Kathy Mattea will be live on WAMU’s Bluegrass Country this morning (4/2) at 11:00 a.m. with Katy Daley and Lee Michael Demsey to talk about her latest CD, Coal. The new release, produced by Marty Stuart, is as the title suggests, a set of tunes about the life and times of coal miners.

Mattea grew up in West Virginia, raised in a family of mine workers, so the music is very personal for her. Many of the titles will be familiar to bluegrass fan - The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore, Dark As A Dungeon and Blue Diamond Mines, just to name a few - and the treatments are largely acoustic in nature.

WAMU’s Bluegrass Country is the new name for the free 24/7 bluegrass radio service previously known as BluegrasCountry.org, and streamed at that web address and on HD WAMU-Channel 2 in the Washington, DC metro area.

You can read more about Coal in a piece Richard posted here earlier this year. Audio samples can be found on Mattea’s web site.

You can also see a set of photos from Kathy’s recent visit to the Robinson Run Mine in West Virginia last week online.