Delheads have two chances to experience his Delness this weekend from the comfort of their homes or workplaces.

This morning (1/30) just after 9:00 a.m., he will join Katy Daley on WAMU’s Bluegrass Country to talk about he and the band’s plans for ‘09. Katy tells us that she expects to discuss the upcoming McCoury retrospective project, 50-50 (Fifty Songs for Fifty Years), Delfest 2009… and the Big 7-0!

Del turns 70 years old this Sunday, February 1.

Listen to Katy online at www.bluegrasscountry.org, or on HD Radio 88.5 channel 2 in the DC metro area.

On Saturday, you can catch the Del McCoury Band on The Marty Stuart Show on RFD-TV. The show airs at 8:00 p.m. (EST) and is carried on DIRECTV and many cable carriers throughout the US.

They will pick and sing, and talk with Marty about all things Del.

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.

For some Kathy Mattea is to West Virginia what Patty Loveless is to Kentucky, although the former hasn’t embraced bluegrass music as has the latter – until now, perhaps.

Raised near Charleston, West Virginia, Grammy-award winning singer Mattea is to release a CD, simply entitled Coal, on the newly formed label, Captain Potato Records, on April 1. From what I can glean, it is one that is sure to attract some bluegrass fans – it’s her first album minus drums, even.

Being from the coal-rich hills of West Virginia, Mattea is readily aware of the nature of the industry. She is still haunted by memories of the Farmington Mine disaster of 1968 near Fairmont, West Virginia, and both her grandfathers were miners while her mother worked for the United Mine Workers Association. Nevertheless, it’s a project that wasn’t taken lightly. In fact, Mattea said the Sago Mine Disaster (also West Virginia) and the death of 12 of its miners made her realize it was time to tackle the Coal project, which, she says, has been on her mind since she was 19, when she first heard Dark As A Dungeon.

“This record reached out and took me. It called to me to be made. When Sago happened, I got catapulted back to that moment in my life and thought, ‘I need to do something with this emotion, and maybe this album is the place to channel it’. I knew the time was right.”

The album features traditional and contemporary songs, many of them by songwriters with Appalachian roots; Jean Ritchie, Billy Edd Wheeler, Hazel Dickens, Utah Phillips, Merle Travis, Si Kahn and Darrell Scott. Some of the highlights are Black Lung, The L & N Don’t Stop Here Anymore, Coal Tattoo, Green Rolling Hills [with Tim and Mollie O'Brien providing harmony vocals], Blue Diamond Mines [with Marty Stuart and Patty Loveless - background vocals], The Coming Of The Roads, Red-winged Blackbird and Lawrence Jones. As Mattea says, the songs were chosen because they articulate “the lifestyle, the bigger struggles,” and “speak to the sense of place and sense of attachment people have to each other and to the land.”

The backing musician includes names that are no strangers to bluegrass aficionados, beginning with Mattea’s hand-picked producer [who also plays guitar and mandolin], Marty Stuart, who plays guitar, mandolin and mandola on the tracks and joins Patty Loveless for background vocals on one song also. Bryon House (bass) and Stuart Duncan (fiddle, mandolin and banjo) are household names in the bluegrass world. Lesser known are Bill Cooley, who has been with Mattea for 20 years, handles the guitar duties, while John Catchings (cello), Randy Leago (keyboards and accordion) and guest steel player Fred Newell round out the album’s sound.

Kathy Mattea’s web site features an interview from her recent appearance on NPR’s Living On Earth that features some of the music from Mattea’s forth-coming album Coal as well as some personal insight into growing up, living in a coal mining community and the environmental effects of the coal industry.

It seems Marty Stuart has given quite a Valentine’s Day gift to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. On Wednesday, February 13, 2008, he donated Lester Flatt’s old 1950 D-28 to the museum.

History tells us Lester bought the guitar for $115 at a pawnshop in Charleston, WV, in 1956. He used the instrument for the better part of his career.

Home to Flatt’s world renowned G-run for nearly 25 years, the Martin was used on most of Flatt & Scruggs’s classic recordings and live performances, including Grand Ole Opry broadcasts and their appearances on the national television show Beverly Hillbillies and the Martha White-sponsored Flatt & Scruggs Grand Ole Opry.

This instrument is just part of a larger collection of items donated by Marty Stuart and Connie Smith. You can view the complete list of donated items on the museum’s website.