Mountain Stage Comes Home: Kathy Mattea Cues Up a Fresh Episode Aug. 23

After a quiet stretch of summer, West Virginia's most important two hours of radio flicks the studio lights back on — and it's worth marking your calendar now.

Mountain Stage returns to the Culture Center Theater on the Capitol grounds Sunday, Aug. 23, taping a fresh episode for NPR Music with a bill that spans banjo scholarship, rockabilly grit, and next-generation songwriting. Host Kathy Mattea presides over a lineup featuring Tony Trischka's EarlJam, Sarah Borges, Buffalo Wabs & The Price Hill Hustle, and Jack Barksdale. The show runs roughly 7 to 9:30 p.m., with tickets in the $25–$30 range.

If you're new here, understand what you're buying a ticket to. Mountain Stage has been recording live in Charleston for going on four decades — co-founder Larry Groce hosted it for 37 years before stepping into an artistic-director role — and it carries this valley's sound to hundreds of public-radio stations. Mattea, a two-time Grammy winner and a West Virginian, took over as host and has made the show's mission explicit. "I feel so optimistic about music and getting West Virginia culture…out to the world," she has said. And on why the program feels different from anything else on the dial: "There is a depth of community in West Virginia and a sense of place…that has been lost in much of the rest of the country."

That sense of place is the whole point. The Aug. 23 bill is a perfect illustration — Trischka is one of the most respected banjo players alive, his EarlJam project a loving excavation of Earl Scruggs; Sarah Borges brings punk-tinged roots rock; Buffalo Wabs & The Price Hill Hustle deal in stomping Ohio Valley string-band music; and Jack Barksdale is a startlingly young songwriter with an old soul. Six-ish acts, one live audience, two hours, broadcast to the world. That's the format, unchanged and undefeated.

Here's the local-pride kicker, and the reason this belongs in your plans even in a busy August: while other cities import their culture, Charleston exports it. Every taping is West Virginia telling the rest of the country what it sounds like, in its own voice, from its own capital. You can be in the room where that happens for less than the cost of dinner and a movie.

And if you want the full ritual, do what the regulars do afterward — walk over to the East End, find the post-show jam, and see which of the night's guests turns up to play for free. Charleston keeps the tradition. All you have to do is join it.

Sources: WVPB — Kathy Mattea to host Mountain Stage (WCHS); Mountain Stage — Upcoming Live Shows; Bandsintown — Culture Center Theater