The Grove

resident

August 2013

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CERYS MATTHEWSOn life and love in the Grove

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Keeping up with CerysCerys Matthews talks to Sandra Deeble about the joy of singing, family life and why she loves living and working in Ladbroke Grove

Cerys Matthews has been blessed with an open heart and a generous spirit. This makes what she does, sharing with others the

things that she loves, recipes, stories and songs from Pittsburgh to Portobello, feel completely natural and joyful.

For those of us who have deserted the Archers Omnibus in favour of Sunday mornings with Cerys on BBC Radio 6, there is no going back.

Her show won a Sony award this year and it’s described as eclectic, but this is an undersell. Her innate curiosity is infectious and the programme is completely and deliciously bonkers; she manages to segue from ‘hot, latin flavours’ to ‘bleating goats’ in a beat. One minute you’re in Brazil, the next, you’re in New Orleans, with a blast of Glastonbury in between.

When you open Hook, Line & Singer, her ‘recipe book for music’, you have a similar experience. It’s an assault on the senses: jam-packed with childhood memories, beautiful illustrations and travel tales. You can be in landlocked Tennessee with ‘Oh, my darling Clementine’ – Cerys used to live in Nashville – before ‘taking the Costa Brava plane’ to sunny Spain with Eviva Espana, where Cerys also lived when she was eighteen, fleeing the grey skies. Be warned: it’s impossible to read this book in silence. You will end up humming, then singing, and then you might do what I did: you’ll find yourself in a music shop, buying a ukulele.

‘At this point, what’s so exciting is that I’m able to share the depth of my passion for music,’ says Cerys. ‘Every day I’m thankful for the interesting

things I get to do.’It’s a point in her life, she says,

that makes her days as the lead singer and songwriter for the multi-million selling band Catatonia feel like a long time ago.

And at this stage in her life, she says, she’s happy for things to be quieter. What is more, she has found a place that really suits her down to the ground.

‘I love food and music and we live in the most amazing part of London. Where else can you get Moroccan fish like you can here? Oh, my gosh. And see a busker in flippers? And there’s the man who plays the hammered dulcimer on Portobello Road.’ She invited him on to her radio show.

Cerys admits to being, ‘a brilliant Spanish cook,’ and is a regular at R Garcia & Sons on Portobello Road. She is also a fan of La Bodega and Galicia.

‘You might as well be living in Spain,’ she says, mentioning the

fact that she can buy delicious sobrasada (Mallorcan chorizo) on her doorstep.

I ask Cerys if her book is to music what the slow food movement is to cooking?

‘It’s like home cooked food,’ she says. ‘You don’t have to go out and eat fussy restaurant food.’

It is the simplicity of her song book

that has encouraged people to have a go, join in and sing along. Even poe-faced Jon Snow got involved and attempted to sing ‘You are my sunshine’ with Cerys on the Channel 4 News.

‘The most heartening messages have been from social workers and also from care homes saying that they’ve found it useful,’ she says.

‘It started with an idea for a book about fishing,’ she remembers. (Cerys once made a documentary about shark

PROFILE

Cerys with fellow Welsh warbler, Tom Jones

Cerys still loves playing music

Rex

Feat

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The most heartening messages have been from social workers

saying that they found the book useful

18 thegroveresident.co.uk

and salmon fishing for Radio 4). Throughout her life, she has also collected songs from all over the world. ‘So I compiled my favourite songs from all of my song books.’

The songs are divided into chapters. ‘Action Songs’ includes Incy Wincy Spider and Pat-a-Cake. Sea Dogs and Blue Water reacquaints us with Down by the Riverside and My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. Doing the Lambeth Walk pops up in the popular section, Nana’s Tune Emporium.

Cerys wants to encourage everyone, to sing: ‘Don’t be scared of it!’

This leads us to talk about children and music and what is happening in schools. ‘Every child needs to have a great education and music is part of that,’ she says. ‘The best teachers have a lifetime of influence over you,’ she says.

In addition to encouraging singing

and learning an instrument, Cerys is an advocate of giving children the confidence in their own opinions.

‘I like to encourage opinion. You need to ask kids, “Does it sound good to you?” It’s such a throw away culture now. The marketing people are getting cleverer.’

With her own children, she has nurtured a love of language and different cultures. It’s impressive to find out that her children live in Ladbroke Grove yet can speak Welsh.

Cerys has five children: son Red (3), John Jones (7), Glenys (9) and step-children, Harvey (17) and Hope (21).

Marrying her manager, Steven Abbott in 2011 ‘turned out to be the best thing I ever did.’

‘Children find it super easy to learn languages,’ she continues, and you will often hear her speaking Spanish on her Sunday morning show and of course, she also sings in Welsh.

Cerys’s life might be quieter now but she is also extremely busy. She does some ‘mainstream’ stuff: The One Show and she is sometimes on Sir Tom’s team in The Voice. She is a patron of the Dylan Thomas Society, and led the winning bid to host the world music expo Womex in Cardiff in October. Later this year she is releasing an album and another children’s book, Gelert, to follow her first, Tales From The Deep.

I ask if it’s handy being in the right part of London for nipping to Wales.

‘It is on the M4,’ she says. ‘But I’m trying to persuade my parents to sell their farm in Pembrokeshire so that they can come and live in Ladbroke Grove.’

Coming to this area, she says, was pure chance; ‘an accident. A friend of mine was selling this house.

‘Having toured all my life, it was hard to settle,’ she admits. But now she says she’s in the right place.

‘I love the Grove,’ she says. ‘Why would you live anywhere else?’

Hook, Line & Singer: A sing-a-long book by Cerys

Matthews is published by Particular Books. £20.

On Monday 12 August, Cerys Matthews, Laura

Marling and The Stranglers will join London Sinfonietta

for the Late Night Prom at the Royal Albert Hall.

I love food and music and we live in the most

amazing part of London. Where else get you get Moroccan fish like it?

PROFILE

Cerys with new book, Hook, Line & Singer

A rare moment with husband Steven