The Sawdoctors Go All The Way

Four takes on The Sawdoctors. First a typical day on Grafton Street. Parked outside the HMV store is the 2FM mobile. Inside Larry Gogan interviewing Leo Moran and playing On The Run from their new album, All The Way From Tuam. Now that s what we usually call Irish pop and its promotion.
But not necessarily this. A fortnight earlier on Clare Island off the Mayo coast, I kneel beside a mountain stream to pick wild spearmint as three choughs whistle down the wind above me. Almost a mile back down the road, The Sawdoctors are posing for a photo-session in the rough fields beyond the guesthouse where they re boarded. Only Finn McCool might look west and see the transmitters, the dreaming spires of MTV America.
A week later. The Sawdoctors debut at the Abbey Theatre. In the bar, I see Tom Murphy and Jim Sheridan. Do such associations mean The Sawdoctors are the last word in boreen credibility?
In the balcony, I sit beside Dave Robinson, once the mastermind behind Stiff s trail of pop mayhem, who s recently returned to the fray as consultant to Solid. The Sawdoctors start mellow and restrained; the keyboards sound uncannily familiar. "Hey, it s Brinsley Schwarz," I say, turning to their former manager. Dave Robinson does not suppress a smile.
Almost a month later, I phone Leo Moran in Leeds, from where he regales me with tales of success on their British tour, 2,000 at Glasgow s Barrowlands; well that s not surprising it s only a few Glasgow Celtic supporters. But last night, Leo claims, they outsold EMF in Newcastle. Earlier they drew 800 in Norwich, hardly a magnet of Irish immigration.
Is The Sawdoctors story set to get even stranger?

You might suspect The Sawdoctors had been plotting and perfecting sweet revenge on the media. Encamped on Clare Island, they ve summoned us Dublin hacks for an audience. The plan should make sense since the band can continue rehearsing their new set while the press get the advantages of informality, local colour and a welcome escape to the invigorating West.
But today, we ve got nervous on the road. The West isn t so hospitable. Our plane bounces through cloud and drizzle to land at Galway airport and the heather gets grimmer as we go further West through Westport and Louisburgh to Roonach Quay on Clew Bay to await our boat.
We ve just passed a completely shrouded Croagh Padraig and manager Ollie Jennings worries or does he wind us up? about storms cutting off the island as we cower in the car. Visibility is low, waves lash the pier and only the hovering trees seem at home. Perhaps I exaggerate but when the boat arrives and we shelter in its cabin, we aren t entirely frivolous when we jest that the first one to puke will buy the round.
And yet The Sawdoctors weren t really preparing a commando course for us. Two years ago, their first visit to Clare Island inspired The Red And Green Of Mayo , the opening track on their new album. Raising their standard on Clare Island is their way of restating their identity.
Of course it s obvious very few Irish bands have achieved as much controversy as The Sawdoctors. In certain circles, you d get a more cordial reception if you argued in favour of the Ku Klux Klan. From one angle, you can advance intense socio-cultural arguments that The Sawdoctors have given a voice to the voiceless. Others jibe they wish they hadn t.
This latter view portrays The Sawdoctors as raw, untutored woollybacks who imprison Irish music in the dank cell of a backward rural past that excludes innovation. The Sawdoctors are impossibly cool lads, grotesque creatures from the black showband lagoon where the caricature of country music is Jim Reeves not Nick Cave and where Fianna Fail urban district councillors call for a referendum to confiscate all My Bloody Valentine records at point of entry.
Their defenders claim The Sawdoctors are part of what we are; the first Irish group to express a rural experience that s been regularly downgraded by pop at its most cosmopolitan. My Bloody Valentine could never claim to speak for all those young GAA corner-forwards forced to leave their townlands to forage for Morrison visas, so shouldn t someone?
But their opponents might retort don't The Sawdoctors have a peculiarly wily innocence? Isn t their wholesome wisdom far too sweetly consoling for anyone scared of and disinterested in rock chaos? Hey, you ve just been granted a dressing-room audience with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love; wouldn t your cheeks flush in scarlet embarrassment if your imperfect cousin from The Sawdoctors tagged along?

