Kathleen Alice Mattea (born June 21, 1959) is an American country music and bluegrass singer. Active since 1984 as a recording artist, she has charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including four that reached No. 1: "Goin\' Gone", "Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses", "Come from the Heart", and "Burnin\' Old Memories", plus twelve more that charted within the top ten. She has released fourteen studio albums, two Christmas albums, and one greatest hits album. Most of her material was recorded for Universal Music Group Nashville\'s Mercury Records Nashville division between 1984 and 2000, with later albums being issued on Narada Productions, her own Captain Potato label, and Sugar Hill Records. Among her albums, she has received five gold certifications and one platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). She has collaborated with Dolly Parton, Michael McDonald, Tim O\'Brien, and her husband, Jon Vezner. Mattea is also a two-time Grammy Award winner: in 1990 for "Where\'ve You Been", and in 1993 for her Christmas album Good News. Her style is defined by traditional country, bluegrass, folk, and Celtic music influences.\n', '

Mattea was born in South Charleston, West Virginia, as the only daughter of three children, and grew up in Cross Lanes. Her father worked in a chemical plant and her mother was a homemaker. She sang in her parents\' church as a child, and in high school she performed at school shows and family gatherings.\n', '

In 1976, while attending West Virginia University, she joined a bluegrass band, and two years later dropped out of school to move to Nashville. During this time, Mattea also listened to folk and bluegrass, which she would later say "formed [her] roots" as an artist. She worked as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and then as a secretary and a waitress, in order to support herself while working as a demo singer. Songwriter, publisher, and record producer Byron Hill discovered her and helped her sign to Mercury Records in 1983.\n', '

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