Cerys Elizabeth MatthewsMBE (/ˈkɛrɪs/; born 11 April 1969) is a Welsh singer, songwriter, author, and broadcaster. She was a founding member of Welsh rock band Catatonia and a leading figure in the "Cool Cymru" movement of the late 1990s.[1]
Matthews now hosts a weekly music show on BBC Radio 6 Music, a weekly blues show on BBC Radio 2, and a weekly show on BBC Radio 4, Add To Playlist, which won the Prix Italia and Prix Europa 2022.[2] She also makes documentaries for television and radio and was a roving reporter for The One Show. She founded "The Good Life Experience", a festival of culture and the great outdoors in Flintshire in 2014, and is author of Hook, Line and Singer, published by Penguin Books, and children's stories Tales from the Deep and Gelert, A Man's Best Friend, published by Gomer. Matthews' illustrated version of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood was published in November 2022, by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.[3]
Matthews learned to play the guitar at the age of nine, sang Welsh folk songs and taught herself traditional songs from all over the world, including blues and Irish folk songs.[13] She was a member of the West Glamorgan Youth Orchestra.[14] She had a stint in Spain as a nanny, where she learned to speak Catalan.[15]
Catatonia were formed in 1992, after Matthews met Mark Roberts. She subsequently sang lead vocals on, and co-wrote the music and lyrics for, the band's hits. Songs she co-wrote included "You've Got a Lot to Answer For", "Mulder and Scully", "Dead from the Waist Down", and "Road Rage". Matthews also played guitar on the earlier material before second guitarist Owen Powell joined the band. She also performed a single with the band Space named "The Ballad of Tom Jones", which tells the story of two lovers who want to kill each other, but then hear a Tom Jones song that defuses their homicidal feelings. Matthews later collaborated with Jones to record a version of Frank Loesser's "Baby, It's Cold Outside" on Jones's 1999 album Reload. Matthews was voted the "Sexiest Female in Rock" in a 1999 readers' poll in the now-defunct magazine Melody Maker.[16]
Matthews joined the Pet Shop Boys on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury in June 2000, performing a duet of their hit "What Have I Done to Deserve This?".[18] In December 2001, she returned to the recording studio for the first time since Catatonia split up. She recorded a song in both English and Welsh for the pre-school cartoon series Sali Mali.[19] She provided guest vocals on the track "Cyclops Rock", from US alternative rock band They Might Be Giants 2001 album Mink Car. Her line was originally supposed to be provided by Joe Strummer of the Clash.[20] Cerys went on to co-write "Gypsy Song" with Strummer on her Cockahoop album released by Rough Trade in 2003.[21]
Matthews moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2001. On her arrival she began playing with Bucky Baxter, who had played lap steel guitar for Bob Dylan and Ryan Adams. She had already collected 76 traditional folk songs with the idea of making an album of folk covers. Her debut album, Cockahoop, ended up consisting mainly of her own songs. It was recorded in seven months and appeared on Blanco y Negro Records in the United Kingdom in May 2003. While recording this album she met Seth Riddle, whom she married in Pembrokeshire on 22 February 2003.[22] She toured the album around Britain with minimal promotion as she was several months pregnant at the time. The album's Stateside Records release followed in October 2004.[citation needed]
In December 2005, Matthews recorded a version of Len Barry's 1960s UK and US top-10 hit "1-2-3" in Nashville. She released it as a download-single with all profits going to a children's charity.[23][24] In early 2006, Matthews introduced material from her then upcoming album at SXSW in Austin, Texas.[25]
In 2006, Matthews conducted a short tour of the UK to promote her second solo album, Never Said Goodbye. The album was preceded by the single "Open Roads". Band members included Kevin Teel on guitar, Ben Elkins playing keyboards, Mason Neely on drums, and Jeff Irwin playing bass. She headlined Cardiff's Big Weekend festival. During September and October 2006, Matthews embarked on a UK and Ireland tour, during which she played tracks from her first two solo albums as well as three Catatonia hits. She also embarked upon a short acoustic Welsh tour in November 2006 before returning to Nashville for Christmas.[citation needed]
In an interview on the eve of the launch of her Welsh mini-album Awyren = Aeroplane, Matthews confirmed she had divorced from Riddle and temporarily moved back to her farm in Pembrokeshire.[26][27]Awyren = Aeroplane won her the "Contemporary Composition" award in the National Eisteddfod. The award had been resurrected and presented for the first time since 1936. In 2007, Matthews became Vice-President of the Welsh homelessness charity Shelter Cymru.[28] She also accepted a role of Performing Arts Ambassador for Linden Lodge School, Wimbledon in the same year.
From November 2008, Matthews sat in for Stephen Merchant and Marc Riley on BBC 6 Music and went on to present George Lamb's slot in April 2009. In May 2009, she presented the show A Month of Sundays With... Cerys Matthews. She then covered for Nemone on 6 Music from July 2009, while Nemone was on maternity leave.
Matthews began maternity leave from November 2009 and had to finish presenting the show a month early. In April 2010, Matthews returned to 6 Music to present a weekend show on Sunday mornings. She produces and presents radio documentaries and shows, including Hook Line and Singer, where she shared her love of fishing on Radio 4.
