At about 7:10 Sunday night, as I was pulling the last batch of cookies from the oven, I looked at the refrigerator and noticed the Kathy Mattea tickets.

For 7:30.

Luckily, we live very close to the CAC, so we weren’t even late.

For those of you who don’t know who Kathy Mattea is, she’s a singer-songwriter-guitarist from West Virginia (Cross Lanes) who went to Nashville to make a name for herself.

As a WVU native, and as someone who went to WVU, she was very excited to be playing in Morgantown, and had stories about her time at WVU (she was here when some students added the “flush handle” to the CAC one night).

But of course it was mostly about the music. She has a fabulous voice. I mean really. She did a couple of acapella pieces (including one by Hazel Dickens) that were marvelous.

She’s out touring for her latest album, Coal, which she started to put together after the Sago Mine disaster in 2006, and as she joked, it made for a somewhat melancholy set, so she did play other pieces. The last piece they played sounded like an Irish reel and may have been my favorite piece of the night.

I’m not sure how widely she’s touring, but if she comes to your area, I highly recommend you go see her.