Or as the seers still dispute, what is hip? The problem here is that Mickey Rourke, Sean Penn, Kiefer Sutherland, Keanu Reeves or whatever member of the Hollywood brat pack was last spotted in Lillie s Bordello is quite likely to put his hand up to admiring the Doctors.
Furthermore Sawdoctors advocates might argue that the band s detractors have fallen for the bankrupt elitism of the rock court. Not everyone desires or should wish to join the sex n drugs heaven and hell of the endless existentialist party with its casualties beyond counting. Hip can damage your psychic health.
Besides, The Sawdoctors are hardly the Padraic Flynn marching band. Their instincts are far from being cagily reactionary. Despite emigration, they represent a strange self-confidence in their generation and you can argue that English music would be improved if it had a grassroots movement of bands who weren t afraid to say something.
And so it goes. In fact I can stretch a theory to suggest The Sawdoctors actually do have something in common with Therapy? and the Sultans Of Ping FC. All these bands plus Limerick s Cranberries, Galway s Toasted Heretic, Cork s The Frank & Walters, Kilkenny s Engine Alley and Carlow s Castenedas matured by honing their identities remote from Dublin and its A&R and deal-obsessed milieu. All these bands, including The Sawdoctors, have identities worth debating. All these bands, including The Sawdoctors, have a meaning beyond commercial success.
But of course, The Sawdoctors are the commercial success. Their debut album sold roughly 100,000 copies; 60,000 here and about 40,000 in the UK and, so they claim, not only to Irish emigrants. Watching their two Fiile triumphs, you know The Sawdoctors have tapped into a vein of Irish life other acts have dismissed with a sniff of superiority.
This leads to a faint but nagging unease: if The Sawdoctors can achieve so much by looking inward, does Irish music always profit by forever gazing out to be blinded by the next big bright idea.
Ideally it should do both. Great pop is inclusive and creates solidarity; it is not exclusive or inbred through a declining bloodline. Yet as they enter their second campaign, valid questions can and must be asked of The Sawdoctors.
Will they be deemed a novelty act, Irish rock s practical joke on the rest of the world? Do they sometimes huddle together in the warmth of local sentimentality? And can they develop both musically and attitudinally?
This last is the most worrisome test. The Sawdoctors may be a more successful soap opera than even Glenroe but only so many songs can be sung about them. And if the keys to their sound are Davy Carton s robustly self-confident vocals and Leo Moran s economical guitar lines with their echoes of Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison and Duane Eddy, can they progress from being just curators of their own ballroom of romance?
In truth, they are neither the bumpkins of anti-hip, nor seers for the sociologically inclined. Yet on Clare Island, you again detect a symptom of The Sawdoctors continuing ability to spread cultural confusion.
Covering them is a reporter from BBC Radio 3 s new arts programme, an assignment that conjures up disorientating visions of The Sawdoctors out on the furthest fringes of the avant-garde together with Schonberg, Stockhausen, Boulez, Uncle Edgar Verese and all. Is this a sign of the sheer cheek of their artistry? Or instead further depressing evidence of the British arts establishment s taste for trawling and plundering Ireland for the right rural stuff of peasant authenticity?
Clare Island even further west than John McGahern?

