Plainsong was originally a British country rock/folk rock band, formed in early 1972 by Iain Matthews, formerly of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort, and Andy Roberts, previously a member of The Liverpool Scene and Everyone. Plainsong's line-up consisted of Matthews, Roberts, piano and bass player David Richards who had played with Roberts in the band Everyone, and American guitarist and bass player Bobby Ronga, who Matthews and Roberts had first met in the summer of 1971 when they toured the US and Canada as an acoustic trio with former Fairport guitarist Richard Thompson.
Managed by record producer Sandy Roberton, Plainsong released just one album during their original existence, In Search of Amelia Earhart in October 1972, before splitting up at the end of December that year in somewhat acrimonious circumstances. A second studio album Now We Are 3 was recorded before the split but remained unreleased until 2005.
Matthews and Roberts have revived Plainsong several times since the early 1990s, firstly as a quartet in 1992 with two new band members: Mark Griffiths, Matthews' former colleague in Matthews Southern Comfort, and British singer-songwriter Julian Dawson, recording a new album Dark Side Of The Room in 1992 and then going out on tour in August 1993 for the first time in 20 years. Two more albums followed - Voices Electric in 1994 and Sister Flute in 1996 - before Clive Gregson replaced Dawson in the band in 1996, touring Europe in 1997 and recording another new album New Place Now in 1999. Dawson rejoined Plainsong in 2003 for their next album Pangolins.
Ian (later Iain) Matthews had been a member of Fairport Convention between 1967 and 1969, sharing vocals on the band's first two albums, the self-titled Fairport Convention and What We Did On Our Holidays, singing with Judy Dyble initially and then later Sandy Denny. By the time of the recording of band's third album Unhalfbricking, 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. The genre was somewhat alien to Matthews' tastes at the time, leading to a discontent within Fairport that saw him essentially fired from the band after a meeting with producer Joe Boyd in February 1969.
He then left to work solo, soon afterwards forming his own band, Matthews Southern Comfort whose greatest success was topping the UK Singles Chart with their version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" in late October 1970. After that band split up, he recorded two solo albums in 1971 for the Vertigo label, If You Saw Thro' My Eyes and Tigers Will Survive, on both of which Andy Roberts had played guitar.
The beginnings of Plainsong stemmed from Iain Matthews' tour of the US in the summer of 1971 to promote his If You Saw Thro' My Eyes album released at the beginning of May that year. Matthews visited the US in June 1971 to meet with record industry contacts and to promote the album through a series of press conferences for Mercury Records, the distributor of the Vertigo label in America. That trip took in several US cities and laid the groundwork for a return at the end of July as an acoustic trio - joining him on the tour were Andy Roberts and his former colleague Richard Thompson, who by that time had recently left Fairport Convention. The tour would see them play residencies at The Bitter End in New York, the Poison Apple in Detroit and the legendary Troubador nightclub in Los Angeles. Their driver for the tour was New Yorker Bobby Ronga, who also happened to play bass and piano. Ronga was invited by Matthews to join them on bass during their mid-August Bitter End residency, where they were booked as the support act to the singer Dion (DiMucci), who at that time was reinventing himself as a folk singer some ten years after coming to fame with chart hits such as "Runaround Sue" and "Teenager In Love".
Following that tour, Andy Roberts was booked as the support act on an upcoming Steeleye Span tour and needed a bass player. His Everyone bandmate David Richards was his immediate choice but was unavailable as he was already out on tour with Sandy Denny. Roberts had liked Bobby Ronga's bass playing style on that summer tour and invited him to fill the vacant slot. Ronga duly moved to the UK for the tour, and also ended up playing piano alongside Roberts’ guitar work on the recording sessions for Matthews' second Vertigo album Tigers Will Survive.
Throughout that period, Matthews and Roberts frequently discussed the idea of playing together on a more formal basis. It came to fruition in late December 1971 after a meeting at Matthews' Highgate flat, where with Richards and Ronga they tried out the Tandyn Almer song "Along Comes Mary" and agreed that if it worked satisfactorily they would go ahead and form a band. The band's name was picked on a whim when later that evening they randomly opened a copy of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music to find Plainsong at pages 450-451. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plainsong_(band)
