Julie Matthews is an award-winning singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. She has been a member of some of the most influential British folk duos and groups and is acknowledged internationally as a major songwriter, with her work being covered by a wide range of artists and groups. Her music is often classified as English folk, but contains strong American influences.

Early career

Julie Matthews was born in Sheffield

Sheffield

Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...

, England. The daughter of a steel worker, she began playing guitar at the age of nine before teaching herself piano. While still at school she began songwriting and recording and was soon exploring what she would identify as the three primary jobs of her songwriting: ‘confession, observation and social comment’. She left school at 18 and began writing songs for a small London publishing company. After only a few months the company went bankrupt, forcing her to work for several years as a nightclub and hotel pianist throughout Europe, while still playing her own music at festivals.

With Pat Shaw

Julie met Pat Shaw at a session at a local radio station and they formed a musical partnership, singing and playing together. However, while singing at the Feet First Festival in Derbyshire in 1990 Julie was seen by Ashley Hutchings

Ashley Hutchings

Ashley Stephen Hutchings is an English bassist, vocalist, songwriter, arranger, band leader, writer and record producer. He was a founder member of three of the most noteworthy English folk-rock bands in the history of the genre; Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and The Albion Band...

, who invited her to join the Albion Band. With a lack of progress of their own projects Pat began a career in teaching and Julie joined the Albion Band and toured with them for three years. No studio album was created with this lineup, but recordings from this period surfaced as Captured (1995).

Julie and Pat Shaw released their first album, As Long As I Am Able, in 1992. As things began to move forward as part of a duo again Julie left the Albion Band in 1993 and was replaced by songwriter, guitarist and singer Chris While

Chris While

Chris While is an award-winning songwriter, singer and musician, known particularly for her powerful and moving vocals and the quality of her compositions and live performances. She has enjoyed success both as a solo artist, a songwriter and as a member of a number of notable and influential...

. Julie and Pat joined fellow south Yorkshire musicians Kathleen and Rosalie Deighton

The Deighton Family

The Deighton Family is a folk ensemble from Yorkshire, England. The group is led by husband and wife Dave and Josie Deighton, and the five other members are their children, Maya, Arthur, Kathleen, Rosalie, and Angelina....

, Kate Rusby

Kate Rusby

Kate Anna Rusby is an English folk singer and songwriter from Penistone, South Yorkshire. Sometimes known as The Barnsley Nightingale, she has headlined various British national folk festivals, and is regarded as one of the most famous English folk singers of contemporary times...

, and Kathryn Roberts

Kathryn Roberts

Kathryn Roberts is an English folk singer, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire.Her first released recordings were on the album Intuition, a collection of songs by various South Yorkshire folk artists which also included her friend Kate Rusby...

 for the highly regarded album Intuition (1993). The same year they released their debut album Lies and Alibi's. All the compositions were by Julie including ‘Thorn Upon a Rose’, which was subsequently covered as a single by Mary Black and which charted in Ireland and Japan, helping to establish Julie’s growing reputation as a songwriter of note. The album received critical acclaim being nominated in the ‘rising star' category of the Great British Country Music Awards; this led to the duo opening for Mary Chapin Carpenter

Mary Chapin Carpenter

Mary Chapin Carpenter is an American folk and country music artist. Carpenter spent several years singing in Washington, D.C. clubs before signing in the late 1980s with Columbia Records, who marketed her as a country singer...

 at Her Majesty's Theatre in London in 1994. However, soon after Pat returned to her career in teaching and Julie rejoined the Albion Band.

The Albion Band

Julie and Chris While now became the mainstay of writing within the band. The 1995 release Albion Heart included the While/Matthews collaborations of ‘Man in the Bottle’ (with Ashley Hutchings) and the title track, which became something of a group anthem and provided the first evidence of a fruitful musical collaboration. In addition Julie contributed three tracks, including the memorable up tempo ‘Devil in Me’ and the ballad ‘Love is an Abandoned Car’. In 1995 Chris and Julie toured Canada as ‘The Women of Albion’. The intention was a one-off project, however, positive audience reception and their growing musical partnership led them towards pursuing joint projects. They released an EP Blue Moon on the Rise (1995) with five jointly penned tracks, including the since much recorded reworking of a traditional theme as ‘Young Man Cut Down in His Prime’.