Clare Island may be isolated but it is no social Siberia. It s a regular stop for Charlie Haughey on his chieftain s nautical progress. Last year, I went there for a weekend holiday and was totally dumbfounded to meet Paul McGuinness and Chris Blackwell on their boating trip.
But tonight, The Sawdoctors have come down from their mountain stronghold and are hammering out their own acoustic session in the hotel bar. Radio 3 holds out her microphone as Davy Carton quips: "the karaoke will be along in 15 minutes."
Along the walls are photographs of Mary Robinson, Sean McBride and Charles Haughey posing with various islanders. In the corner stands an antique foghorn as The Sawdoctors busk a raucous set and their latest ally, Anto Thistlethwaite, adds some siren sax. Really, there s little difference between this unbuttoned session and ht The Sawdoctors parade in public. Their music has a life beyond the stage and the studio.
And yet a week later at the Abbey, The Sawdoctors are almost reticent. They shouldn t be Donegal have just triumphed at Croke Park and Pearse Doherty is over the moon and floating off to Mars. But the purpose is to showcase their new material and prove they can play a more reflective set. Suddenly, you realise The Sawdoctors have sobering responsibilities.
Not only to themselves. After their traumatic dealings with Warners which resulted in only the Doctors And Sharon Shannon being given international access, Solid have much riding on the Tuam team. The Sawdoctors first album succeeded partially because it had the carefree spirit of a band with nothing to lose. All The Way From Tuam is the album of a band who know they ll never get such long odds again.
The Sawdoctors may have sung about emigration but they were still Tuam homeboys. But the most intriguing moments on All The Way Form Tuam find The Sawdoctors as a travelling band, exiled themselves on the limbo of the road, in their own Midnight Express and hurting for home. These days, the boys can t be so boisterous.

Leo Moran will even admit that. Twice I speak to him, firstly on Clare Island with Pearse Doherty, and secondly, by phone to Leeds. On the latter occasion, he s starting to find his own range on the new album and observes: "We have to write a couple of good rockin songs now. Like this is The Sawdoctors. Let s have some crack, wherever we get to travel. I ve been noticing a certain trend in what people have been thinking of the album. The general feel of it seems to be slightly nostalgic."
Or all the way from Tuam to where? The shams still seem locked in their own touring battlebus, these characters still haven t quite engaged the outside world. Leo has often compared the Doctors Tuam to Springsteen s Astbury Park but The Boss eventually had to interact with experiences other than those of his New Jersey youth. Must The Sawdoctors also move on?
Earlier on Clare Island, Leo s first response is way cautions: "It could well be too much for people but if we change, it s got to be a natural change. And if we re any good, we will change in a natural fashion. But we wouldn t have a meeting one day and say right lads, that s Tuam under the carpet, let s do something else ."
But All The Way From Tuam hardly changes the scenery from their debut. The mood may be more restrained but its themes rarely monitor their experiences touring outside Ireland in the last 18 months.
Leo acknowledges that. "I m very conscious of that. There s a batch of songs in us I don t know what they are but they have to come out yet." He agrees there is "a gap to be filled" but he reasons that "songs have a long gestation period in The Sawdoctors in a year or two, we ll have the handle on it to feel comfortable with it."
Such attitudes reinforce their position in a peculiar poptime of their own. Sometime long ago, The Sawdoctors patently received a huge dose of immunity against fashion. I can hardly see the London Warners press office frog-marching them to some boite to congregate with this week s supermodels. Then listen to Music I Love on the new album.
"I ve tried goin to discos," it opens, "throwin shapes on the floor, nothin ever happens."
It s all most distrustful as it paints a picture of a solitary male in his darkened bedroom listening to Presley, Beatles and Stones records. The Sawdoctors are far from bothered to seek allies from those who ll be reinventing the Nineties.
But then Leo has his own theory about the rock circus: "We prefer to stay on the periphery because I think it s awful hard to be seriously in a band after Spinal Tap. It just burst the bubble, you just can t mess around and try and be serious. It cut it down to size.
"For me," he concludes doubtless with his tongue gouging his cheek, "the post-Spinal Tap era is a very definite phase in rock music."
When did you first realise this?
"Someday last week. I thought if you re going to be over the top, people will just laugh at you."

