Kathy Mattea

Kathy Mattea has played bluegrass country and western since 1976, when she joined her first band in college. She started recording in 1983 and has recorded 17 albums, with thirty singles claiming a spot in the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts, with twelve in the top ten and her hits "Goin' Gone" (1987), "Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses" (1988), "Come From the Heart" (1989) and "Burnin' Old Memories" (1989) reaching the number one spot.

She’s won three Academy of Country Music awards, four Country Music Association awards and Grammys in 1991 for Best Female Country Vocal Performer with the single “Where You’ve Been”, and in 1994 for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album with her 1993 effort, Good News.

She also has a genuine philanthropic streak, being an outspoken supporter of HIV/AIDs charities during the 1990s epidemic in the somewhat conservative context of country music. She was given two awards for her efforts the Minnie Pearl Humanitarian Award and the Harvard AIDS Institute Leadership Award.

She’s a well-accomplished old dame and, at 55, she’s as young and sprightly as in her late 1980s heyday. It’s truly an honor to watch such an established country star perform and it’s a night we’ll all remember as being great.

It’s not every day that you see a mainstream 7-piece jam band complete with trumpet and saxophone hit the road, but similar to the likes of Moon Taxi and The Wild Feathers, the New Orleans based Revivalists deliver the enthusiastic twang of a southern alt rock band playing with a genuine and undeniably innate sense of rhythm.

For such a big outfit, the guys are close yet comfortable on stage, each ingratiating himself inconspicuously before coming together as a group both mentally and musically for the drop. Vocalist David Shaw’s rough yet rich delivery is at times reminiscent of Ray LaMontage’s husky but passionate tone (especially when he’s stripped down with only a guitar). Shaw not only genuinely inflects his commitment to the song using his powerful voice, but also through his onstage presence, fumblingly calculatedly around onstage while continuously encouraging the crowd and interacting with the front row die-hards.

The unrelenting saxophone, along with the trumpet, pierce the melody, adding to the highly energetic and involving performance; it’s exactly what you’d expect from a 7-piece jam band.

With an EP and two albums under their belt, including a 2014 re-release of the two-disc City of Sound, The Revivalists offer a grand, one-of-a-kind musical experience, continuously touring North America with the entire band in tow.