As a birthday gift for Carmen, we went to see Kathy Mattea in concert at Frederick, Maryland's Weinburg Center last night. It was an excellent performance most remarkably marred by a brief power outage in the midst of one of her songs. Trooper that she is, she stepped out onto the stage apron and attempted to continue on with the song, unplugged, so to speak. But then the power came back on and she started the song over from the top. Every song, with that momentary exception, was totally flawless in execution.

Kathy's vocals were utterly flawless. She has a power in her voice with which only a few are blessed. Her backup band, consisting of guitar, stand-up bass, and mandolin/fiddle is equally talented.

I must remark, however, with regard to the song, Coal Tattoo, Carmen and I were greatly disappointed. The bassist slapped the upbeat while everyone else accented the down. I am sure it took considerable talent on the bassist's part to maintain that throughout the song. The problem was that one (well, we, anyway,) received the impression that everyone was out of sync with one another. The "drive" of the song that Carmen and I were so accustomed to hearing in the song, (and is much more present, BTW, on the "Coal" CD,) was completely thrown off and left the song wanting.

Personally, I was quite impressed by her inclusion and execution of another favorite Billy Edd Wheeler song, "Redwing Blackbird". It is a song I have loved since first I heard it and her rendition in no way detracted from that love.

Certainly no attempt at musically portraying the life of the coal miner should exclude songs by Jean Ritchie. She is well represented on the CD and Kathy's performance of Jean's songs did them justice. Yes, I suppose one could argue that such songs should be rendered with much less or at least simpler, more plain accompaniment; but I believe Mattea's efforts were powerful enough for us to excuse what some may term as a wee bit of overproduction.

During the performance Kathy made mention that the wonderful collection of songs included in the "Coal" CD is partially attributable to the help of Frederick, Maryland's own Joe Bussard who, upon learning of her wish to create the "Coal" CD, sent her a three CD compilation of coal related songs from his tremendous collection. (Note: if you are into blues, this man holds a treasure trove of '78's from which a great number of re-recordings are available through many sources, including Smithsonian Folkways and Amazon.)

In summary, I wish to say that I have always most enjoyed performers who were relaxed enough on stage to "get real" with the audience. I think Kathy Mattea proved to be one of those. She truly seemed to enjoy performing and reacted readily to audience feedback, of which there was an abundance. Carmen and I are very much enjoying her latest CD, (well reminiscent of her excellent performance,) and are very much inspired by the collection.