A Quote by Kathy Mattea

So I really did stop and change what I saw I was about, and really try to put that principle into play as the center of everything - my friendships, my marriage, my career, my family, my way of being in the world. And that changed everything for me.
I don't really have a career as a jazz musician. I don't really have a career as a classical musician. I don't really have a career as a college professor, and yet I did all those things and I did them well. I put out some records in the 1980's and 1990's that changed the way some trumpet players played.
'Fix' was a song that definitely put me on the map and changed everything for in me my career. I'm really thankful for it.
What really broke it down was I had my son while I was locked up, so that really affected me. I can't really have this, knowing my father was locked up when I was small. So that really out of everything - through the fame, the money, everything - that really put the toll on me: 'Oh yeah, I gotta change.'
Nobody taught me to play bottleneck. I just saw it and taught myself. I got an old bottle and steamed the label off, put it on the wrong finger, I basically did everything wrong until I met some of the Blues legends early in my career who taught me another way. I didn't have anyone to tell me women didn't play bottleneck.
Everything I've been through, everything I'm about to go through in my career and my life, if my family wasn't with me and didn't support me, it would be really tough.
I still feel vibrant and alive that way. I'm in a marriage where we put an enormous amount into our marriage. I always say, there's me, there's my husband, and then there's the "us," the us that we create. That's what we really take care of. We never, ever take it for granted. We do everything we can to be together, not to be separated for periods of time. We're just a very, very tight family unit, and we're really kind to each other. I think it's so underrated; people don't appreciate the necessity of that in society now.
I have gotten better at being patient and sitting with discomfort. Before I would worry and try to fix an issue and force circumstances to change or try to change people's minds sooner than was realistic. Now I wait and trust that everything passes and time really does heal everything.
The thing that hasn't changed, and I don't think will ever change, is that the operative word in music is "play." You have to have a playfulness about it. As the world shifts, it's starting to understand more and more that to have a playfulness about any and everything is actually the way of having a better life, or being more creative, or being more productive.
I saw 'Hairspray' at the Pantages in L.A. It came to the Pantages right before I did the movie, and just being in New York sometimes and seeing the marquees and everything like that, I'm like, 'I really, really have to go experience a Broadway play.'
I have a son and a wife, and I really enjoy my family life as much as I enjoy my career, but there are times where my career just kind of overpowers, and they have to be really very understanding of it. I appreciate them for that. That's probably the hardest part about everything.
Music is infinite and personal. I don't want to put myself in a box. I want to try everything and I'm trying everything. I'm really trying to write what's in my heart and what I feel without a lot of help in that department. It's about being brave.
Everything I did in the jails - chain gangs, everything - I haven't changed the policy. I did it, I stand by it, and I'm not going to change.
College was really good for me. It's where I did my growing up, learning how to live on my own and to be myself. That really helped. I've eased my way into everything since then, so it doesn't feel too crazy. It's just about being the same person, whether good things come my way or bad things come my way, and to enjoy the opportunities I have.
So, The Color Purple changed my life. It changed everything about my life because, in that moment of praying and letting go, I really understood the principle of surrender. The principle of surrender is that, after you have done all that you can do, and you've done your best and given it your all, you then have to release it to whatever you call God, or don't call God.
I always thought I wanted to play professionally, and I always knew that to do that I'd have to make a lot of sacrifices. I made sacrifices by leaving Argentina, leaving my family to start a new life. I changed my friends, my people. Everything. But everything I did, I did for football, to achieve my dream.
Being in New York, and meeting really amazing, talented, eccentric, and bold people, and just feeling really excited about life, got me really revved up and I just felt like everything was at my fingertips - that I could try anything. I really felt invincible. It was such a shift.
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