photo by Phil Seccola
last update September 2000
Matthews Southern Comfort
Matthews (who had changed his surname to avoid confusion with saxophonist Ian MacDonald of King Crimson) then signed with starmakers Howard and Blaikley, who had been involved in the success story of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick And Tich. He made a solo album MATTHEWS SOUTHERN COMFORT, for MCA in 1970 ( produced by Steve Barlby) with songs (many written by himself) fitting his beautifully pitched and somewhat sad voice. Richard Thompson played on the album as did other former Fairport-colleagues Simon Nicol and Ashley Hutchings. "Colorado Spring Eternal" with Thompson on guitar was a minor hit and Matthews formed a band also called Matthews Southern Comfort because he felt he was not ready for a solo career yet. The group featured the American songwriter Carl Barnwell, Gordon Huntley (now dead) on pedal steel-the only one that played on the album- , Mark Griffiths (from Harsh Reality) on lead guitar, Andy Leigh (from his Pyramid-days and replacing Peter Watkins) on bass and ex-Marmalade Ray Duffy on drums (replacing Roger Swallow). In a period of less than a year the band made two excellent albums :"SECOND SPRING" and "LATER THAT SAME YEAR" with Matthews compositions like "And Me", "My Lady" and "The Ballad of Obray Ramsey", Carl Barnwell-songs and versions of songs by Neil Young, Jesse Winchester, Alan Anderson and others. By surprise, they topped he UK singles chart with their version of Joni Mitchell's Woodstock, which, apart from the unwelcome side effects of sudden stardom, also effected in an appearance in the famous British TV program Top of the Pops with the host introducing this week's #1 by Matthews Southern Comfort and all the dancing kids turning around wondering "who the hell are these guys ?" (quote Iain Matthews). Growing tensions within the group (bass players and stuff) had Matthews losing faith and the day after a television session for Dutch VPRO program "Pick In" on November 26, 1970 he walked off the stage in Oxford and left the band while Woodstock was still in the charts and before the release of LATER THAT SAME YEAR .The others continued with little success as Southern Comfort, recording 3 more albums .The most important factor in Matthews' decision to quit had clearly been the overwhelming success of the no.1 single which "marked a pinnacle that he found both fulfilling and restricting" as Jerry Gilbert put it.
Solo
He then signed a solo deal with Vertigo,
releasing two excellent solo albums, IF YOU SAW THROUGH MY EYES and TIGERS
WILL SURVIVE, both featuring many of his ex-colleagues from Fairport. After
a false start involving producer Paul Samwell-Smith (the man who introduced
him to former Liverpool Scene member Andy Roberts- who would become his
right-hand), Matthews did the production himself and today IF YOU SAW still
stands out as one of the highlights of his career : assisted by people
like Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, Andy Roberts , Pat Donaldson and Gerry
Conway he recorded beautiful songs of his own like "Desert Inn", "You couldn't
lose" and "Never ending" (with Keith Tippett excelling on piano), along
with two Richard Farina songs , one of which was "Reno Nevada" he previously
recorded with Fairport .The album was critically acclaimed and sold rather
well. To promote it he toured America for the first time with a band consisting
of Richard Thompson , Andy Roberts and bass player Dave Richards . 
TIGERS was recorded in two halves , before and after the tour and, according
to Matthews the album was too hastily made and lacking enough strong songs
, but in fact it still sounds excellent. Matthews compositions like"Midnight
on the water", "Never again" and the title song are combined with songs
by Richard Farina and Peter Lewis, while Phil Spector's "Da Doo Ron Ron"
scored a minor hit in America. Iain was very pleased with the band he toured
with in America and he wanted to form a permanent group - Richard Thompson
had just left Fairport Convention and didn't want to commit himself again,
but both Andy Roberts and Dave Richards said yes, as did the American percussion
player Bob Ronga, who had been a roadie during their tour. In November
1971 they met in Matthews' Highgate flat and decided that if they could
come up with an original acoustic arrangement of the Association song "Along
comes Mary", they would take off as a group. Although they never recorded
that particular song , Plainsong was born . Matthews was still obligated
to make another album for Vertigo, but the record company was unwilling
to commit Plainsong to the label (why take Plainsong when we already have
Ian Matthews). As a result, he was given a small budget to make a contractual
commitment album, JOURNEYS FROM GOSPEL OAK (recorded in just five days
and a.o. containing cover versions of songs by Gene Clark, Paul Siebel
and Merle Haggard), which Vertigo did not release but instead sold to Mooncrest,
a label with which the album's producer Sandy Roberton was connected. Originally
released in 1974, it became one of the earliest compact disc releases to
feature Matthews' post-Fairport work.
