Country music artist to return to
campus in spring
MURFREESBORO,
Tenn. — MTSU student and aspiring country music artist Hunter Wolkonowski
of Winchester, Tennessee, knew that singer-songwriter Kathy Mattea was coming
to give a guest lecture earlier this semester. But the real thing — which even
included a few songs by the Grammy-winning country music artist — was still
surreal.
“I’ve
been a fan of country music since I was a young girl, and I’d come in the house
and I’d hear my Nana playing records on the record machine, and she’d play
Kathy Mattea,” said Wolkonowski, who’s majoring in recording industry
management within the College of Media and Entertainment.
“I’ve
always looked up to (Mattea), so when I walked in, I couldn’t believe it was
her. She was super nice, super grounded … I guess she is something I’d want to
be when I grow up because I’m wanting to be in country music.”
Wolkonowski
was among the 20 or so students in MTSU professor Kris McCusker’s popular music
studies class, “American Music in the Modern Age,” who were treated to more
than an hour of insights and wisdom from the Nashville singer-songwriter
earlier this semester.
McCusker,
a professionally trained ethnomusicologist and historian, said her Department
of History course looks at how historical events have shaped music, such as
producing certain kinds of “sounds” and/or musicians.
“What we
do is see the ways that history produces music, how music is the outcome of
political, cultural and social changes at various points in the past,” she
said.
Mattea’s
visit stemmed from an interview she did with a graduate student last spring.
McCusker assisted the student with the phone interview, which was done from
MTSU’s Center for Popular Music in the Bragg Media and Entertainment Building.
An
invitation was extended, which Mattea gladly accepted. Greg Reish, director of
the Center for Popular Music, assisted McCusker with the logistics to bring
Mattea to campus.
“She’s a
real educator at heart,” said McCusker, who noted that her class was studying
music the 1980s and 90s, a period when Mattea was hitting it big on the country
music scene. Mattea rose to prominence in the 1980s with hits such as “Eighteen
Wheels and a Dozen Roses,” “Goin’ Gone” and “Love at the Five and Dime.”
Mattea shared with students how she got started in her music career
during that time and also discussed her social activism around issues such as
HIV/AIDS and the environment. The AIDS activism was sparked by Mattea having
friends who died from AIDS, but “nobody was talking about it,” McCusker said. A
native of West Virginia coal country, Mattea would later turn her attention to
the environment.
Using
McCusker’s class guitar, Mattea even performed a few selections, including her
song “Seeds” that includes this verse: “In the end, we’re all just seeds in
God’s hands, we start the same, but where we land, it’s sometimes fertile soil,
it’s sometimes sand, we’re all just seeds in God’s hands.”
Here's a
short video of McCusker discussing the visit and a few clips of Mattea
performing "Seeds" for the class: https://youtu.be/RvqOnf-kgb4
These
days and in the wake of a bitterly divisive presidential election, Mattea
shared with students “the beginnings of the ways she started seeing music differently,
from simply being an entertainment medium, to a medium that builds
relationships among people, that crosses political barriers around certain
environmental and social issues,” McCusker said.
Wolkonowski,
who performs under the name Hunter Girl a few times each week at various venues
in Nashville, was inspired by Mattea’s socially conscious perspective.
“I
really liked how she had the ability to write songs that pertain to what’s
going on in the world right now,” she said. “All of her songs have a story …
she really puts social and economic things that are going on in our life today
and puts them into words for people who can’t really speak up about things.”
McCusker
said Mattea plans to return to MTSU in the spring to work with Reish in the Center
for Popular Music.
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