The connection between the contest and Matraca Berg -- the lady to the left -- is more or less incidental, but as an incentive either to enter or spend your hard-earned cash at Kemp Mill, here is a bit about Matraca Berg.

Even though she's only 34, Matraca (pronounced "mahTRAYzah") Berg has been in the music business for sixteen years. She has three albums and a songwriting resumé that includes big hits for some very popular singers. For some reason, her own career as a performer has never really taken off, and that is a real shame for at least two reasons.

The first reason is that she is very good. Her lyrics are smart, her melodies strong and her voice well-seasoned and edged with smoke. Her latest CD, Sunday Morning To Saturday Night should do well if there is justice in the music business, but those who want justice would probably do best to look elsewhere.

Berg can tell a story. "If I Were an Angel" is about a woman who followed the wrong man to the middle of nowhere where she waits tables and contemplates her destiny, caught between eternity and the next bus home. The rollicking title track puts us in the pew one Sunday next to Jimmy Miller, whose wife just left for Memphis in Jimmy's new car. The congregation -- a bit like God -- knows all and forgives all, not least themselves. And "Back in the Saddle" is in the raucous voice of a dude ranch refugee who meets a bow-legged hunk in a cowboy bar: "I can put you back in the saddle, baby/Yeah, stand you up tall."

I believe she surely could.

Perhaps the high point of the album is "Back When We Were Beautiful," a clear-eyed meditation on the soul-aches and ironies of growing old. The melody manages to be at once substantial and delicate, and the accompaniment -- piano, two violas and a bowed bass -- is a sumptuous surprise.

The second reason why it is a shame that Berg's performing career has never matched her success as a songwriter is that Rising Tide -- the label that brought Saturday Morning to Sunday Night out -- has been shut down by its parent company and as of this writing (4/27/98), Matraca Berg has neither a label nor a record contract. But that could change if record company executives see enough sales of this fine and polished disk.

Oh, by the way -- if you're looking to buy this album, head for the country bin. And if the label "country" puts you off, I'd like to suggest that you just might be in for a revelation.

But on to the contest

-Allen Stairs
stairs@glue.umd.edu