Regular readers of Saltscapes magazine will know that columnist Katharine Mott is in love again. No, the biker chick's boy next door did not come riding back into town... but in her July/August 2010 column, "Diary of a Dream," she professes her love for 30-year-old world-class blues artist, Matt Andersen.

Katharine had the chance to see Matt perform on February 3, at the Marigold Cultural Centre, in Truro, NS. Not wanting her to be a solo member of the Granny Groupie fan club, a few Saltscapers accompanied her, watching as she sat fixated on the formidable figure on stage.

Did she have a backstage pass after the show? No. But she didn't need one. In folksy fashion Matt came out to the lobby to greet his fans. Katharine—who was grinning from ear to ear and walking on air—impatiently waited for the crowd to disperse, sidled up to the star, and continued on from where she and Matt had left the conversation when she interviewed him in Cape Breton, several months earlier.

"I'm still tingling," she says, a week later.

She first heard Matt when she was working at the Saltscapes Expo in 2008. She'd had major surgery a week earlier and was a little unsteady on her feet, but was told by her doctor to walk. At the urging of a friend she walked from the Saltscapes booth to the New Brunswick performing arts stage to hear a fellow New Brunswicker, said to be fantastic. 

She continued to walk back and forth from booth to stage, and by the end of the three-day Expo she was well on the way to recovery.

She's been a self-proclaimed Granny Groupie ever since, attending large and small venues to hear Matt. 

What does she admire most about him?

"He plays and sings because he loves it—he does it to entertain himself and is thrilled that others are entertained as well," she says.

Rumour has it that he is a contender to open for U2 playing at Magnetic Hill, in Moncton, on July 30. Either way, he'll always have a career in music therapy, and a Granny Groupie following.

Matt Andersen has four nominations for 2011 East Coast Music Awards, taking place in Charlottetown during East Coast Music Week, April 13-17. For more information about the ECMAs, go to http://www.ecma.ca/.