CLARKBURG – On a rainy afternoon in 2019 in a rehearsal space at West Virginia University, Kathy Mattea was making like your nonna’s kitchen.
That is, she plopped down cross-legged on the floor, to render her artist-in-residence duties at the College of Creative Arts and Media as friendly, and non-intimidating, as could be.
A little bit of la familia as it were.
She politely asked a vocal student to halt his number.
Just for the moment.
“It isn’t anything bad,” the Grammy-winning Nashville singer and Cross Lanes native said.
“You have a beautiful voice. “But I’m wondering if we could play around with a few things for the performance.”
When it was done, Mattea, who went on to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry and host of “Mountain Stage,” West Virginia Public Radio’s landmark music performance show, had acquired a studio full of de facto family.
In the Italian way.
And the student gained a new arrangement of a song he could now call his, uniquely.
Mattea is planning on doing the same when she headlines the 2026 edition of the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival, which will be Sept. 4-6 in Clarksburg.
This is the 47th year for the gathering, which traditionally draws thousands to the Harrison County city for food, entertainment and pageants, not to mention appearances by Italian-American luminaries.
Frankie Avalon, the 1960s surf movie king, has performed in past years. So has Tony Danza, the hoofer and sitcom star.
Bruno Sammartino, the opera-loving, pro wrestling champion who reigned in Pittsburgh for decades, even gave keynote remarks at the opening breakfast one year.
A Roman Catholic Mass celebrated in Italian is a highlight every Sunday of the festival.
Visit the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival page on Facebook for the full schedule of events, including Mattea’s concert, plus a history of the celebration – photographs included, just like your nonna’s album – going back to its inaugural weekend in 1979.
Like a lot of state natives here, Mattea is proud of her Mediterranean bona fides.
Her grandfather hailed from a small village near Turin, in northern Italy, and spoke in broken English in his adopted homeland.
And her father, a first-generation American, did a “lot of translating,” as she told journalist Bob Masullo in a feature on her heritage and lineage.
She remembers the pair conversing in the Piemontese dialect of the homeland.
While Mattea only speaks “bits” of Italian, she said in the article, she is fluent in food.
She’s famous for her pasta sauce (her touring band requests it) and is also the proud curator of her aunt’s ravioli recipe.
Mattea studied engineering in Morgantown before dropping out and taking a gamble on Music City.
In Nashville, she constructed her music name with “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses,” “Where’ve You Been?” and other hits.
Mattea became an activist for coal mining safety after the Sago disaster in 2006.
She’s now in her fifth year as “Mountain Stage” host.
Of course, Mattea loves her Italian heritage and her West Virginia roots, too.
And in 2019, those music students at WVU loved her as a mentor.
“Man,” said Devon Cliett, the student whose vocalizing she gently interrupted for the moment. “She’s so insightful, and just the way she teaches … I learned something today.”
