Lesher Center Presents: Mountain Stage

Mountain Stage with host Kathy Mattea

Table of Contents Welcome About Mountain Stage Artist Bios Lesher Center Programs Support Lesher Center

Program Details Approx 2.5 hours, including a 15 minute intermission

Welcome Join us for a year of entertainment, joy, and inspiring artistic voices!

Building upon your ongoing support, we welcome you to the 23/24 season from Lesher Center Presents, including the Headliners Series, Center Repertory Company productions, and Bedford Gallery exhibitions. You’ll find a diverse array of genres, artists, and themes at your home for incredible, innovative arts experiences.

We look forward to seeing you this year – you won’t want to miss what you’ll find at the Lesher Center!

Peggy + Carolyn Peggy White Executive Director, Diablo Regional Arts Association Carolyn Jackson General Manager, Lesher Center for the Arts

Digital Programs Beginning in 2024, Lesher Center’s Headliners Series adopted the use of digital programs meant to be viewed on mobile devices. By cutting our paper use and eliminating substantial printing costs we are sustaining our mission to elevate the arts in the greater Contra Costa region.

Please be considerate of other patrons and artists when viewing digital programs on your mobile devices.

View digital programs before the performance begins or during intermissions.

Patrons who create distractions may be asked to leave.

Mountain Stage

Presented By

Whether you’re new to the show or you’ve been around since 1983, we’re glad you’re here.

Since 1983, Mountain Stage has been the home of live music on public radio. Produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting and distributed by NPR Music, each two-hour episode of Mountain Stage can be heard every week on nearly 300 stations across America, and around the world via NPR Music and mountainstage. org. Recorded in front of a live audience, Mountain Stage features performances from seasoned legends and emerging stars in genres ranging from folk, blues, and country; to

indie rock, synth pop, world music, alternative, and beyond.

After 38 years and more than 900 episodes, the program’s original host and co-founder Larry Groce handed over full-time hosting responsibilities to West Virginia native and Grammy winner Kathy Mattea in September of 2021.

Mountain Stage has proudly provided a platform for emerging and established artists since 1983.

Whether you’re new to the show, or you’ve been around since the early days – we’re glad you’re here.

We invite you to dig into our audio archive at NPR Music and watch performances from select shows on Live Sessions. *Mountain Stage is produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting and distributed by NPR Music.

Artist Bios

Bruce Cockburn An inspired poet and exceptional guitarist, the award-winning artist has spent his entire career kicking at the darkness with songs that tackle topics from politics and human rights to the environment and spirituality.

And he’s not letting up. While other singer-songwriters his age are slowing down, Cockburn, on the eve of his 78 th birthday, has released a dozen new compositions as powerful as any he’s written. You could even say his songwriting is on a roll as well.

Exquisitely recorded in Nashville with his longtime producer, Colin Linden,

O Sun O Moon exudes a newfound simplicity and clarity, as Cockburn focuses on more spiritual than topical concerns this time around, looking back and taking stock. “I think it’s a product of age to a certain extent,” he explains, “and seeing the approaching horizon.” Then, lightening the tone, he adds with a laugh: “I think these are exactly the kind of songs that an old guy writes.”

Never one to rest on his laurels— even when, as he notes, “time takes its toll,” Cockburn keeps finding and conquering new challenges, never repeating himself in the process. “I just don’t want to ever keep doing the same thing,” he says. “I’m grateful that I can keep on doing anything at this point,” he adds. “My body doesn’t hold up and perform the way it once did.”

That may be so. But the legendary musician has just made his 38th studio album. And it may stand as one of his best of his long and storied career.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott One of the last true links to the great folk traditions of this country, with over 40 albums under his belt, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott is considered one of the country’s legendary foundations of folk music. Long before every kid in America wanted to play guitar before Elvis, Dylan, the Beatles or Led Zeppelin - Ramblin’ Jack had picked it up and was passing it along.