Plainsong
Plainsong then signed with Elektra, and released the magnificent IN SEARCH OF AMELIA EARHART in 1972 . Amelia Earhart is the subject of two songs - Ian and Andy had both read a book by the American journalist Fred Goerner about the female pilot and her navigator Frederick Noonan who had gone missing in 1939. According to Goerner the official reading of a crash was covering up a mission above enemy territory and that both were captured by the Japanese. Plainsong recorded an old song "Amelia's last flight" with the official story and the Matthews song "The true story of Amelia Earhart" phrasing the Goerner version. Plainsong was a democratic band, but not without problems and it did not take long before Bob Ronga left the band. During the recording of a second album (what could be retrieved was released in 1994 as AND THAT'S THAT, but it was supposedly originally titled PLAINSONG III, referring to the membership of the band rather than a third album), Matthews and Richards apparently fell out.
Solo again
To continue would have been difficult, and Matthews accepted an invitation to work with ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith in Los Angeles and he, his wife Chris and their daughter Darcy (named after the song Darcy Farrow) moved to California - the West Coast being the place where all the music he loved came from. An excellent solo album (organized and encouraged by Nesmith), VALLEY HI, was the result.The album had a very strong countryrock sound due to Nesmith's band and production work. Matthews was not particularly pleased with the album and decided to choose the musicians for his next record himself. Session men like David Lindley, David Dickey and Steely Dan's Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter assisted him on 1974's SOME DAYS YOU EAT THE BEAR ...SOME DAYS THE BEAR EATS YOU, which included the Tom Waits song, Ol' 55, which Matthews recorded a month earlier than label-mates The Eagles, Jesse Winchester's Biloxi and a new version of "Keep on Sailing", a song known from VALLEY HI. Quite rightly Matthews was very pleased with the album , but Elektra finished his contract (The Elektra period has been compiled on the CD THE SOUL OF MANY PLACES in 1993). JOURNEYS FROM GOSPEL OAK was now finally released by Mooncrest , but during 1975 Matthews remained without a label and his wife and daughter had gone back to England .
He then signed with CBS for GO FOR
BROKE , recorded in Nashville and produced by Norbert Putman and Glen Spreen
and marking the beginning of his cooperation with guitar player Jay Lacey.This
album had a couple of highlights like Jesse Colin Young's "Darkness, Darkness"
and his own "Lonely Hunter" , but the whole thing was rather disappointing
.The second CBS album, recorded in Hollywood and called HIT AND RUN, is
full of songs, often written together with Jay Lacey , that sounded as
if they were made for American FM-radio and lacked the melancholic atmosphere
so typical of his previous recordings. In this period he toured with a
group called Motion (Jay Lacey, Don Whaley , Steven Hooks , Bobby Wright
and Bobby Guidotti) and his music had become jazzier under the influence
of people like Herbie Hancock. Both CBS albums were commercially unsuccessful
and by 1978, Matthews was again "available for hire", at which point Rockburgh
(which was owned by Sandy Roberton) offered to re-sign him. The first fruit
of this reunion was STEALING HOME, on which the backing musicians included
Bryn Haworth and Phil Palmer on guitar, Steeleye Span's bass-player Rick
Kemp and Pete Wingfield on piano.The album was not much better than HIT
AND RUN , but Roberton licensed the album for North America to a small
Canadian label, Mushroom, which had been financed by the discovery of the
group Heart. "Shake It" was excerpted as a US single and reached the Top
10, but the founder and owner of Mushroom died suddenly, and the company
virtually collapsed. A follow-up by Matthews, SIAMESE FRIENDS, was already
contracted to Mushroom, and was released in 1979. Matthews had teamed up
again with Mark Griffiths for a couple of songs and covered John Martyn's
"Anna" and Stevie Nick's "Crying in the Night". Matthews toured Europe
and America regularly accompanied by bands changing personnel as well as
names (the Polaroids, the Great Buildings), but artistically he had seen
much better times, which became apparent in 1980 with the release of a
third album for Rockburgh, A SPOT OF INTERFERENCE, which was an ill-judged
attempt to climb aboard the new wave. He was backed by a band called The
Insults (Mark Griffiths and Bob Metzger on guitars, Dave Wintour on bass,
Rob "Argent" Henrit on drums). Later that same year came DISCREET REPEAT,
a double album Best Of featuring post-Southern Comfort material,
but , like many other small labels in that period, Sandy Roberton's company
went bankrupt in 1981.
