IT HAS been a hectic year so far for The Saw Doctors and it is about get a whole lot busier with the release of their new album The Further Adventures Of The Saw Doctors on September 17.
Lead guitarist Leo Moran recalls the events and happenings that have led to this point:. “We were in Australia in March, in England and Scotland in April, and in the States in May. Then we had our second ever visit to Norway and our first ever visit to Switzerland.
“Then we went back to the States again and did another couple of dates. Then we came home and did the Oxegen Festival, Glastonbury, and the V Festival and then we went back to the States again.
“We’re about to release our new album and we’ll do a tour of Ireland and Britain on the back of that and that’ll bring us right up to New Year’s Eve. We’ve had some of the best gigs of our lives this year. Sometimes I have to look through my diary to see if I actually lived through it all.”
Jackie Hayden, in a recent Hotpress review of The Docs’ first album in almost five years, wrote: “Rejuvenated by their clever re-working of The Sugababes’ ‘About You Now’, The Saw Doctors have stormed back into prominence, especially on the Irish live circuit abroad. Further Adventures reinforces that resurgence”
The start of the adventure
Twenty two years ago the band were playing a six-week residency at The Quays when they were discovered by The Waterboys’ Mike Scott. It was through Scott they met and recorded with the acclaimed engineer/producer Philip Tennant.
Their debut album If This Is Rock and Roll, I Want My Old Job Back propelled The Docs to national stardom and this year they reunited with Tennant for Further Adventures.
“We always enjoyed working with Philip and we had a bit of success together way back in the day,” Leo continues. “When we mentioned working on this new album he was really up for it. We started in Rockfield Studios in Wales for a couple of sessions and then we finished it off in Grouse Lodge in County Westmeath.
“Every time we were going recording we’d barely enough songs to last us a week but we ended up figuring it out and we got a lot done. It was our first time recording with this current line-up and it was a very pleasurable experience. I think this is our most consistent record to date.”
When Tennant started working with The Docs last year he was at a point in his career where he had achieved extraordinary success as a producer and manager. He had discovered, developed, and signed English pop singer Pixie Lott.
Her debut album Turn It Up reached number six on the British album charts and she was just about to ‘break’ America. Suddenly he found himself in the studio with his old friends from Tuam helming their new album.
“You mightn’t think it, but, there are a lot of similarities between Pixie and The Saw Doctors, in terms of energy levels and their desire to get their music heard,” Tennant tells me. “I remember I was mixing Fisherman’s Blues in the late ‘80s when Mike Scott told me about this young band he’d seen in Ireland.
“He really wanted to do something with them and so he invited them to go on the road with him. I recorded all the shows on that tour and when I heard ‘N17’ live it explained so much about the guys without them ever having to say a word.
“I was brought up in a small town in the north of England and when Davy sang about him leaving his home town it just really connected. After that tour The Saw Doctors and I went in to a studio together and we recorded ‘I Useta Lover’, ‘Sing A Powerful Song,’ and ‘It Won’t Be Tonight’ and everything changed for them after that.
“I believed from day one and I still firmly believe that Davy Carton and Leo Moran are two of the greatest songwriters I’ve ever worked with.”
Further adventures
Over the past two decades The Saw Doctors have had many hit singles including ‘I Useta Lover’, ‘N17’, ‘Hay Wrap’, and ‘She Loves Me’. Last week they released their latest single ‘Takin’ The Train’ and are set to unleash further singles from the new album.
The songs on Further Adventures truly reflect the times we live in yet also hark back to the band’s glory days.
“When you’re writing songs you’re always trying to be observant and trying to represent what’s around you,” Leo says. “‘Hazard’ makes reference to all the people back on “the rock‘n’roll” and in ‘Indian Summer’ there’s a nod to the workers at the Coca-Cola plant when the place was closing down.
“Eímhín our drummer started writing ‘Takin’ The Train’ and then myself and Davy finished it off with a chorus we had lying around. It’s funny that the chorus came from a song about emigration that we had from when we first started writing songs together and now it’s relevant again.”
A stand out track on the new album is ‘Well Byes’ which tells the tale of the various characters who frequent small town Ireland. In the past they would have been referred to as ‘corner boys’ and would have been given a wide berth.
“It often takes me about 20 minutes to walk a hundred yards in Tuam because you meet so many people,” Leo says. “You have people slagging you and showing you photographs and tapes and wanting to sell you things.
“That doesn’t all happen in the one day but it can happen in the one day in the song. Some of the people I’d be referring to in the song would be older but a lot of them would be quite young.
“I think there’s a bit of a tradition of the older people passing on their skills and their wit to their kids and to the people around them. There’ll always be kind of crafty, imaginative, and witty people around. So, it’s always an interesting journey for me every time I go outside my door.”
Interesting journeys and adventures permeate The Docs’ new album, not just musically, but also in terms of the album’s cover art. The cover depicts a 1970s teen reading a Beano-style comic book about The Docs’ adventures on the road. The album art has also been garnering a lot of attention.
“You always hope that when you bring out a new album it can make new friends for you,” Leo admits. “The comic book seems to be making us as many friends as the songs are and that’s a great bonus.
“Our friend Squigley McHugh did a poster titled ‘The Further Adventures Of The Saw Doctors’ for us when we were starting out playing in McAvoy’s in Tuam. When we were looking for a title for this album it just seemed to fit.
“The young lad outside Quinn’s Sweet Shop reading the comic could be any one of us. Maybe he’s looking into the future from a 1979 perspective to see how we’re getting on.”