Matthews' solo debut, Such Is Life (1996), was notable for the fact that six of the fourteen tracks that had already been recorded. One had been taken by Fairport Convention

Fairport Convention

Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are widely regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement...

 to be used as the title track of their 1995 album Jewel in the Crown

Jewel in the Crown (album)

Jewel In The Crown is a 1995 folk-rock album by Fairport Convention which is viewed by many as the best record produced by the line up which had been formed in 1985 for the one off project, Gladys' Leap...

, (the anti-imperial message of which led to accusations of being unpatriotic) and ‘Love me or Not’ was covered by Frances Black

Frances Black

Frances Black is an award-winning Irish singer. A pure vocal tone and an energetic stage presence has made Black one of Ireland’s most popular singers...

. In 1996 Julie and Chris joined with Christine Collister

Christine Collister

Christine Collister is a Manx folk, blues and jazz singer-songwriter. She was born and grew up on the Isle of Man and first came to public attention in 1986 as the singer of the theme song for the BBC's television adaptation of Fay Weldon's book The Life and Loves of a She-Devil.Prior to this, in...

, Melanie Harrold and Helen Watson

Helen Watson (singer-songwriter)

Helen Watson is an English singer-songwriter. Her music encompasses blues, soul, jazz, pop and folk.-Biography:Watson began performing on the folk-club circuit during the late 1960s whilst working as a teacher in Manchester...

 to form Daphne’s Flight

Daphne’s Flight

Daphne’s Flight was an album that resulted from a collaboration between five of the most highly regarded female vocalists, instrumentalist and songwriters in the British folk and root music scene: Christine Collister, Melanie Harrold, Julie Matthews, Helen Watson and Chris While. The collaboration...

. They produced an eponymous record that showcased the formidable vocal talent in the group. The last Albion album with Chris and Julie, Demi Paradise, was released in 1996. Julie contributed to five of the twelve tracks, but by this point Julie and Chris had decided to focus on their solo and joint work and left the band after the 1997 Cropredy Festival

Cropredy Festival

Fairport's Cropredy Convention is an annual festival of folk and rock music held on the edge of the village of Cropredy in Oxfordshire, England. It has taken place in August since 1976....

 in August.

In the Big Room to Stages

Julie co-produced Chris’ solo album, In the Big Room, with writing credits for on two songs and instrumental contributions on every track. This was followed by their first album as a duo, Piecework, in 1998. This included what are often considered some of Chris and Julie’s most powerful songs and marked the emergence of their distinctive and highly polished sound. It included the Matthews penned ‘Class Reunion’ which soon became a concert favourite; the moving collaboration ‘Even the Desert’ and ‘Seven Years of Rust’ which was based on her father’s experiences: memorably expressing triumph over adversity. A busy recording schedule resulted in their second album Higher Potential in October 1999, which showcased their diverse influences. Tracks penned by Julie included the wistful ‘Angels Walk Among Us’ and the up tempo ‘Digging Holes’. The following year there was the much anticipated double live album, Stages, which managed to capture some of the duo’s outstanding live sound and stagecraft, as well as many of their best songs to date.

Quest to Perfect Mistake

Their third joint studio album, Quest (2001), was produced by acclaimed Ghanaian musician Kwame Yeboah of e2K

Edward II (band)

Edward II is an English band named for King Edward II, which play a fusion of world music, English folk and reggae. Active from 1985, the band broke up after losing several key members in 1999, relaunching as "e2K" in 2000...

 and featured his multi-instrumental skills. It was hailed as their best album to date, and as cementing their position ‘as two of Britain's most important singer/songwriters’. In this period Chris and Julie began to tour frequently in the UK, Europe, Africa, North America and Australia. They are particularly well regarded in the last of these, where they fill large concert halls and attend the major festivals. For the 2004 release Perfect Mistake Julie took the major share of the songwriting duties, contributing nine of the twelve tracks and sharing another two with Chris, with her creations much enhanced by Chris’ outstanding performances, harmonies and instrumental skills.

Here and Now to Together Alone

In 2005 they released Here and Now, recorded at the Worden Arts Centre in Leyland Lancashire, with a more acoustic and stripped down sound. The live vibe may explain its very positive reception in the music press, especially among more traditional folk commentators. In the same year Julie released her second solo album Slow, which showcased some of her down tempo songwriting and which received positive, if not effusive, reviews. Stage 2: Live at the Firehouse (2007) was a second live album from the duo containing some fan favorites and songs written since 2000. In 2008 Chris and Julie released their sixth studio album Together Alone to further critical acclaim, with Propaganda magazine describing the duo as ‘dealing so very tenderly with simple universal truths, they achieve their impact by an astute economy of expression allied to warmly accessible melodies and arrangements’.