Matthews moved to Seattle, where
he formed a band called Hi-Fi with ex-Pavlov's Dog vocalist David Surkamp,
Bruce Hazen, Garey Shelton on bass and drummer Bob Briley. Two more contrasting
vocal styles than those of Surkamp and Matthews could hardly be imagined,
but the group made a live mini-album, DEMONSTRATION RECORDS, in 1981, and
followed it in 1982 with a full- length studio album, MOODS FOR THE MALLARDS
(both were released in the UK on the small independent label Butt Records)
; influenced by a man like Gary Numan and his experimenting with electronics,
both were intended to be danced at rather than listened to. Nevertheless,
although very different from what you'd expect from a IM record, the band
made some great music and even a Christmas single (It's almost Christmas).
In 1983 Roberton had Matthews sign
with Polydor in Germany for a new album, SHOOK,released in 1984 but this
surprisingly remained unreleased in Britain, and more importantly from
the artistic point of view, the USA. Matthews threw in the towel , had
to sell his guitars and most of his record collection and went back to
California where it took him nine months to find a job as an A&R man
for Island Music in Los Angeles, where he worked with groups like the Long
Ryders and Rain Parade , but was made redundant in 1985.
Return to singing
An appearance at the Fairport Convention Cropredy Festival in Oxfordshire in August 1986 (together with Fairport he did a variety of songs from his career and together with Richard Thompson , Clive Gregson and Christine Collister an impressive a capella version of "Woodstock") convinced Matthews that he should return to singing, even though he had just ended a period of unemployment by starting to work for the noted new age label, Windham Hill. After a frustrating year during which it became clear that Matthews and the label were creatively at odds, Matthews left, but only after recording a vocal album for the predominantly instrumental label, WALKING A CHANGING LINE released in 1988, on which he interpreted a number of songs written by Jules Shear (ex-Funky Kings and Jules & The Polar Bears). While this was his best album to date according to Matthews, it sold little better than anything since STEALING HOME , but it was apparent that the musical idiom he had returned to, suited his voice much better and held a promise for the future .In the album notes a credit to Fairport is to be found "for helping rekindling the flame", indicating that the Cropredy appearance should be regarded as the beginning of Matthews' second spring.
In 1989, Matthews relocated to Austin, Texas, where he linked up with Mark
Hallman, a guitarist and producer who had worked on Changing Line. A cassette-only
album by the duo, IAIN MATTHEWS LIVE, was made for sale at gigs, and Matthews
signed in 1990 with US independent label Goldcastle, to which several comparative
veterans, including Joan Baez and Karla Bonoff, were also contracted. PURE
& CROOKED was released in 1990 (with an explanation on the sleeve that
Ian was changed to Iain to reflect his Gaelic roots) , and proved Iain's
revival : alongside tasteful covers like Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street"
were some fine songs by himself like "Rains of '62" and "Like Dominoes"
to prove that he got rid of his writer's block. For the first time in his
career he started to do solo concerts because there was not too much work
and the revenues were low. At first he did songs that would not ask too
much of his limited skills on the guitar, but over the years he would become
a very competent player.
Plainsong Mark II
Later that same year, Matthews reunited
with his Plainsong-era colleague, Andy Roberts, for a very popular appearance
at Cambridge Folk Festival. This led to regular gigs together and the feeling
that they could cooperate very well brought about the resurfacing of Plainsong
- IM , Roberts, Mark Griffiths and singer-songwriter Julian Dawson recorded
THE DARK SIDE OF THE ROOM in the summer of 1992 . The album was funded
by a German record-maker and supporter and contained a number of strong
songs and the harmonies were excellent , but the whole thing was a bit
too laid-back. The group worked on a part time basis with both IM and Dawson
concentrating on their solo careers and Roberts continuing to write film
music.
Plainsong
in concert in Amsterdam 1996
By 1992, Goldcastle had gone out of business, and Matthews recorded an album for German Line Records: 1992's SKELETON KEYS , once again produced by Mark Hallman and filled entirely with songs by himself like"The Ties We Break" and the beautiful "Compass and Chart", in which the story of captain Benjamin Riley represents the story of Matthews' career. The minimal use of electronic instruments had been replaced by an enterily acoustic sound, which resulted in a very strong album. He then signed with Watermelon, releasing THE DARK RIDE in 1994. This very open and personal record brought us some of his best songs like the title song about the darkest period in his life i.e. the years he had stopped performing , and "Tigers Will Survive Part II" about his daughter Darcy , along with a glorious version of Tim Buckley's "Morning Glory" . Watermelon also re-issued PURE & CROOKED with 5 extra songs .
