Kathy Mattea opens up an Acoustic Living Room for Crossville concert

Grammy Award- winning singer Kathy Mattea will set the stage for an Acoustic Living Room show Friday, Sept. 23, at Cumberland County Playhouse in Crossville, Tenn.

Mattea and her longtime collaborator, guitarist Bill Cooley, have shared one of Nashville’s most musically rich partnerships for over two decades. For this series of shows, they share songs and stories near and dear to their hearts.

Mattea made her critical and commercial breakthrough in 1986 with her third album, “Walk the Way the Wind Blows.” Her single “Where’ve You Been” reached No. 10 on the country chart a nd won her a 1990 Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal. Mattea is a repeat winner of the County Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year, which she won on the strength of “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses” in 1989 and “Where’ve You Been” in 1990.

She won another Grammy in 1993 for her gospel- oriented Christmas album, “Good News.” Her 2008 release, “Coal,” was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk category.

In an August interview with The Huffington Post, she told reporter Michael Bialas she took time off last year to refocus and “play for the sake of playing.”

“I spent a lot of time in my living room with my guitar and my guitarist Bill Cooley, and we just have gone over songs and explored nooks and crannies of the kind of songs that I never would have tried before.”

Her country hits are part of the set, but she also delves into blues and jazz on an intimate musical journey that includes “all kinds of crazy things that I would never do otherwise,” she said.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Kathy Mattea