From Johnny Cash to Tom Waits, Beck to Bonnie Raitt, Ry Cooder to Bruce Springsteen, the Grateful Dead to The Rolling Stones, they all pay homage to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.

In the tradition of roving troubadours Jack has carried the seeds and pollens of story and song for decades from one place to another, from one generation to the next. They are timeless songs that outlast the musical trends of any given day. He wrote one of the first trucking songsCup of Coffee-recorded by Johnny Cash, championed the works of new singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and Tim Hardin; and became a founding member of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue.

He continued the life of the traveling troubadour influencing Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Tom Russell, The Grateful Dead and countless others.

Ramblin’ Jack is a two-time GRAMMY winner, National Medal Of Arts recipient, and in 2016, received a Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement

Award. Featured in the recent Rolling Thunder Revue film by Martin Scorcese and also in the early 2019 PBS release of the Woody Guthrie All Star Tribute Concert Center, Ramblin’ Jack is an icon of American roots and folk music. A lover of storytelling and veteran troubadour style musician, on tour he is in his element and known for telling the tales gathered along his magnificent journey through the roots of Folk, Blues, Americana and Cowboy music and poetry.

His permanently enshrined seat at Woodie Guthrie Center Theater in Tulsa, OK., sits among other greats, including Lead Belly, Cisco Houston and Pete Seeger.

“Nobody I know—and I mean nobody—has covered more ground and made more friends and sung more songs than the fellow you’re

about to meet right now. He’s got a song and a friend for every mile behind him. Say hello to my good buddy, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.”

-Johnny Cash, The Johnny Cash Television Show, 1969.

Colin Hay Hay first came to international fame with seminal ’80s hitmakers Men At Work. While the band would reach the heights of stardom—they took home a GRAMMY Award for Best New Artist and sold more than 30 million records worldwide on the strength of #1 singles like “Who Can It Be Now?” and “Down Under”—by 1985, they’d called it quits and gone their separate ways. Hay released his solo debut the following year and, over the course of the next three-and-a-half decades, went on to record twelve more critically acclaimed studio albums that would

help establish him as one of his generation’s most hardworking and reliable craftsmen. Rolling Stone praised his “witty, hooky pop” tunes, while NPR’s World Café lauded his “distinctive voice,” and late night hosts from David Letterman and Craig Ferguson to Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel have all welcomed him for performances.

Over the course of his remarkable solo career, Hay developed a reputation as a gifted raconteur with serious comedy chops, and his frequent appearances at LA’s Largo club helped garner him a legion of fans in the entertainment world.

Among them was actor/director Zach Braff, who called Hay’s mix of heartfelt songwriting and hilarious storytelling “one of the most amazing things I had ever seen.”

On top of his rigorous schedule as a solo artist, Hay has also managed to tour the world several times over with Ringo Starr & His All–Star Band, release an audiobook of Aesop’s Fables, star in the award-winning documentary Waiting For My Real Life, and even provide the voice for Fergus Flamingo in Disney’s The Wild.

The Lucky Valentines These two have been making music together since the moment they met in 2009.

Their newest album, Losses, is their most personal record yet- full of real life grief, observation on the connectivity of all things, and the hope that comes through trials of fire. It was recorded in one Heavenly, creative week at Dreamland Studio in Kingston NY. Each tune was tracked live, and then more magic was added on top. Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, The National, Anais Mitchell, Josh Ritter) produced this

album and gave each song such tender loving care that your ears will be enthralled from the first note.

TLV have written upward of eighty songs, and use a mix of folk melodic sensibilities, tight harmonies, and a whole lotta love to make sad things beautiful. Their sound could be bottled up as “Bruce Springsteen and Patty Griffin meet Shovels and Rope in a Gypsy Junkshop”. He sometimes uses a thirdhand suitcase as a kick drum, and the rotary phone from her father’s shop as a mic. She blends classical violin with raging folk passion. He channels John Prine and Hank Williams. They have played hundreds of live shows together and have been featured on MTPR’s Musician Spotlight, at Austin’s Iconic Hole in the Wall Cafe, the street dance and side stage of Red Ants

Pants Music Festival, and were featured on the May 2022 episode of MTPBS’s award winning 11th and Grant with Erik Funk.

