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.
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.
As Matthews told author Ian Clayton in an interview for their co-written 2018 book Thro’ My Eyes: A Memoir,[15][16] "it got me out of the dilemma of not wanting to go solo and it sounded like a band name".
A young bass player, Pete Watkins, completed the first line-up, but soon realised that his studies were going to be affected and dropped out, to be replaced by Andy Leigh who had just left Spooky Tooth.
Their style of three-part harmonies mixed with country rock appealed to English music fans at the time and they toured the UK extensively, beginning in February 1970 with a gig at the Mothers club in Birmingham, a triple-header bill alongside Fairport Convention and Fotheringay.
[19] A live performance of the band playing at a festival in Maidstone, Kent in 1970, again alongside Fairport Convention, was captured in a Tony Palmer film narrated by John Peel and released on DVD in 2007.
Matthews recalled in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner & Spencer Leigh: "I had bought Joni Mitchell's album and we had to do four songs on a BBC lunchtime show.
The day after its release, on Saturday 25 July 1970, MSC performed "Woodstock" on the British TV programme Disco 2 with DJ Tommy Vance.
[5] It was released as a single on the Decca label in the United States and Canada, coupled with a track from their Second Spring album, "Ballad of Obray Ramsey", and peaked at No.23 in the Billboard charts on 16 May 1971.
Matthews was not happy with chart success and its attendant media coverage and obligations,[28] nor with the spectre of being labelled a country rock band.
He abruptly quit and returned to London by train,[31] leaving the band to play the gig and another in Manchester the next day without their front man.
In an interview published in 1971 in Disc and Music Echo, Matthews said, "In the past year, the group was formed, did two albums, got a number one single and disbanded".
[33] The remaining members of the group continued under the shortened name of Southern Comfort,[34] releasing three albums on the Harvest label, while Matthews picked up the threads of his career.
In early 1971 he joined forces again with former Fairport colleague Richard Thompson and Andy Roberts and the trio recorded two concert sessions for the BBC and toured the US in the summer.
In 2005, he decided to revive the Matthews Southern Comfort band after touring with Dutch pianist Mike Roelofs and New Zealand guitarist Richard Kennedy, both of whom he thought would be perfect as members of a new MSC.
[37] He also co-opted Dutch guitarist and multi-instrumentalist BJ Baartmans and American singer Terri Binion for this project, and 15 new songs were recorded during a 10-day period at a studio in Holland.
Overdubs, new vocals and drums were added and in 2010, forty years after the original band had broken up, a new Matthews Southern Comfort album, Kind Of New, was released.
[41] Two video clips of the band performing old MSC songs, "Road To Ronderlin"[42] and "Darcy Farrow",[43] were released on YouTube to promote the forthcoming album.
A new digital single, "Hey Superman",[50] written by Matthews about the pandemic with all four musicians recording their parts in isolation, was released on 23 April 2020.
The album featured MSC's interpretation of 15 songs that had been performed by various artists at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969 and was released on the Must Have Music label in April 2023.