Love Travels

Kathy Mattea (vocals); Bob Halligan, Jr. (acoustic guitar, piano); Jim Lauderdale, Bill Cooley, Don Potter (acoustic guitar); Duke Levine (electric guitar); Paul Franklin, Steve Sturm (pedal steel guitar); Stuart Duncan (mandolin); Jerry Douglas (dobro); Chris Carmichael (violin); Steve Lauer (accordion, harmonium); Hunter Lee (whistle, bagpipes); Lionel Cartwright (piano, background vocals); Matt Rollings (piano, Hammond B-3); Ben Wisch (synthesizer, background vocals); Tim Lauer (synthesizer); Edgar Meyer (acoustic bass); James "Hutch" Hutchinson (bass); Abe Laboriel, Jr, (drums, percussion); Jim Keltner (drums); Kirby Shelstad (percussion); Jonatha Brooke, Michael McDonald, Kim Richey (background vocals).

 

Producers: Kathy Mattea; Ben Wisch

 

Mattea is a tasteful, thoughtful singer who uses country music as a means to an end. Her music is not so much rooted in the country tradition as it is a by-product of it. Mattea's roots are more James Taylor than George Jones, and while steel guitars and 2/4 rhythms abound, LOVE TRAVELS is more an album of stylized Nashville folk-pop than neo-country.

 

To flesh out her introspective vision, Mattea reaches beyond the usual stable of Nashville songwriters to include songs by some honest-to-god singer-songwriter types. Gillian Welch contributes "Patiently Waiting" and "455 Rocket," and they show Welch to be capable of writing outside her own trad-country performance style. Jim Lauderdale's "I'm On Your Side," an unsentimental oath of loyalty, is one of the album's highlights. Janis Ian's moody, minor-key "All Roads To The River" lends a dark side to LOVE TRAVELS. The clean but homey production of Mattea and Ben Wisch creates an atmosphere through which the subtle beauty of the songs can clearly be seen.

 

Recorded at Woodland Studios, Nashville, Tennessee