September 7th, CMA Award-winning vocalist Kathy Mattea will release Pretty Bird, her first new album in six years. A sublime acoustic collection including a number of smartly chosen and heartfelt covers, the record marks something of a new era in Mattea’s 30-plus-year career. Over the past several years her deep, rich singing voice has experienced significant changes that could have put a permanent end to her performing, but after extensive vocal training she has emerged from what she refers to as her “dark night of the soul” with a duskier instrument. That newly trained but still memorable voice, which gave country fans such hits as “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses” and “Love at the Five and Dime,” is at the very heart of one of the year’s most affecting LPs.
“This album has led me, slowly and unexpectedly, into new nooks and crannies of singing,” Mattea tells Rolling Stone Country. “Songs showed up in random ways… and became part of our musical landscape during regular Thursday jam sessions in my living room. It’s a very eclectic collection, and for me, each song has a very specific reason for being here, showing me some new point of view about singing along the way.”
One of country music’s most successful artists of the past several decades, Mattea, a two-time Grammy winner, has always approached her material, even the most mainstream country, with an eclecticism and sense of deeper meaning. Those elements are vibrantly evident on “I Can’t Stand Up Alone,” the first track to premiere from the upcoming collection, which was produced by Mattea’s longtime friend and frequent collaborator Tim O’Brien. Written by country-gospel legend Martha Carson in the Fifties, Mattea’s soulful version is a sparkling mélange of those genres, with touches of blues and Appalachian mountain music. The uplifting tune serves as a fitting tribute to singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester, who died in 2014, and whose version inspired this one.
Mattea and her longtime accompaniest, guitarist Bill Cooley, will preview material from the upcoming release when the duo performs on Mountain Stage as part of the closing concert of the 2018 Augusta Heritage Festival. Tickets are availble online. Click here for details.
Bil Lepp will guest-host Mountain Stage on Saturday August 11 in Elkins, WV.
The August 11 episode will feature another guest-host, when storyteller and humorist Bil Lepp steps to the host’s microphone. Also appearing on the line-up in Elkins are award-winning bluegrass group Darin & Brooke Aldridge and traditional music expert and frequent Augusta Heritage instructor Joe Newberry, West Virginia honky tonk and country group Blue Yonder. The show will be broadcast nationally later this fall via NPR Music.
Follow Mountain Stage on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for all the latest updates on live shows and our radio broadcasts.
