Country Girl With Something To Say

For the first time in three years, Grammy-winning country singer Kathea Mattea is out with new music, her 11th studio album.

Mattea dropped by The Early Show Thursday to talk to Co-Anchor Jane Clayson and to perform a song from the new record, a deeply personal CD called The Innocent Years.

"I went through a lot while I was making the record," Mattea said. "Both my parents were dealing with serious illness, and my record label sold, and I turned 40. It was, like, life was coming Â… fast and furious."

She began to write for the first time in many years. "It was therapy," she explained. "A lot came out on the record. Halfway through, I decided that I had to make this record asÂ…a reflection of the sort of rite of passage into adulthood."

The title, The Innocent Years, resonates with Mattea on many levels, she said.

On one level, there is the yearning to go back for one day to a time when "I didn't have to be responsible, when somebody else made it OK."

But, then, it is also "about stepping through that door into the next part of your life, and the things that we go through as we grow up, and we trade our innocence for wisdom.

"I wouldn't go back. But the realization that it's happening and that your life is a finite thing, and you have to evaluate what you're going to do with it - those are big things."

No matter what you call it, the CD is getting good reviews, and Mattea said she thinks that's because "there is more me on the recordÂ… More of myself, more of who I am, down deep, got onto the grooves of the record."

Mattea will be touring with Asleep At The Wheel this summer, and she's collaborating on a children's record with Raffi.