TLV blends homespun DIY folk and country sounds with fresh sonic energy; infused with cold heartache, electric wonder, razor sadness and fiery Joy, their music is made to be played on repeat.

Shaun and Jamie have four beautiful children together and find joy in gardening, performing, writing, homeschooling, and reading Lord of the Rings to their aspiring Justice Warriors. Their dream is to travel the world sharing music, and come home to a little farm with horses to ride, and goats to mow the lawn. For now, they live in a sweet little city, ride in a big ol’ van, and the kids do the lawn mowing.

Chuck Prophet Since his neopsychedelic Green On Red days, Chuck Prophet has been turning out country, folk, blues, and Brill Building classicism. THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT is something different, a weather vane picking up signals from outer space – or maybe it’s the Heartland.

Priced out of his beloved hometown, San Francisco, Prophet found himself re-energized in Upstate NY just a few miles from the Vermont border – and made a record that is much a 21st century exorcism as it is America.

The songs inhabit a world where a

Fast Kid might be on the run from the truant officer or a handsy boss… or the Immigration Service. These are love songs that turn political on a dime (Love Doesn’t Come from the Barrel of a Gun), and melodic hallucinations about kicking back in the Oval Office after hours “talking to my baby, saying baby, let’s not fight.”

Where else besides a Chuck Prophet LP are songs going to come at you from both the Tenderloin and an English roundabout, with stopovers in Nixonland and a love-struck mirror on a Saturday night while a workingman tries his Best Shirt On? With special appearances by the ghost of Johnny Thunders and Willie Wonka and John the Baptist and the train that brought Abraham Lincoln home one last time.

In Waving Goodbye, a young girl leaves small town attitudes behind to conquer the world one gig at a time.

Then there’s a dance Marathon, lost in time and reborn as a reality show.

According to Womankind, men had their run, but it’s over. (The good news is he can still try to sing his way into her heart.)

And it all leads up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue where a singer has his say, in two and a half loping verses and a middle eight.

Kathy Mattea Kathy Mattea is among the most commercially successful and respected female country artists of her era, infusing 1980s country with a fresh, stripped-down style and a unique blend of traditional country roots and attention to the stories being told. Growing up outside Charleston, West Virginia, Kathy’s tastes were eclectic.

Her love of traditional country was solidified after she left West Virginia University and took a job as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. It broadened

when she started earning extra money singing on demo tapes for songwriters pitching their tunes on Music Row. After signing a recording contract with Mercury, Kathy teamed with independent producer Allen Reynolds. Their creative alliance resulted in hit singles for more than a decade, including “Love at the Five and Dime” (1986) -- her first Top 10 hit on the country charts, peaking at No. 3 -- and her biggest No. 1 success, “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses,” which captured the 1988 CMA award for Best Single.

Mattea cemented her star status by becoming CMA’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 1989 and again in 1990. Her Top 10 hit “Where’ve You Been,” co-written by husband Jon Vezner and Don Henry, earned

Kathy the 1990 GRAMMY Award for Best Female Country Vocal. She won again at the GRAMMYs in 1993 with her Gospel-influenced Christmas album, Good News. After a mining disaster in her home state killed twelve miners in 2006, she came out with Coal (2008, produced by Marty Stuart), filled with songs about mining life and its repercussions, as a tribute, she said, “to my place and my people.”

In September of 2021, Mattea took on full-time hosting responsibilities for Mountain Stage from the program’s original host and cofounder Larry Groce.

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HEADLINERS SERIES Up Next Mads Tolling & The Mads Men February 9 Celebrating the 1960s with their own distinctive style and innovative flair.

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