Diverse Projects

While pursuing a career based around her work with Chris While and her solo endeavors, Julie has fitted a number of diverse projects into a busy schedule of touring and recording.

St Agnes Fountain

In December 2001 Chris and Julie joined forces with Chris Leslie and David Hughes

David Hughes

David Hughes may refer to:*David Hughes , interim president and CEO of Amtrak, 2005–2006*David Hughes , English astronomer specialising in comets*David Hughes , Swedish bass guitarist...

 to form the Christmas project St Agnes Fountain, which combined original music, unique arrangements of classic seasonal songs, with a good deal of humour. They have toured in the pre-Christmas season every year since and released 'Acoustic Carols for Christmas' in 2001 to critical acclaim and have produced five subsequent albums: Comfort and Joy (2002), The Show (2003), Three Ships (2003) The White Xmas Album (2006) and Soul Cake (2008).

Blue Tapestry

In 2002 the duo collaborated with outstanding instrumentalists Maartin Allcock

Maartin Allcock

Maartin Allcock , also known as Martin Allcock, is a multi-instrumentalist musician and record producer.-Biography:...

, Pete Zorn

Pete Zorn

Pete Zorn is an American multi-instrumentalist who plays roots music. He is best known as a longstanding member of Richard Thompson's touring band, where he serves as backing vocalist and plays acoustic guitar, mandolin, saxophone, flute, and tin whistle.Although he frequently tours with Thompson,...

 and Neil Marshall for a series of live performances under the title 'Blue Tapestry', which cumulated in a rapturous reception by 20,000 fans at the 2003 Cropredy Festival. This was a show featuring the music of Carole King

Carole King

Carole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, King had an album, Tapestry, top the U.S...

 and Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

, which resulted in a subsequent release of the highly regarded album Blue Tapestry Live (2003).

Radio Work

As a duo While and Matthews have worked on several musical projects for the BBC including Tales of the Towpath (2005), a radio documentary about the building of the Manchester Ship Canal and the 2006 Radio Ballads. Julie wrote 11 of the songs, covering four of the programs for the critically acclaimed shows. In 2007, Julie embarked on a solo tour that featured these songs, interspersing the live performances with recordings of the original testimonies the songs were written around.

Party on the Lawn

While and Matthews have an annual festival 'Party on the Lawn' which takes place at:
Prebendal Farm, Bishopstone, Wiltshire in June. However, other commitments mean that it will not take place in 2009.

Rejoice the Voice

Chris and Julie, along with fellow Daphne's Flight member Helen Watson, also tour with their woman’s vocal workshop 'Rejoice the Voice', providing women with an opportunity to sing collectively and improve their vocal technique. In 2009 Julie, Chris and Helen released Bare Bones, featuring some of the songs they worked on at the 'Rejoice the Voice' workshops.

Record Production

As well as producing her own, Chris’ and some of their joint albums, Julie has also produced albums for other artists, including Helen Watson's Somersault (1998) and Lifesize (2002) and Kellie While's Tenacious (2001).

Awards

While and Matthews have been nominated as best duo in the BBC Radio 2 Folk awards seven times and as best live act twice and won the 'Best Duo' award in 2009.

With Kathleen Deighton, Rosalie Deighton, Kathryn Roberts, Kate Rusby, and Pat Shaw

• Intuition (1993)

With the Albion Band

• Captured (1995)
• Albion Heart
  Albion Heart
  Albion Heart, released in 1995, was the second album of the long running Albion Band's acoustic phase and the first to contain both Chris While and Julie Matthews, marking the beginning of their highly successful collaboration...
  
  (1995)
• The Acoustic Years 1993-97 (1997)
• Demi Paradise (2004)
• Albion Heart On Tour (2004)

With Chris While

• Blue Moon on the Rise EP (1995)
• Piecework (1998)
• Higher Potential (1999)
• Stages (2000)
• Quest (2001)
• Perfect Mistake (2004)
• Here and Now (2005)
• The Best of While and Matthews (2006)
• Stage 2: Live at the Firehouse (2007)
• Together Alone (2008)

With St Agnes Fountain

• Acoustic Carols for Christmas (2001)
• Comfort and Joy (2002)
• The Show (2003)
• Three Ships (2003)
• The White Xmas Album (2006)
• Soul Cake (2008)