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Although born in Cardiff, Matthews was brought up in Swansea and
Pembrokeshire. It was during school holidays there that she first developed
her interest in music, by picking up an acoustic guitar and playing Beatles
songs and Welsh folk numbers.
After leaving school, she spent some time nannying in Barcelona and studying
psychiatric nursing, before returning to Wales. She met Mark Roberts in 1992
in Cardiff, and the fledgling Catatonia was born.
She sang lead vocals on 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 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 also collaborated with Tom Jones himself to record a
version of Frank Loesser's Baby, It's Cold Outside on Jones' album
'Reloaded'. She even came back to Cardiff and played in a number of
pubs, including 'The Caerau'....in Caerau!
In September 2001 Cerys announced her departure from Catatonia after
bouts of exhaustion and anxiety, and a spell in rehab due to
problems brought on by excessive drinking and smoking.
The remaining members
of the band continued their career together, under a different band
name. After a well deserved rest, Matthews moved to Nashville in
2002, in search of a new ideas for an album.
It is here that she met Bucky Baxter, who she worked with to produce her debut solo album,
Cockahoop, which was recorded in seven months and appeared in the UK
in May 2003.
Cerys still lives in Nashville with her husband Seth Riddle, whom
she married in February 2003, and their two children, Glenys Pearl
Y-Felin and Johnny Tupelo Jones.
In December 2005, Cerys Matthews recorded a new version of the
classic 60's hit "1-2-3" in Nashville, Tennessee. The Cardiff-based
ad-agency JM Creative asked Cerys to sing the song for a series of
television and radio commercials promoting the importance of
numeracy. The campaign was commissioned by the Basic Skills
Agency on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government. |
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