Truth is The Sawdoctors specialise in reminding us of what we should have but didn t notice. Coming from Tuam, they mark real social changes not passing fads. Or as Leo accurately remarks: "I definitely think if I Useta Love Her had come out 15 or 20 years ago, it would have been banned."
Sometimes nice lads can get away with blasphemy if not murder. Could Siniad O Connor write and sing a song that rhymed "Mass" with "the glory of his ass" without an immediate media furore?
It gets even more ridiculous as Leo points out: "When it did come out, I think the Church were actually glad to get a mention. Do you know what I mean? There s no figures, I ve no proof of it, but I imagine the amount of people going to Mass has fallen off. So I think the publicity of it, a popular band mentioning Mass was like "
Even alongside "the glory of his ass"?
"Swings and roundabouts," he says.
Moran also has designs on the annual Padraig pilgrimage. "I was there on Reek Sunday last year," he recalls. "It s a wonderful occasion for thousands of people to get together and climb up a mountain. It s a great buzz. So I was just thinking it would be great to have a similar thing that wasn t tied in with religion."
Through the lines with the Galway street theatre group, Machnas, The Sawdoctors have learned how to plan massive communal celebrations so this might not be an unfeasible scheme at all. Last year, the Fiile Firbolgs were miraculous? I thought it the ultimate punk-stadium gesture. Bog-Monster Boogie had provided the ultimate answer to the empty and exorbitant extravaganzas of such as Michael Jackson. Once again, The Sawdoctors had overturned the tired terms of Irish art-rock.
Such as it is. For Irish and especially Dublin acts merely flirt with art. It s a flag of convenience, an artistic learner driver s licence for angst. Mostly Dublin acts fiffle with imported ideas. Unlike The Sawdoctors who have firm links with the Galway artistic community, Dublin music is remote from both the performing and visual arts and so collapses into secondhand attitudinising.
"Both myself and Pearse worked with Machnas," Leo reminds me. "It s like Machnas have gone international and we re trying to go international. We once did a spoof on Rattle And Hum for Jo Maxi in 1988 with them. It was like we were playing on top of the Claddagh Palace and all the celebrities were arriving for us. And Padraig Breathnach (leader of Machnas) was the Paul McGuinness figure. And he said, we ve brought the lounge-bar atmosphere of the west of Ireland to the big stage, now we re going international ."
Yet Dublin still doesn t get the joke. Worse, Dublin still doesn't tell its own. On the album s title track, The Sawdoctors proudly declare, "no matter where you re from, everyone s local" yet since Paul Cleary went to ground, nobody s committed to writing songs about the capital of Ireland.
Leo mulls this over: "I mean what s a Dublin song? Would it be about living in a housing estate? Being bored, hanging around a housing estate, that s a real experience for thousands of kids. We were up in a shopping centre a while back and it was the centre of the town. That would be a good Dublin song.
"Like, I d think the kids in Dublin might relate to Red Cortina ," he continues. "Like the youth club and the father driving her around, I think that s a common experience."
Then he ends with a promise. "We d like to play in Tallaght, one day."

But now The Sawdoctors are packing the student union in Leeds. This is even more peculiar since The Sawdoctors Album hasn t yet been released in Britain. They have no new press profile in Britain and expect hostility from Melody Maker and few favours from NME. Back in Dublin, I can t play doubting Thomas. I ve got to accept Leo s word. So what, in the name of Maeve, Queen of Connacht Gold, is happening?
Check these three possible factors. First, The Sawdoctors have extended their successful Irish grassroots policy, concentrating on regional press and radio. Second, a boost from last year s Channel 4 documentary. Third and more speculatively, there may also be a strange Levellers connection.
As for Crusties, The Sawdoctors are, at best, fellow travellers, but their producer, Phil Tennant also works with The Levellers. Their prime importance must be that they are the first band in ages to win a huge audience without press patronage. Yet ever since New Model Army, there s been an English audience, outside of London, who are fed up with fashion, and possibly misunderstood and ill-served by the press.
It also may be growing. If the disasters of the last month really amount to a watershed in English history, be sure that new musics and audiences will emerge. After the devaluation of sterling, the devaluation of style.
I don t believe The Sawdoctors lose sleep pondering these matters. I quiz Leo about their audience and he s unworldly and vague. For instance, ht other bands feature most on their sweatshirts? What clues do their fans give in conversation afterwards?
Leo can t answer. He claims it s far less formal: "I don t know where they re coming from. It s some sort of groundswell somehow it s like the tradition in modern technology of four songs being passed along. I think a lot of our fans learn our songs in pubs or give away our tapes to each other."
But I still don t get it. The good citizens of Norwich bellowing along to songs about Gaelic corner-forwards playing in Roscommon CBS 1981 would break anyone s heart.