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Charley Hubbs at work in the studio. |
Union Alumnus Nominated for Grammy
Of the millions of viewers watching this Sunday night’s Grammy Awards show, one of them will be a Union College alumnus who has good reason to tune in.
Charley Hubbs is up for a Grammy for his work on Kathy Mattea’s recent album, COAL. The Cannon, Ky. native attended Union College from 1995 to 1997 to study music education. He now lives in Nashville where he works as a sound engineer.
COAL has been nominated for a Grammy in the Traditional Folk category. Though Kathy Mattea will accept the award in the event of a win, each key team member who worked on the album is permitted to have his or her own statuette of the famous gilded gramophone.
If COAL wins, Hubbs’s first Grammy will be significant for many reasons, not the least of which is the album’s theme. The album is a collection of traditional tunes covered by Mattea that speak to the culture of coal, coal mining and coal communities.
“I really know what this is about,” Hubbs says of the album’s subject matter. “I know and grew up around so many miners. It makes me proud that Kathy chose to do this album, and I’m honored to work with someone who represents it the best way it can be—through music.”
The nomination is welcome recognition of the hard work Hubbs and the rest of the team put into the production process. Hubbs says the nature of the album required a more complex approach to sound.
“We recorded the album in a more traditional style,” he says. “We didn’t try to isolate particular instruments. We had all of them in the room with Kathy at the same time and used a multi-track process.”
The end result, says Hubbs, is a more intimate, concert-like feel that supports the spirit of the album.
Hubbs has been working with sound in Nashville since 1999. He says his current projects have taken him far away from the world of traditional music. He is now working with two groups, one from Asheville and one from Los Angeles, on dance-club-style music.
With one Grammy nomination under his belt and a possible award awaiting him Sunday night, Hubbs will likely have a number of projects in his future.
“I think it will launch more work for me, and more high-tier projects,” he says.
In the meantime, he is content to have been part of one of 2008’s critical and commercial musical successes.
“I just hope I can help her get number three,” Hubbs says of Mattea, who has won two Grammy awards.
The Grammy Awards will air on CBS at 8:00 p.m. EST this Sunday.
February 6, 2009
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