Matthews released her first CD in two years in October 2009. The album, titled Don't Look Down, was released in two versions, one in English and the other in Welsh (the title of the Welsh edition was Paid Edrych i Lawr). It was recorded in Providence, Rhode Island, Nashville, Seattle and London, and coincided with a two-week UK tour in October.[30][31]
Since 2010
Matthews has covered Glastonbury Festival for both BBC Television and BBC 6 Music, she wrote and presented a BBC Two programme on poetry and presented TV documentaries on singer Dorothy Squires, the Mississippi River and Cuba. She wrote and presented a documentary on early blues players such as Memphis Minnie, children's character Pippi Longstocking, Mahalia Jackson and the celebrated British blues label "Blue Horizon". She has presented a documentary for BBC Radio 2 on Maida Vale studios. She frequently contributes to BBC Radio 4 programmes such as Feedback, Frontrow, Loose Ends and Saturday Live, also writing a column for world music magazine Songlines. Since 2021, Matthews and Jeffrey Boakye have presented Add To Playlist, which explores connections in music.[32] She has curated festivals for the Tate Modern, the Shetland theatre and Womex.
In 2010, Matthews released Tir (in Welsh: "territory" or "land"), a collection of traditional Welsh songs, and of photographs from her family archive from the 1880s to 1940s of people at work and play.[33] They included "Calon Lân", "Cwm Rhondda", "Migldi-Magldi" (sung as a duet with Bryn Terfel), "Myfanwy" and "Sosban Fach".[34] This is the third release on her own label, Rainbow City.
Explorer is Matthews's fourth solo album (2011). In both selecting and writing the songs she delved into the influence of both the music she has heard round the globe, and the places she had visited. Recorded over seven days, the album from the outset had no pre-determined sound or calculated format.[35] On the album she incorporates a little Spanish, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and American sensibilities, styles, and genres.[36] In April 2011, a video was released through Matthews's official YouTube Page[37] of the lead single from Explorer, "Sweet Magnolia".
Matthews played the Isle of Wight and Hay festivals in 2012, the latter with a Woody Guthrie tribute show, and collaborated with artists such as Arun Ghosh, Tunde Jegede, Attab Haddad, Frank Moon and the London Bulgarian Choir. 2012 also saw Matthews play music from her collection of Welsh traditional songs Tir, with Ballet Cymru, ending in a show in Sadler's Wells, and a nomination for a Theatre Critics Award 2012.[38]
For Christmas 2012, She produced and arranged Christmas album Baby, It's Cold Outside (2012) to much acclaim, recognised by the Sunday Times as an "essential seasonal album".[39]
Matthews played UK literary festivals including Dartington, Chester, Hay and Edinburgh and released an album of traditional Welsh reels and songs, Hullabaloo. She sang Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" as part of the memorial service for esteemed War correspondent Marie Colvin, in May 2012. Also in 2012, Matthews appeared as a celebrity guest mentor for Tom Jones's team on the first series of the UK version of The Voice.[40]
In 2014, Matthews co-founded an interactive festival, The Good Life Experience, with Charlie and Caroline Gladstone, held every September on the Gladstone estate in Hawarden, Flintshire near the Cheshire border. It is a festival which celebrates the great outdoors, with abseiling, campfires, axe throwing, foraging, talk on survival, as well as cultural activities, crafts, books and music.[41]
Matthews won the Best Presenter Music award at the Audio Production Awards on 23 November 2016.[46]
In 2017, she was a guest presenter on the BBC's coverage of the Royal Welsh Show, along with Andi Oliver and Omar Hamdi.[47] On 14 May 2018, Matthews took over from Paul Jones as the presenter of The Blues Show on BBC Radio 2.
In 2022, Matthews made a pilot for a new BBC Radio 4 music programme called Add To Playlist, with Jeffrey Boakye. This emerged as a weekly Friday night show which Matthews and Boakye present and direct musically, production is by Jerome Weatherald.[49]Add To Playlist went on to win both The Prix Italia and Prix Europa in the music radio category in 2022.[50]
Personal life
Matthews has two sons and a daughter. She married her second husband, Steve Abbott, who also has two children, in 2011 and they live in west London.[51] In 2019, to celebrate her 50th birthday, Matthews took her nine- and 12-year-old sons and husband to hike to Everest Base Camp.[52][53]
Matthews is fluent in English, Welsh, Spanish, and French.[54]
Hook, Line and Singer, Matthews' collection of singalong classics published by Penguin, became a top-3 Sunday Times bestseller in 2013. The book includes personal anecdotes and song histories. Song examples are "Let's Go Fly a Kite", "Oh Susannah", and "Swing Low Sweet Chariot".
Tales from the Deep (2011), Gwasg Gomer, Wales: Gomer Press Limited, ISBN978-1-84851-312-9 Nominated for a People's Choice Award.
Gelert, a Man's Best Friend (2014), Gwasg Gomer, Wales: Gomer Press Limited, ISBN978-1-84851-464-5
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