KBPS Interview: The Saw Doctors

Leo Moran is a member of Irish folk-rock band The Saw Doctors who are returning to England this autumn as part of their tour including Leeds at the 02 Academy on 2^nd December. Famous for hits such as ‘I Useta Lover’ and ‘Hay Wrap’ we spoke to Moran ahead of their live date to talk about their live shows, upcoming music and more!

What can people expect from your live show?

We have a couple of new band members and a couple of new musical elements. We have a new bass player – Will Merrigan – and he’s a very good singer as well, and a new keyboard player – Kieran Duddy. This means that our bass player we had Anthony Thistlethwaite is able to go over and play all the things he’s able to play, like saxophone and the mandolin and the harmonica. So we have more singing and more instruments, so we’re very much enjoying our new toys, and being able to re-arrange old songs and come up with some new ideas!

That must help to bring the songs alive on stage?

It gives us a lot of options and it’s a lot of fun re-arranging things. It’s something we’re going to work more on. And we’re hoping to have a section of the show that is more acoustic as well. Will also plays the double bass. We haven’t got round to including that yet but we hope to during the tour.

How has touring been going?

We did a lovely little run up in Scotland with the Highlands and islands – that was gorgeous! The band is sounding great and we’re very much enjoying it. It’s work in progress, but it should always be work in progress really, as you always want to have something to improve on or work on.

You’ve had a bit of a hiatus over the last few years. Is it good to be back on the road?

Absolutely! It’s wonderful being back, making a racket! We have done a few smaller gigs. I did a few tours with Anthony Thistlethwaite, and also did one in America. We learned a lot from breaking down the songs and doing them in different ways. It really is nice to be back and making the big noise with all the elements we have to play with!

Do you have any plans for new studio material?

We’re hoping to record a few days next week. We’d hoped to have an album together before we started playing again but we just didn’t put enough work into it, so we’ve taken off the spring time to work on an album, so hopefully we’ll have an album by summer or autumn next year and everything that goes with that.

For people that are not as familiar with your music, how would you describe the Saw Doctors?

They are simple rock songs with an Irish accent!

Lyrically you like to keep them locally themed; is that important to you?

It’s important that our songs are distinctive. What we’ve learnt over the years is that the songs that people like, by us, are the songs that they don’t get from anybody else. There’s a certain recognisable thing about that. It’s hard to define what it is but when we hit on what it is it seems to connect with people and have a resonance, so we always hope to write a song that’s distinctively us. If people want to hear great songs about other things there are millions of bands out there that are better at it than we are, but we’re good at what we do!

You’re also hoping to go over to the states next year?

Yes, we’d love to go over and do some festivals. We’re just interested in getting in front of anyone we can. We’re very fortunate with the wonderful job and lifestyle that we have that we get to travel to lots of different places that would never have been on our map if we didn’t have the music to take us there. We’re very fortunate and we’ll go anywhere where they’ll have us!

What was it like performing in Scotland?

We’ve been going up to Scotland for a long time and feel comfortable up there. The hospitality we get, especially the further you go up to the more remote places, where there’s a serious appreciation of your journey and your efforts to get up there. You can sense that from the people. It’s also a very beautiful place and it was amazing to do our first gig back in Tobermoray, which is a complete picture-postcard place.

You have the accolade for the bestselling single ever in Ireland; it must be great to hold that?

It happened of its own accord. The song came out and it had a life of its own and it was what gave us the impetus and the trampoline to jump high. It made us known in places we never could have been known otherwise, and it gave us a platform to work from, and it’s what we’ve been doing ever since. It was number one for nine weeks in 1990 and in the end we had to delete it as we wanted to sell some albums, and we were afraid people would just buy the single and not the album!

You also had success covering a Sugababes track too, which is unusual. What attracted you to the song ‘About You Now’?

It’s a really good song and we have a slot in the last song we play where we insert some song for a bit of fun – usually just a verse and a chorus. One of the ones we did as an insert was out version of ‘About You Now’, and you could see in the audience that it caught on like wildfire, kind of a novelty idea, an unexpected thing. It’s a great song, written by Cathy Dennis, who’s a bit of a genius pop writer. When we went to learn it and play it you realise how well it is written; it’s a fantastic pop song. But we weren’t really surprised. The place where we insert the song is a great litmus test into how the reaction of a song is. Sometimes a song can surprise you one way or another; it could be more popular than you think or vice-versa. We’ve actually had two hits from that, as we also had a hit with ‘Downtown’. That came about the same way, but then we had to stop doing cover releases as it was becoming a bit of a pattern, and we didn’t want to be known as a band having cover hits all of the time. The next one that would have been a hit, I believe, would have been ‘Daydream Believer’. We inserted that when Davey Jones died, and again you could see the audience just loved it. We had to kind of pull out at that stage!

You’ve shared a lot of your set-lists on social media; it must be a great to have such a large back catalogue of songs to pick from?

We’re up to about fifteen now but we’ve got to learn a good few year, but we’ve got plenty to keep us going and we’re looking forward to learning the rest of them!

Are there any contemporary songs you’ll be slotting into your live set or will you be leaving that as a surprise?

We tried ‘All About The Bass’ but that didn’t seem to work quite in the same way but we’ll keep searching and trying and amusing ourselves. It’s always good to have one thing to learn in the set. Sometimes it might get down to two or three, but as long as you have the one thing to think about it keeps you on your toes, and keeps everything fresh!

Finally have you got any big ambitions for 2017?

We don’t really want big ambitions. It’s just whatever happens, happens. I’ll be happy if we can keep playing, and playing in places we’ve never been before. I just like making sure the show is as good as possible and I hope when people come to see us they say it’s the best they’ve ever seen. That’s our job!

Find out more about the Saw Doctors on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/sawdoctors. Unfortunately the gig with the Saw Doctors has been delayed. Keep an eye on their Facebook page for updates.