When I speak to Cerys Matthews - the smoky-voiced solo artist
and ex-frontwoman of Catatonia – she's in the departure lounge at Heathrow.
Funny place for an interview. “Guess where I’m going?” she
laughs. She won't admit she's appearing on I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of
Here but it is a badly kept secret. It seems like a pretty mad thing to be
doing. It’s hardly as if she needs to. “I don’t want to stop
going fast," she counters. “Life’s amazing isn’t it
really? And it still continues to be; what I’m about to do being a prime
example.”
How on earth did Cerys go from the pop charts of the mid-90s, famed as much
for her live-fast lifestyle (indie website Drowned In Sound has described her
as, “one-time professional indie-rock drunkard”) as for the quality
of her pipes, to a plane to the Australian jungle, hanging out with q-list
celebrities and eating various polypedal animals? In September 2001 Catatonia
split, Matthews apparently unable to cope with the pressure of continuing to
deliver chart-friendly music after their heyday. And, to be fair, struggling
with much-talked-about personal demons. After the release of their last LP,
Paper Scissors Stone, Cerys surprised most by moving out of the UK to Nashville,
Tennessee. There to record her debut solo album, Cockahoop, she became engaged
to Country music producer Seth Riddle.
“
When I left for America, people were saying that I was brave for going to the
States, just landing there where nobody knew me…” she explains. “But
it was a decision that just had to be made. For me, it would have taken more
guts to stay in the same situation. It was good that I left. It wasn’t
a brave decision, it was the only thing to do.” Riddle wasn’t the
first person with whom she made a connection; professionally rather than personally.
She clicked with musician Bucky Baxter. “I landed there, met Bucky Baxter
and he’s a bit of a headcase and he was there ready for another headcase
to land. We got on very well and through him I met a lot of the old Nashville
scenesters.
That didn't mean she immediately came over all Country’n’Western
though. “I wasn’t trying to play Country music,” she says. “I
wasn’t trying to get into what they were doing [professionally] as much
as I was there to play my own music too, with them. If you’re with other
people and you can learn off each other then you can get on; if you’re
just trying to copy then it’s not cool really.”
And the working relationship with Bucky proved very creative. “Bucky
and I were headcases, but in the best possible way," she explains. "Not ‘lunatics’ but
just quite confident in doing whatever shakes your tree, tickles your fancy.
He’d go running up the hills and I’d go running up the hills and
he’d dream of getting off the electric grid and I’d dream of singing
with turtles or whatever… We didn’t think it was odd either way.
Then all the while we were planning to finish the studio and record some music.”
Sometime along the way. Cockahoop was recorded and Cerys stayed: “Going
to America wasn’t really that well thought-out. I left the band and enjoyed
some road trips in America. Then decided on a whim to go and record my first
solo album there and again it wasn’t planned, but I just stretched out
my time in America to almost six years!” She married Riddle and became
a mother. And discovered that making music in America came surprisingly naturally. “The
main thing that’s different is there are so many players; it’s
not an issue to pull out a guitar and play. It’s not something that anyone
notices, it’s almost expected, just to pull out a guitar and pass it
around, or play it on the porch. That’s why I felt comfortable there,
as that’s what I like to do best.
“
I just remember the times of driving around listening to the Allman Brothers
or The Band… There’s an ease about the music, a laid-backness that
makes it a little bit different to British music; that’s more ‘on
the beat’ somehow.” So by extension, I ask if the British attitude
to music is a touch restrictive or unhealthy somehow? “Yeah, but I love
the British cynicism and humour,” she says. “People take the mick
out of you for getting a guitar out and playing music; I don’t like it,
but I also like it because it’s particularly British.”
It seems strange that someone who enjoys the peculiarly British attitude to
cynicism should choose - and relish - the straight-forwardness of the southern
USA. But she never found it hard to interact, to socialise or work with her
Nashville friends and colleagues. Indeed, she talks enthusiastically about
her time there and the influence she hopes it will continue to have on her
music. In 2006 she released her second solo LP, Never Said Goodbye, with those
folk and country influences infusing her unmistakable music. That her solo
work has a niche market compared to the Britpop-era Catatonia is undeniable,
so is there anything that she misses about being in a high-profile position
within the British mass music media? “You know what I miss? Maybe having
my music on the radio!” She laughs readily. “Is that a bad thing
to say? No, I’m being flippant; I don’t really miss anything you
know? Life just goes on and it keeps on surprising you; it’s amazing.”
Her resilience was needed when her marriage to Riddle broke down and she moved
back to Wales, now living with her children in Pembrokeshire. But to hear her
talk about her life in West Wales, she comes across as something of a sensible,
devoted mother and musician. “I’m not a domestic goddess, I’ll
tell you that now! I have to juggle a lot of things and that’s not easy,
but I’m definitely as obsessed with music as I ever was. Then being a
full-time mother on top of that takes a lot out of you.” Her life in
Pembrokeshire is the antithesis of her London and Cardiff binge-years. “I’m
a real country girl at heart,” she says. “I like fishing and walking
by the sea here. I don’t like the complicated things in life or the things
that are classed as sophisticated.” In 2007 she recorded her first Welsh-language
EP, Awyren (Aeroplane) which is out on a local Cardiff label run by a long-time
friend. It’s beautifully sung and performed, redolent of that more idyllic
lifestyle she’s experiencing.
And then, out of the blue, comes I’m A Celebrity... “I would probably
regret not doing it on my death bed! It’s one of those things isn’t
it? And I’m the kind of person who definitely wants to pack as much into
my life as I can, and that would certainly be an experiment that would be worth
investigating. The way I’m looking at it is that it’s a human experiment…
“
The only thing I’ve learned in life is that if you’re going to
go fast, keep your eyes on the road. You’ve got to remember that bit
of advice. I was happy when that came out of my head.”
Cerys’ new mini-album Awyren (Aeroplane) is out now on My Kung Fu records.
Also online through Amazon and iTunes. Cerys is touring in Wales in February.
To find out more go to www.cerysmatthews.co.uk
Bushtucker Babe
Cerys Matthews must
rate as one of the
coolest living Welsh women, so what on earth made her head for the jungle?
Phil Grape tracks her down