Matthews Southern Comfort

Matthews Southern Comfort (MSC) is a British country rock/folk rock band, formed in 1970 by former Fairport Convention singer Ian (later Iain) Matthews. The original line-up consisted of Matthews, lead guitarist Mark Griffiths (who later became the bass player with the Shadows and the Everly Brothers), rhythm guitarist Carl Barnwell, bass player Pete Watkins, drummer Roger Swallow and pedal steel guitarist Gordon Huntley. Watkins and Swallow left the band after a few weeks and were replaced by bass player Andy Leigh and drummer Ray Duffy.The band was formed to enable Matthews to tour following the success of his first post-Fairport album, released in early 1970, Matthews' Southern Comfort. The band recorded two more albums that year, Second Spring and Later That Same Year, before Matthews abruptly quit at the height of their fame, shortly after their version of Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock" became a worldwide hit. It reached the top of the UK music charts in October 1970, their only No. 1 hit single, and charted in several European countries, as well as reaching No. 5 in Canada and No. 23 in the Billboard Top 100 in the United States. A second single, "Mare, Take Me Home", reached #86 in Canada. Three more albums were released by the band under the name Southern Comfort in the early 1970s.In the twenty-first century, Matthews has twice reformed the band with mostly Dutch musicians, first in 2010, releasing two new albums, Kind Of New and Kind Of Live (individually and as a combined tour issue), and again in 2017, releasing two further albums, Like A Radio in 2018 and The New Mine in 2020. A fifth MSC album, The Woodstock Album featuring 15 cover versions of songs played by various artists at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, was released in April 2023.Matthews had been a member of Fairport Convention between 1967 and 1969 and sang vocals on the band's first two albums, alongside Judy Dyble on the self-titled Fairport Convention, and with Sandy Denny on the acclaimed What We Did on Our Holidays after she had replaced Dyble as lead female singer in 1968.By the time they recorded their third album Unhalfbricking in early 1969, Fairport, under Denny's influence, had largely abandoned their original American singer-songwriter material and were moving towards what would become known as English folk rock. The genre was somewhat alien to Matthews' tastes, and led to a discontent within Fairport that ended with Matthews leaving the band after a meeting with producer Joe Boyd in February 1969. Matthews continued to live in a shared house in London with Fairport members Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol and was paid a £20 per week retainer while he found his new path. In Fairport Matthews had not played any instruments except the odd conga drum or Jew's harp, and to counter this 'deficiency' he set about learning to play the guitar, with Richard Thompson as his teacher. He was still living with Thompson and Nicol at the time of the motorway crash in May 1969 that killed Fairport drummer Martin Lamble and Thompson's then girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.