Biography Davy Carton : Singer, Songwriter Leo Moran : Guitar, Songwriter Pearse Doherty : Bass Guitar Jim Higgins : Drums Derek Murray : Keyboards, Accordion Anthony Thistlethwaite : Saxophone Danni Healy : Trumpet Padraig Stevens : Percussion
'There is a special place in rock 'n' roll mythology reserved for that rare phenomenon, the people's band. The Grateful Dead, The Faces, Status Quo and Bruce Springsteen during his years as leader of the E Street Band are examples which define the breed: performers who have established a special relationship with their audience irrespective of marketing budgets and media approval, and for whom the dictates of fashion are broadly meaningless. The Saw Doctors are the latest in this strangely noble line…They are not loud or angry, or vigorously uncompromising. They have no image, message of "attitude"… Yet in Ireland, where the critical establishment has greeted their uniquely emerald brand of post punk country-rock with sniffy talk of "designer bogmen" they are adored in a way that even U2 would envy. It is not just that their singles and albums have topped the charts or that their biggest live show there last summer attracted a crowd of 50,000 devoted fans. They are loved for their lack of pretension, the catchy choruses and for a repertoire of songs which give universal expression to specific aspects of Irish culture. In the way that Lou Reed or Paul Simon can paint a picture of life in New York that often has a vivid resonance regardless of where in the world it is heard, so the Saw Doctors draw their inspiration, both lyrically and musically, from a parochial Irish background, and then use it to create the kind of songs that will strike a chord anywhere that people have ears.' David Sinclair, The Times.
The Saw Doctors came together in the small Galway county town of Tuam in September 1988, when Leo Moran, realising that the potential for Irish reggae was somewhat limited, quit local scenesters Too Much For The White Man, and got together over a pint with like-minded Davy Carton, formerly of punk outfit Blaze X. With a clutch of self-penned rootsy-rock tunes, they started gigging around Galway, not even taking a name until one bar decided to advertise them in a local paper. The name Saw Doctors (travellers who earned money by sharpening saws in old Ireland) was adopted until they could think of something better.
Somehow, the opportunity to think of something better simply never came. By a happy accident, while taking the West of Ireland by storm, they were seen by Waterboys' leader Mike Scott, who immediately asked them to support his band on a UK tour.
In September 1989 Scott's name appeared as producer of their debut single "N17", a rousing road song as quintessentially Irish as "Route 66" is American. "N17" paved the way for their first hit "I Useta Lover". For a while it was virtually a second national anthem, dominating the No1 slot in Ireland for 9 weeks and becoming that country's biggest-selling single of all time.
A re-release of "N17" at the year's end saw it too soar into the Irish charts with ten times platinum sales, quickly followed in the spring of 1991 by their debut album "If This Is Rock'n'Roll I Want My Old Job Back" which gave them their first No1 on the albums chart. Now a wider public was discovering the songwriting strengths of Moran and Carton.
Their unswerving commitment is to write and sing about the things they understand which, by extension, are also the things that audiences around the world understand. "From country to punk to pop and rock'n'roll," explains Moran candidly, "We stole all our favourite bits."
In a Saw Doctors' song, you'll listen in vain for the usual swaggering rock cliches about life on the road, drug problems and easy sex. Instead, continuing the tradition of all-time greats from Woody Guthrie to Hank Williams, their songs range from bringing in the harvest, to running away to join the army; from the plight of Ireland's unmarried mothers to the effect of strong religion on a nation's youth; from playing gaelic football against a neighbouring village to loving the prettiest girl in town but lacking the courage to tell her.
The summer of 1991 was spent playing festivals, followed by the band's first brief but successful American jaunt in the autumn. They returned home to find themselves not only Best New Band at the Irish Entertainment Awards but also, and this is unprecedented for a band so new, the subject of a Channel 4 TV documentary entitled Sing A Powerful Song. A second American tour followed in 1992. "The full house cheered," reported The New York Times, of their Big Apple gig that May, going on to note that, "It was only the group's first song .... fans jumped up and down, climbed on shoulders and collided with one another: slam-reeling."
Not surprisingly, considering their achievements, several major companies had been monitoring their progress so, when their second album "All The Way From Tuam" appeared in October 1992, it boasted a WEA label and secured their first UK Top 40 entry. Tickets for the subsequent UK tour disappeared fast, outselling higher profile acts in key territories. 1993 was a year of consolidation, as the Saw Doctors toured extensively across Europe and Australia in support of the album.
