Matraca Berg was born and raised in Nashville, the daughter of session singer Icee Berg, and grew up in and around the studios of Music Row. She had her first No. 1 before she turned nineteen, when T.G. Sheppard and Karen Brooks took "Faking Love," written with Bobby Braddock, to the top of the country chart in 1983. The hits that followed made her one of the defining Nashville songwriters of her generation: "The Last One to Know" for Reba McEntire, "XXX's and OOO's (An American Girl)" for Trisha Yearwood, "You Can Feel Bad" for Patty Loveless, "Wild Angels" and "Happy Girl" for Martina McBride, "Hey Cinderella" for Suzy Bogguss, and "Strawberry Wine" and "We Danced Anyway" for Deana Carter. "Strawberry Wine" won the CMA Song of the Year award in 1997, and "You and Tequila," recorded by Kenny Chesney with Grace Potter, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song. She was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008.
Berg is also a recording artist with a catalog of her own, beginning with her RCA debut Lying to the Moon in 1990 and continuing through The Speed of Grace, the acclaimed Sunday Morning to Saturday Night in 1997, and The Dreaming Fields and Love's Truck Stop, released on Dualtone in 2011 and 2012. Her writing draws on her mother's people, who came to Nashville from rural Appalachia, and on the Tennessee farm life of her grandparents, which gave The Dreaming Fields its title song. She lives in Nashville with her husband, Jeff Hanna of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, whom she married in 1993.
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