As a founding member, guitarist and songwriter with Ireland’s most enduring outfit – the mighty Sawdoctors – Leo Moran can rightly claim to be a something of a veteran of the Irish music scene.
“Yeah, we’ve been playing consistently for nearly 18 years or so,” he says. “It certainly feels like it sometimes – we’ve done an awful lot of touring in that time. But I love it. I’ve always felt that it was great that you could make a living out of your hobby. There was no real plan when we started out. We were all gone past the teenage phase of wanting to be rock stars and we were never virtuoso musicians. But it’s great to be still around – I saw a poster recently for one of the Feile festivals from about 15 years ago and there were loads of Irish bands on it who were big at the time. But we were the only one on the bill who are still going strong.”
Home for Moran is the house in which he grew up, across the road from the old railway station in the Sawdoctors’ spiritual home of Tuam, Co Galway. He lives here with his 86-year-old father – a star in his own right when he appeared on the cover of their debut album – and his 15- year-old son (currently on holiday in the States), not forgetting the sheepdog dog Sally!
“It’s a base for me really, rather than a home,” he says. “When I’m not out on the road, I’m always to be found hanging around here. It’s a real old house; my father thinks it might have been part of a hotel at one stage. About five years ago we gutted the place and had it re-wired and re-plumbed and all that, but it’s still the same as it always was, though the traffic outside is getting busier.”
While Moran doesn’t claims to be a domestic God, he says he does his bit to keep the household running smoothly.
“I do a bit of housework and I’m able to keep the place half-decent most of the time,” he says. “I do a bit of cooking, I can do a nice curry or a quick stir-fry and I like cooking fish. One of the great perks of our job when we’re travelling is there’s such a variety of food, especially in America. We were in Scotland last week and the food was delicious everywhere we went, which you wouldn’t necessarily expect.”
While music clearly plays an important part in his life, the Moran household isn’t exactly what you would call a shrine to rock ‘n’ roll.
“I don’t really sit down and listen to music as much I used to,” he says. “I tend to listen much more in the car these days. I’ve a few oul’ guitars in the house but I’m not a great man for possessions. I watch a bit of TV and a few DVDs. I have that Bob Dylan documentary [No Direction Home] and I got the Metallica one [Some Kind Of Monster] recently. We watched The Godfather the other night and I have The Sopranos first season which I’ll watch sometime.
“I love having nothing to do when I’m here,” he continues. “That’s when unexpected things tend to happen. Usually, I check the e-mail and surf the web for a bit in the morning. There’s a pub about a hundred yards down the road, The Rustic Vaults, which I drop into quite often. I think, like a lot of Irish towns, Tuam is much quieter than it used to be in terms of pubs and nightlife. It’s something that I miss a lot – it’s one of the disadvantages of progress and wealth.”
Meanwhile, The Sawdoctors are as busy as ever. After a handful of Irish dates this month they head over to the US for a couple of weeks of hectic touring and then it’s straight back to the UK for a brace of festival appearances.
“We only meet each other these days when we get together for a tour,” he says. “Davey [Carton] lives in Claregalway, Anto [Thistletwaite] lives in France now. We’ve made about 53 trips to the States at this stage. The flying gets harder as you get older, but I’ve learned to never look at my watch and to have a few brandies and try to get some sleep. We still do some Irish festivals, and Irish people usually come to see us everywhere we play, but mostly we do normal gigs for Americans. We’ve never exclusively played the Irish ghettos, which stood to us in the long run. It can be a dead-end for some Irish bands who go over to the States.”
The band plans to continue touring and recording for as long as is possible - and enjoyable “It’d be great to have another hit,” Leo admits. “It’s hard to sell albums when you don’t have hit singles every now and then. But people seem to be aware that we’re still very much around – TG4 played our documentary the other night, which was great and helps keep the profile up.”
While he’s clearly very attached to his home town and the family home, Leo hints that he might like a change at some point in the future.
“I’ve always had one little ambition,” he reveals. “I’d love to have a house where I can hear the sound of the sea. It’d probably have to be somewhere in Connemara I suppose.”