Singer Kathy Mattea turns coal to diamonds

With her warm Appalachian voice and heartfelt lyrics, Kathy Mattea led her audience through quite the emotional journey last weekend at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts. This was never more evident than when she sang one of her first big hits, "Love at the Five and Dime," which sang of the beauty of romantic love, but it does not come without difficulties.

This territory of songwriting has always been a staple of Grammy award winning country music singer Mattea's career. Lately she has been exploring a new area: coal mining.

For her latest album, "Coal," Mattea dug deep into the songwriting archives and pulled out 11 tunes telling of the toughness and hardships of coal miners. During her performance she played several songs off this album including the up tempo "The L & N Don't Stop Here Anymore" and the lament "Dark as a Dungeon."

The inspiration for Mattea's latest album was the Sago, W.Va Mine Disaster that tragically claimed the lives of 12 coal miners in 2006. The incident struck a very personal chord for Mattea, who is a native of West Virginia and has a family with coal mining heritage.

Although coal-mining songs are rarely happy, Mattea managed to find several that captured a poignant beauty that exists amongst the tough and gritty lifestyle. A great example is the ballad "Red-Winged Black Bird," which uses a dying bird as a metaphor for the coal miners' life-threatening work.

"Coal" also brought about a musical change for Mattea. It is her first album without any drums. This carried over into her live shows, allowing her excellent supporting musicians to open up and take over the stage during their solos. This was especially evident during the performance of "Come From the Heart."

"I think she is a great artist, musician, and singer," said Stan McMillen, a UConn alumnus from Coventry. "I especially like how they stretched it out musically on 'Come From the Heart.'"

Without the drums David Spicher takes up the rhythm on stand up bass. The other musicians included Eamonn O'Rourke on fiddle and mandolin and Mattea's long-time guitar player and collaborator Bill Cooley.

Another memorable aspect of the performance was Mattea's charismatic personality, seen in her telling of stories about her family in between songs. She also coaxed the audience into singing along with one of her biggest hits, "Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses."