Matthews said her early days in Nashville were a "huge dream"

The former lead singer of the indie band Catatonia said it was "the right time to come back and play some shows".

Matthews, who grew up in Swansea and Pembrokeshire, went off to Nashville where she met husband Seth Riddle, after her Catatonia split in 2001.

Her three-month UK tour, which takes in the Llangollen Fringe on Saturday, is now under way.

In an interview with BBC Radio Wales, the mother-of-two said her next solo album Never Said Goodbye, to be released in August, was the "joining up of my old life... with my present life".

Asked about why she had run off to America just when Catatonia - of Road Rage and Mulder and Scully fame - were at the top, Matthews said she "needed to really just take a step back from what had been going on".

'Pinch myself'

"From the age of nine I really, really wanted to make records. And then we got the chance to do that and then the records got successful... all of a sudden it was like 'what happens now?'

"You get busy doing things that's not particularly involved with music."

Matthews, 37, opted to move to the country music capital of Nashville in the US and develop her solo music.

She also met her music producer husband and they now have two children, Glenys Pearl Y-Felin and Johnny Tupelo Jones

She said the time in Nashville was "almost like it was a huge dream".

"I used to pinch myself because I was just living in a shack with no electricity, no water... and just playing this music with all these people who were so talented, like Johnny Cash's bass player and Mark Knopfler's guitar player.

Matthews and her husband are in Wales for the "foreseeable future"

"They'd just come and hang out on the porch. It was kindda weird - like I'd gone to heaven or something."

Even though she "ran off" four years ago, Matthews and her husband still have a strong connection with Wales, where they married.

"I do live in Nashville but we also spend an awful lot of time in Wales... we're here for the foreseeable future really."

Matthew started her tour in Portsmouth on Friday night before playing back in Wales at the Llangollen Fringe on Saturday.

It also includes gigs at The Point in Cardiff on Monday, and also at the city's Big Weekend next month.

Her band was "big, loud and rude and bottom end", Matthews said.

She said it had been difficult trying to reproduce the new album live because "it's so intimate in some respects and then so rude in other respects".

Asked if she would be playing any old Catatonia hits, Matthews said she had not ruled it out.

"I'm waiting for the time they feel right.

"I'm juggling them around, we've been rehearsing a couple - we'll see what happens."