The same year Plainsong launched a new album called VOICES ELECTRIC , with highlights like "Christoforo's Eyes", "Voices","The Rat and the Snake" this is an impressive piece of work. To add even more to all of his activities Matthews in his home town Austin teamed up with his friend and producer Mark Hallman and a young and talented singer-songwriter called Michael Fracasso to form Hamilton Pool ; they released a country-rock flavoured album in 1995 titled RETURN TO ZERO.Shortly after that Fracasso left the band , but he returned as later on David Halley joined them as well. In 1997 Mark Andes (Spirit, Firefall, etc.) became a member, but as members had careers of their own as well, the whole thing died out.
GOD LOOKED DOWN (again solely with
own songs) was released in the summer of 1996. Again , this is a very strong
album , with a different sound (more electric) and is highlighted by "Alone
Again Blues" , "The Power of Blue" and "So Many Eyes".Musicians included
Glenn Fukunaga, David Grissom, Bradley Kopp, Michael Ramos, Mark Hallman,
Chris Searles and Gene Elders
.Mark Hallman produced the album.
In September 1996 Plainsong launched
SISTER FLUTE, with excellent Matthews songs like "People's Park" (about
Woody Guthrie) and "Spirits", but after a short tour to promote the album
Julian Dawson left the band to concentrate on his solo career, to be replaced
by Clive Gregson (of Gregson&Collister and Richard Thompson-band fame).Plainsong
toured Austria,Holland, Belgium and Germany and a live mini-CD was released.
The new line-up recorded an album
"New Place Now"- produced by John Wood-in Austin, Texas, released in 1999,
and did a very succesful tour in the UK.
Alas, in the Spring of 2000 it became
clear that we now have to speak of "the late great Plainsong".
Plainsong during their 1997 tour of Holland
left to right Mark Griffiths, IM, Andy Roberts, Clive Gregson
photo by Ulf Dahlheim (Norway)
In the meantime Matthews produced
an album for Watermelon by Eric Taylor (who had made an LP Shameless Love
in 1981) on which he sang harmonies as well. The two toured Holland
and Belgium in April and May 1997.
In the summer of 1997 Matthews signed
with the young German label Blue Rose Records and the new album "EXCERPTS
FROM SWINE LAKE" was released in February 1998 and consists of eleven IM
compositions and a cover version of Dougie MacLean's "The Trail of the
Survivor". His next CD for the same label, "A TINIEST WHAM", was released
in February 2000, and apart from a co-written song with Michael Fracasso
is entirely self-penned again. New projects include an album of Sandy Denny
songs made under the group name NO GREY FAITH, a duo-album with label-mate
Elliott Murphy "LA TERRE COMMUNE" and "More Than A Song" with Eliza Gylkison
and Ad Vanderveen.
Renewed interest for Matthews in
the early 90s made the American folk/roots magazine Dirty Linen ask him
to go through his archives, which in 1991 led to ORPHANS & OUTCASTS
a collection of demos and live recordings from the period 1970-1978 including
MSC and Plainsong . Two years later this was followed by ORPHANS &
OUTCASTS Vol. II 1981-1989, not his best period but helpful to get a picture
of the ups and downs of his career. In 1999 small English label Unique
Gravity released a very interesting Volume III. Apart from the official
releases there's also a series of CD's called the NOTEBOOK series that
can only be obtained through Perfect Pitch - there's four of them up till
now. Iain was involved in a CD PLUS program for children called "The Remembering"
in which people like Mark Hallman, IM, Tish Hinojosa and Sara Hickman wrote
and performed original songs representing an archetypal childhood memory,
illustrating a story by Jan Bozarth - Iain contributed the song "Jacques
and Tambo".
Today Iain Matthews, a non-smoking
vegetarian, is temporarily based in Amsterdam. He is regarded as an exceptional
vocalist with an excellent taste in both interpreting songs from others
and creating his own material. Over the years he managed to stay loyal
to his own musical ideas despite the fact that this meant no real commercial
success and he feels that on his most recent albums he was able to do his
own thing, unlike many things he did in the past.
sources :
Microsoft Music Central
Muziekkrant OOR
Several inlays of albums
Platenblad 48
Patrick Humphries-'Meet on the Ledge'
Rhythm of the West (IM newsletter)
Iain Matthews
article by :
Jaap van Moppes
The Netherlands