IT takes a brave man to admit that he didn’t get something right. But Iain Matthews is very open about the reasons he’s put a new band together and recorded a new album.

Iain was the key figure in Matthews' Southern Comfort who, in the Seventies, were best known for the song Woodstock.

The band’s distinctive sound based around close harmonies earned them critical acclaim but the band did not stay around long enough to fully capitalise on it with Iain walking away dissatisfied with his own creation.

Now, Matthews' Southern Comfort are back with a date in Barnoldswick next week which will give Iain the opportunity to put the record straight.

“It has been an itch I’ve wanted to scratch for some time,” he laughed. “I put an album out about six years ago with different line-up and it paved the way for where we are now.”

Iain has no regrets about walking away when fame appeared to be beckoning.

“My concept for the band was correct at the time,” he said. “I put together what I envisioned but once it was all together I realised that I’d really painted myself into a corner sound wise.

“Once you have a pedal steel guitar in the band you are what that pedal steel guitar says you are. It didn’t give me enough room to move around and develop.”

Not surprisingly then, the new incarnation of Matthew Southern Comfort doesn’t feature a pedal steel guitar.

“It’s become very acoustic now,” he said. "We are a four piece with no bass and drums and I’ve replaced the steel guitar with a keyboard which gives us more flexibility.

“We have kept the vocal harmonies, I think they were an important feature of the old band and we still keep a lot of the old material. I’d say that 50 per cent of what we play on stage are some of the older ones. We have reworked them but with the last album Kind of New, we re-recorded three of the old Southern Comfort songs and with new album we have done the same.”

Iain’s new band features three musicians from Holland where he has been based for a number of years.

“It works for me creatively living here but it wasn’t a creative decision that brought me here in the first place,” he said.

“At the time I was living in Texas and just felt I needed to get back to Europe again and learn to be European. A friend of mine had a biggish apartment in Amsterdam said ‘the top floor is empty if you need a place to land’.

“That was all I needed. I stayed in Amsterdam for about a year then moved further south. I can’t think of a better place to live. It’s also great for touring as I’m almost on the German border; about an hour out of Belgium, not too far from France and for UK all I have to do is jump on the ferry.”

Iain has never stopped writing, performing and producing since those first days of Matthews' Southern Comfort and Europe has been a very successful market for him.

“If you talk to any of the UK Americana touring musicians they will tell you that Holland and Germany are great countries for this kind of music,” he said.

“The Germans are very fond of country music and I think Americana is an extension of that, so they have really taken to it in a big way.”

Iain appears to be a man very much at home with himself, making the kind of music which he wants to make unlike those early days with the band.

“In my naivety back then I decided that the best way to deal with it was to extract myself from the situation and start again,” he said. “In hindsight of course that probably wasn’t the way to do it.

“But I think what I’m doing with new line-up is to put it straight and get it right.

“In the long run I don’t really have regrets. I’m sitting here talking about my new project almost 50 years after my first one. There is no room for regret

“I’m here still feeling the muse, still feeling creative, still getting to tour and make albums. Let’s be honest, it’s a wonderful life.”

Matthews Southern Comfort, Barnoldswick Music and Arts Centre, Thursday, December 7. Details from 01282 813 374 or www.barnoldswickmusicandartscentre.com