Kathy Mattea Eighteen Wheels Later

Kathy Mattea Eighteen Wheels Later

by Lisa Hummel

After nearly two decades as one of country music’s best-known artists, having earned multiple Grammy Awards and Vocalist of the Year honors, and topping the charts with such hits as “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses,” Kathy Mattea left Mercury Records — the only label she had ever been with — for the great unknown.

Mattea felt the tides turning during the recording of her last album, 2000’s critically acclaimed The Innocent Years. Having dealt with both of her parents being seriously ill, Mattea found herself writing again for the first time in years, as a catharsis of sorts.

“I had come to town to write years before and had kind of put that on the back burner, and I just found myself so full of emotion that I had to get out that writing was the best way to process it — it was sort of like being led,” said Mattea. “I wasn’t sitting down thinking, ‘Oh, I need to write now.’ It was just sort of organic how it all started. It helped me to process things a lot.”

With a renewed sense of connection to her own work and with her parents on the mend, Mattea found herself battling a separate set of emotions at Mercury. Citing a shift toward youth in the industry and a change in the corporate environment, she felt compelled to make a move.

“For the first time in the 17 years that I was there, the company had sold, the corporate culture had changed, and some of my long-time supporters had moved on, and I found myself in a place where I thought, ‘What I want to do and what they want to do are two different things.’ I wound up going in and saying, ‘I wouldn’t be sitting here if it wasn’t for you, but if I stay we will hate each other so we should probably just know when to say when,’” she said. “It wasn’t an easy tie to cut … I did a lot of soul searching, because I wanted to do it with love. I did not want to taint my artistic progression and my work with something that was done out of resentment or punishment or anger. And I really didn’t want to do it until I could do it from that place.”

Mattea had long been a proponent of including eclectic sounds in her works, implementing everything from R&B and gospel influences to bluegrass and folk on her albums. Yet, with The Innocent Years, she was more aware than ever that work was taking her further and further away from the pop-tinged country music that was filling the airwaves.

“There’s been a pretty big shift in the industry toward youth, and I don’t really want to sing songs that 20 year olds sing,” she explained. “Part of what happened to me was sort of a maturity of my own connection with my own music: going through the stuff with my parents, writing about it, and really putting songs on this record that had to deal with adult themes. I want to sing to people my age about what our lives are like — and that really used to be what country music was about. I felt like I needed to move to a place where they understood what I wanted to do.”

In June of this year, Mattea signed with Narada Productions, a Virgin Records offshoot. A small label best known for its emphasis on instrumental and world music, Mattea saw Narada as the perfect outlet in which she could create freely — and one in which she would not have to compete with her former successes.

“I think the real trap is in trying to go backwards and recreate something that happened to you in the past,” she explained. “For me, it’s really about going forward … it’s about being able to continue my own progression as an artist. It’s about understanding — being able to listen to that inside voice so that you can make your music from the inside out. All I really cared about was having an environment where I was allowed to be myself and people were excited to have me.”

Mattea is currently working on a project that is tentatively slated for release in the spring of next year. She promises that it won’t be drastically different than her earlier works, allowing that it will have a Celtic influence. “The album is really song-driven, which is very much how my music has always been, and I’m just not letting anything into the mix unless I can sing it with a guitar and it holds up,” she said. “I just spent three 12-hour days in the studio last week, and I could not speak about it for two days without weeping. It was an amazing experience, and it’s just such a gift; I don’t think I would have been able to have that experience had I not had the courage to make the changes I needed to make.”

Currently touring, Mattea is enjoying the view of the road this time around, playing in more intimate theaters as opposed to the larger stages of arenas and fairs. “Its been really, really fun to reduce it down to four pieces and do an acoustic show this year because it really sort of boils it down to the essence,” she said.
Mattea is quick to point out that she has not turned her back on country music; rather, she is planning a “bluegrass-flavored” record for future release. “It’s not really about cutting some umbilical cord or about making some statement,” she attests. “It’s really mostly about staying connected to my own sort of musical inspiration.”

Mattea is well aware that the future is unchartered. She has no designs on repeating the success of the past, nor does she choose to dwell in it.

“When you make these kind of changes its really about accepting where that takes you. I think if you do it and you do it trying to sell the multi-platinum record you could set yourself up. I always said when I started out that when I hit this point in my career I didn’t want to go to Branson [Missouri] and sing “Eighteen Wheels” in spandex for the rest of my life. I’ve seen people do it. They become a human tape recorder. They get suspended at that moment in time because they make so much money to just be at that moment,” she says. “I still do “Eighteen Wheels.” I still do all of those songs, but I just didn’t want to get trapped into that place where you turn the thing you love into the thing you hate because someone gives you money for it. It’s only money.”

Meet Kathy Mattea. Welcome to her journey.

Kathy Mattea will be at the Whitaker Center in Harrisburg on November 13 at 7:30 p.m. For tickets and information, call 214-ARTS.