River Matthews
River Matthews
Hi River, we heard your acoustic session on Jo Whiley. Wow! Your voice has a lot of soul to it. Why haven't we heard of you before?
Ah, glad you enjoyed it! I guess you haven't heard of me before cos I'm quite new to the songwriting scene. Have been playing and singing for years but only started writing properly about two years ago.
We love your single Stars, tell us the story behind it...
The song 'Stars' was a concept I had years ago. I was staying somewhere out in Scotland, miles from anywhere and I went for a walk one night. There were millions of stars in the sky but three stars were the brightest. And it hit me right then that they were the most important people in my life, my Mum, my Dad and my Sister.
Years later I was playing some chords on the guitar when I starting singing 'Count all the stars...' and that idea came back to me. But I realized there was another most important person in my life who wasn't there before, my niece Imogen.
So, I decided to write the song like I was talking to Imogen, telling her to count her own stars.
How did you choose it as your lead single?
It's one of the first songs I ever wrote and it's very close to my heart.
We hear you have an EP release just around the corner. Is Stars a good example of what we can expect?
The next EP definitely carries on from the first, but there's a couple of songs on there which are quite different from Stars!
If you had to define yourself as an artist, what would you say...
I'd put the word artist into a rhyming dictionary and see what came out. Then I'd probably go with another word which didn't rhyme and use it in the middle of a verse.
If you could choose two artists to be compared with, who would they be...
Man, I can't answer that! That's a question for you I think ;)
You have already worked with some of the industry's biggest names, notably Rag'n'Bone Man - have they offered you any words of advice?
Yeah, I've had a lot of good advice along the way. Someone said to me once about songwriting that a song is never finished... it's just a snapshot of where you were right then. I like to think about this sometimes when I'm writing.
If you could collaborate with one artist, who would it be?
So many. I love Corinne Bailey Rae's voice and the gentle soul which comes out... yeah, I'd love to work with her.
Lastly, what one thing do you hope to achieve in 2017...
I wanna work on letting go of things more, and I just wanna have lots more fun really, and meet more beautiful people. Yes!
River Matthews, 15th May 2017, 16:04 PM