Songwriter Scott Matthews has gone back to the drawing board for his third album, he tells Dave Freak.

While making his second album, Elsewhere, Wolverhampton-based songwriter Scott Matthews so impressed fellow Black Country lad Robert Plant that the former Led Zeppelin frontman guested on the record and took Matthews on tour with him as support act.

Fast forward two years and Matthews now finds himself in the company of another musical hero.

His new album, What The Night Delivers, features Danny Thompson, the legendary bass player whose mammoth CV includes such luminaries as Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Donovan, Cliff Richard, Rod Stewart and Pentangle.

“In 1963 he was playing electric bass on tour with Roy Orbison, moved to session work in the mid-60s, played with Nick Drake in ‘68 and then John Martyn,” gushes Matthews.

“All the stories about him are true. He is so down to earth, a great character.”

The two met when Matthews was invited to join producer/curator Joe Boyd’s Way To Blue: The Songs Of Nick Drake project, a celebration of the work of the cult songwriter, who died in 1974.

“After we’d met a few times Danny asked what I was up to, so I asked him if he’d play on a song – and in the end I got him on two,” Matthews says.

“He sent me some ideas and I just thought: ‘These are great’

“He turned up at the studio in his old 1980s Land Rover and bought his double-bass with which he’d recorded River Man and all those Nick Drake Five Leaves Left songs.

“It was a fantastic experience. If I pack it up tomorrow that would be one of my highlights.”

When his debut album, Passing Stranger, was re-released by major label Island in 2006, Matthews found himself the subject of much attention and, in 2007, he picked up an Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for debut single Elusive.

Although his moodier, less immediate second album failed to grab mainstream success – despite Plant’s input – it nonetheless confirmed him as an alluring, inspired and subtle songwriter.

“I’m pleased with how the record turned out but there are a couple of things I should have done,” he reflects.

“I tried very hard to make it different from the first one, I wanted to think outside of the box, hence the Bowie-esque layers; epic on a couple of tracks, and very intimate stuff.

“I’m very pleased with the songs but maybe the execution let it down. So I went back to the drawing board for the third album.