Buoyed by the success of the second album, but now resolved to resume control of their own affairs, the band formed its own label, Shamtown, and while working on their third album, released the "Small Bit Of Love EP", which delivered their first UK singles chart Top Thirty entry during November 1994, and their first appearance on Top Of The Pops. The year ended with the high of another sold out UK tour.
More American dates followed early in 1995, including the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, which found the band in its element. Over the previous couple of years their reputation at British and European festivals, including Glastonbury, had become second to none. This status was more than ever in evidence in June when they headlined London's Fleadh, along with Van Morrison and Sinead O'Connor.
Their next single, World Of Good, bettered the Small Bit Of Love EP by taking them into the UK Top Twenty, swiftly followed by a No 6 position for the third album, Same Oul' Town, supported by, yes, another sell out UK tour.
When that one rollercoastered into London, in March 1996, The Times' Paul Sexton observed that "If they could bottle the sort of bonhomie that can make an entire concert hall feel better, the Saw Doctors would have the medicine show to end them all". Following another UK Top Twenty smash with "To Win Just Once", the band took a well-earned break towards the end of 1996, the first in their ten year history.
Although The Saw Doctors had been building a live following in the USA for the previous few years, they had never had any records released in the States until 1997 when 'Sing A Powerful Song', a seventeen song compilation of songs from their first three albums, was released on both sides of the Atlantic, redressing the balance.
In 1997 Mojo's Phil Sutcliffe, reviewing 'Sing a Powerful Song', wrote that it is a 'Summary selection from the first three albums by Tuam, County Galway's finest punko-Nashville-folk-rock foursome (or so). An album you'd like to shake hands with. Great big Duane Eddy twangs, barrel-chested vocals, creamery harmonies and sweet or serious words; pithily compiled like this. The Saw Doctors are very hard to say no to. Chief songwriters Davy Carton and Leo Moran have their Pogues-style rumbsters - Macnas Parade, Hay Wrap - but their forte is the real-life love song. When I Useta Lover was an Irish Number 1 in 1990 the people loved it and the church hated it. The story starts at Sunday Mass with Carton eyeing a girl, extolling "the beauty of her ass" and placing an "ostentatious contribution" in her collection plate while whispering an enquiry re. the chances of "seduction" later. It Won't Be Tonight, Share the Darkness and several others similarly capture the ache of heart and groin. This ought to be one of those timely compilations that shifts a career into a higher gear.'
After their fourth, most extensive and successful US visit ended in June 1997, they returned to Galway to finish work on their fourth studio album, "Songs From Sun Street", which was released in 1998. More acoustic based than the band's earlier work, it was described by the Illinois Entertainer as 'Indelible melodies in the Lennon/McCartney vein: simple, economic, and bound to stick in yer head. No easy task this, and the fact that 12 of the 15 songs here hook the listener with ease is impressive on its own.'
The finale to the Saw Doctors' celebrated 1998 tour-end gig at London's Royal Albert Hall, was indeed hard to beat. As the show reached a rousing climax, the victorious Galway Football team trooped onto the stage, hoisting the All-Ireland Cup aloft, intensifying the exhilaration of the night to levels rarely experienced - not even at Saw Doctors gigs.
In July 1999 the Saw Doctors headlined the Cambridge Folk Festival before playing alongside Elvis Costello at the 10th London Fleadh and then wowing Scotland at T In The Park prior to headlining the Guildford Festival at the end of that month.
In that year, the Saw Doctors' song "Never Mind The Strangers" featured in the Guinness Corporation's American ad campaign for Harp, and since then The Saw Doctors have been busy touring the US twice a year, devoting over 8 weeks per annum to life on the road in the States and inexorably building an ever bigger following 'over the water', to the extent that they sold out New York's Roseland Theatre in March 2001.
And so to October 1st 2001 and the release of 'Villains', The Saw Doctors' fifth studio album, a brilliant eleven song collection of highly accomplished, down to earth, honest, cracking, rootsy rock'n'roll compositions of the highest calibre.
Source: http://www.workhardpr.com/Saw%20Doctors/sawdoctors.html
