root salad f18 Patsy Matheson
With a new CD to tour, the Leed-based songwriter turns her ‘mucky laugh’ on Chris Nickson
she released her debut CD, With My Boots On. But with that, she took the plunge, gave up her day job, sold her house and signed with an agency, who promptly got her a gig at Glastonbury. Then, pregnant with her first child, she ended up taking five years out to raise her sons.
But she kept a regular gig in Leeds, first at the Grove Folk Club, then the Eagle. Each week she’d have a guest, which is how she met the other members of Waking The Witch. For four years the quartet did well, touring regularly, their albums widely praised. Like so many things, though, the band ran its course, and in 2000 Matheson was back with only her second solo record, the stripped-down A Little Piece of England.
P
atsy Matheson has a mucky laugh. It’s wicked, delicious, and worldly – a lived-in sound. But after more than 20 years honing her craft as a
singer-songwriter, releasing albums and touring up and down Britain, it’s a laugh she’s earned. Give that she’s been a familiar name for so long, it’s a surprise that her excellent new CD, Domino Girls, is only her fourth solo release.
“Well, there was time with Waking The Witch, too,” she observes. “We put out three CDs and a live DVD. That kept me busy for a while.” But for the last sev- eral years she’s been back on the solo trail, each disc better than the last. And, of course, there’s a tale to tell about what brought her here. Sitting in a Leeds coffee shop, not far from her home, it’s a long way from her early years in the misty south of England.
“I started playing guitar when I was fifteen,” she recalls. “It was to accompany my singing, more than anything. And I wanted to be as good as the boys around.”
Right from the start she was writing her own songs, but it wasn’t until she arrived at university in Leeds that things began to blossom. “I set up a folk club at uni, because there wasn’t one and they’d give you a grant. Then a friend took me
down to my first session at the White Stag in town. That was a revelation. I didn’t know it, but Leeds was a centre for tradi- tional music then. After that, the friend of someone in my halls came through with his band – they were based in Manchester. So there was all this music.”
After graduation, she began working at a new Leeds venue, the Duchess of York, which was run by Mick Longbottom. “He wanted to call it the Marquee,” Matheson remembers, “but the owner of the Marquee threatened to sue. Then it went through several names before he settled on the Duchess. I booked local acts from Sunday to Thursday, and John Keen – one of the sig- nificant figures in Leeds music – did the rest. My first gig there was opening for Nico.”
She played support slots at the place, which became one of the great Leeds venues, and at the Irish Centre, opening for all manner of touring artists, while developing her compositional skills and stagecraft.
In 1991, Matheson won the Song For 91 contest judged by Clive Gregson and Maddy Prior. She could have been up and running – but that had to wait. “I got to record the song and my prize was 500 copies of the single. But it was presti- gious.” Five more years would pass before
T
“For that first tour after Waking The Witch, I was really lucky. Clive Gregson went on the road with me just accompany- ing me on electric guitar. One of the gigs was a festival up in Lanarkshire that a friend had organised. We were in a pub, by the passage to the toilets. Clive just looked at me. But it turned out to be one of the best gigs I’ve ever played. I’m going back there this year, playing with Dougie MacLean.”
he festival will be part of Matheson’s second leg of touring for Domino Girls. It’s a record that’s far more ambitious than her previous work, using harmonies and layers of voices, and a few strings – violins and cellos – to frame her velvety voice. The ubiquitous O’Hooley and Tidow add their special talents, but it’s always Matheson who’s the focus. She’s a very handy guitarist, but her writing keeps growing by leaps and bounds, delving into the darkness of No Contract, for instance, or the soft memories of The Hollies. It’s her most personal work to date, but never solipsistic or confessional. Instead, it’s thoughtful, sometimes amused, and mature. “I feel I’m really hitting my stride now,” she agrees. “I love what I do. If I ever reach the stage where I don’t, I’ll stop.”
The problem, though, is making a liv- ing from it. Like so many artists, Matheson is caught in the bind of rising costs – petrol, B&Bs – and the fact that venues are paying no more than they did years ago. The recession has hit musicians even harder than most. “There are so many things I want to do with my music,” Matheson says, “but right now, after the autumn tour, I might take a year off to decide what’s right.”
And in the meantime, there’s always
Domino Girls… and the mucky laugh, of course.
www.patsymatheson.co.uk F
Photo: Ani McNeice
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