Cerys Matthews ( ; born
Cerys Elizabeth Matthews, 11 April 1969, Cardiff
, Wales
) is a
Welsh singer and
songwriter. She is best known as
the lead singer of the Welsh
rock band Catatonia, for her 1999 Christmas duet with
Tom Jones and her 2007 appearance
on
I'm a
Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.
Biography
Matthews
was born in Cardiff and brought up in Swansea
and Pembrokeshire
, and is a fluent Welsh speaker and
multi-instrumentalist. She has cited her childhood heroes as
being
Pippi Longstocking and
The Wombles due to their love of
recycling.
She learned to play the guitar at the age of 9 - teaching herself blues and rude Irish
folk songs.
After a
stint in Spain
as a nanny,
where she learned to speak Spanish
and Catalan, Matthews worked for
Pembrokeshire County
Council. She later moved back to Cardiff and became
involved with the local music scene, meeting Mark Roberts. She currently resides
in London
with her two
children Glenys Pearl, and John-Jones. On 23 November 2009
she gave birth to a second son, who was 8 weeks premature.
Catatonia
The band was formed in 1992, reputedly after Roberts heard Matthews
busking in a street in Cardiff city centre
(this later turned out to be a story fabricated by the band, as
Matthews had known Roberts for some time, although they did often
go busking). She subsequently sang lead vocals on, and co-wrote the
music and lyrics for, the
band's
hits, including "You've Got a Lot to
Answer For", "Mulder and Scully", "Dead From the Waist Down", and
"Road Rage", and 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. In addition, she
collaborated with Tom Jones to record a version of
Frank Loesser's "
Baby, It's Cold Outside" on
Jones' album
Reload.
Matthews was once voted the "Sexiest Female in Rock" in a 1999
readers' poll in the now defunct
magazine,
Melody Maker.
Catatonia's split
After Catatonia's rise to fame with their second album
International Velvet, and subsequent success with third
release
Equally Cursed And Blessed, Catatonia returned in
2001 with their fourth studio album
Paper Scissors Stone.
During promotional appearances for this album it became clear that
Matthews was not coping well with the increased pressure, suffering
from anxiety and nervous exhaustion. On 21 September 2001, the band
officially split.
Sali Mali cartoon series
In December 2001, Matthews returned to the
recording studio for the first time since
Catatonia split up.She went back to the studio to record a song in
both
English and
Welsh for the pre-school cartoon series
Sali Mali.
Nashville
Matthews
moved to Nashville
, Tennessee
in the early summer of 2002. On her arrival
she handpicked
Bucky Baxter, who had
played
lap steel guitar for Bob
Dylan and
Ryan Adams. She had already
collected seventy-six traditional
folk
songs with the idea of making an album of folk
covers. But her debut album,
Cockahoop, ended up as being mainly of her own songs.
It was
recorded in seven months and appeared on Blanco y Negro in the UK
in May
2003. Whilst recording this album she met Seth Riddle and
they married in Pembrokeshire in February 2003, and toured the
album around Britain but with minimal promotion as she was several
months pregnant at the time. Its
Stateside release followed in October
2004.
In December 2005, Matthews recorded a new version of
Len Barry's 1960s
UK top
10 hit "
1-2-3" in
Nashville, Tennessee. She released it as a download-single with all
profits going to a children's
charity.
In spring
2006, Matthews with a new band introduced material from her
upcoming album at SXSW in
Austin,
Texas
.
Never Said Goodbye album
In July and August 2006 Matthews conducted a short tour of the UK
to promote her new second solo album entitled
Never Said
Goodbye (released in the UK by
Rough Trade on 21 August 2006). The new
album was preceded by the single "Open Roads" (released 7 August
2006). Band members included K. Teel on guitar, Ben Elkins playing
keyboards,
Mason Neely on
drums,
and
Jeff Irwin playing
bass. She headlined Cardiff's
Big Weekend festival on 6 August
2006.
During September and October 2006, Matthews embarked on an
extensive 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.
Matthews
appeared at the live 'Guilty Pleasures' concert at the Hackney
Empire
, London on 20 March 2007, performing the Bonnie Tyler hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and
the Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers duet "Islands in the Stream" along with
Terry Hall and the BBC Concert Orchestra
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.
Awyren = Aeroplane won her the
'Contemporary Composition' award in the National
Eisteddfod - the award being resurrected and
presented for the first time since 1986.
In 2007 Matthews became Vice-President of the Welsh homelessness
charity,
Shelter Cymru.
She also accepted a
role of Performing Arts Ambassador for Linden Lodge School,
Surrey
in the same
year.
I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here (Series 7)
Matthews appeared on the 2007 series of
ITV's
I'm a
Celebrity... Get Me out of
Here!, which aired from 12 to 30 November. She was voted
off on 29 November one day before the final episode, coming fourth
behind
Jason 'J' Brown,
Janice Dickinson and the eventual winner of
the series,
Christopher Biggins.
Matthews also got together with fellow contestant
Marc Bannerman after the show, but they split
4 months later.
NME Shockwaves Awards and Big Gig 2008
Matthews
joined the Welsh band Manic
Street Preachers on-stage at The O2
on 28
February 2008 to sing the female vocals of their 2007 hit "Your Love Alone Is Not
Enough", (in place of Nina Persson,
of the Swedish group The Cardigans,
who featured on the studio version), in both the awards ceremony
(within indigO2) and at the
following 'Big Gig' live show (within The O2
arena
).
Radio
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 show
A Month of Sundays With...
Cerys Matthews. She now presents her own show
Cerys on
6 on the same station, including virtual radio roadtrips ,
musical challenges and back-to-school features on subjects as
diverse as. the
boll weevil, the
Vietnam War, the
Bo Diddley beat and
Hildegard von Bingen. She is currently
on maternity leave from the show.
Don't Look Down: Paid Edrych i Lawr album and
tour
Matthews released her first
CD in two
years on 5 October 2009. The album, entitled
Don't Look
Down, was released in two versions, one in English and the
other in Welsh (the title of the Welsh edition being
Paid
Edrych i Lawr).
It was recorded in Providence,
Rhode Island
, Nashville, Seattle
and London and coincided with a sell-out two week
UK tour in October.
Other
After
covering the Glastonbury Festival
for both BBC
Television and BBC Radio 6, she recently wrote and presented a
BBC Two programme on celtic poetry,
documentaries on the singer Dorothy
Squires, and music of the Mississippi
.
Discography
Albums
Compilation albums
Singles
References
- A star is reborn The independent
- Troubled Catatonia split up BBC News
- Cartoon Sali Mali joins Channel 4 BBC News 28 July
2009 Retrieved 23 November 2009
- Cerys arrives for wedding on tractor BBC Wales - 22
February, 2003
- http://www.jmcreative.net/ "1-2-3" download
- http://www.jmcreative.tv/result/videoitem/105.jsp?v=7&n=62
"1-2-3 (For a Very Good Reason)" commercial film
- Divorced Cerys returns to Wales BBC Wales - 15 October
2007
Other sources
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