Complete list of The Saw Doctors’ upcoming 2012 tour dates:
http://bit.ly/xM8JPu
In 2011 the band had a runaway hit with their cover of Petula Clark’s sensational 1960s pop single “Downtown,” which reached #2 on the chart in December. Clark joined the band in the studio to rerecord the chorus and harmony. Watch the new video with Clark filmed on the streets of Galway here:
http://bit.ly/tnk7g6
The Saw Doctors’ latest album, ‘The Further Adventures Of The Saw Doctors,’ was released in Ireland and the UK to unanimous acclaim. It is by far their grittiest album to date, dealing with some of the most serious lyrics of the band’s career. Listen to the opener ‘Takin’ The Train’ with its angst-driven tempo and layered guitars here:
http://bit.ly/bNheiD
The Saw Doctors are: Davy Carton (vocals, guitar), Leo Moran (guitars, vocals), Anthony Thistlethwaite (Bass Guitar, Saxophone), Kevin Duffy (Keyboards, Vocals) and Rickie O’Neill (Drums, Vocals).
Formed in 1986, The Saw Doctors have achieved eighteen top 30 singles and three number one hits in Ireland. Their single “I Useta Lover” is the country's bestselling single of all time, outselling U2. The band has toured America for over twenty years with the New York Times raving, "The Saw Doctors sing earnest folk-rocking anthems of small-town life."
Please be sure to choose wisely, prizes cannot
be exchanged, make sure you choose the venue to which you can attend. Winning tickets will be available at the door.
Wed Feb 22 *Ponte Vedra Beach, FL*
Ponte Vedra Concert Hall
Thurs Feb 23 *Ft. Lauderdale, FL*
Revolution
Fri Feb 24 *Orlando, FL*
The Plaza Live
Sat Feb 25 *St. Petersburg, FL* Jannus Live
Mon Feb 27 *Wilmington, NC*
Brooklyn Arts Center
Wed Feb 29 *Norfolk, VA *
The Norva
Thurs March 1 *Silver Spring, MD*
The Fillmore
Fri March 2 *Jim Thorpe, PA*
Penn’s Peak
Sat March 3 *Uncasville, CT*
Mohegan Sun Casino
Mon March 5 *Pittsburgh, PA*
Altar Bar
Tues March 6 *Providence, RI* Lupo's Hartbreak Hotel
Thurs March 8 *Worcester, MA*
The Hanover Theatre
Fri March 9 *Boston, MA*
House of Blues
Sat March 10 *New York, NY*
Irving Plaza
Sun March 11 *Northampton, MA*
Calvin Theatre
Tues March 13 *Philadelphia, PA*
Theatre of the Living Arts (TLA)
Thur March 15 *Asbury Park, NJ*
The Stone Pony
Fri March 16 *New York, NY*
Irving Plaza
Sat March 17 *Atlantic City, NJ* Borgata Hotel & Casino
Sun March 18 *Ridgefield, CT*
Ridgefield Playhouse
Tues March 20 *Toronto, Canada*
Mod Club
Thur March 22 *Detroit, MI* St. Andrews Hall
Fri March 23 *Cleveland, OH* House of Blues
Sat March 24 *Chicago IL* Vic Theatre
Sun March 25 *Des Moines, IA* People's Court
Thurs March 29 *Sacramento, CA* Ace of Spades
Fri March 30 *San Francisco, CA* Slims
Sat March 31 *San Francisco, CA* Slims
Sun April 1 *Los Angeles,
CA* Troubadour
The Saw Doctors - A Biography
Davy Carton: Vocals, Guitar Leo Moran: Guitars, Vocals Anthony Thistlethwaite: Bass Guitar, Saxophone Kevin Duffy: Keyboards, Vocals Rickie O’Neill: Drums, Vocals
The Saw Doctors is a group of songwriting musicians from the West of
Ireland, hell-bent on celebrating, observing, recording and sometimes poking
fun attheir own locality, accent and idiomatic use of language whilst
dressing their songs up in their favourite sounds and styles from their
years of musical fandom.
Formed in Tuam, really a small market town but in fact a tiny city of two
cathedrals, in the late 1980’s, originally with Mary O’Connor as the main
singer and later basedaround the songs and singing of Davy Carton, Leo
Moran, Padraig Stevens, John ‘Turps’ Burke with no little contribution from
the late Paul Cunniffe (who hadwritten and sang Davy’s previous band, Blaze
X’s, repertoire with him)
The Saw Doctors were discovered by Mike Scott of The Waterboys on a stormy
Wintry Tuesday night in Galway city, plying their trade with more gumption
than virtuosity in the back of The Quays Bar, blue banger slates clattering
down treacherously on the narrow, deserted streets outside leading to where
theRiver Corrib meets the Atlantic Ocean.
Scott took an unlikely liking to the unlikely bunch of raggedy and
fashion-unconscious triers and offered them the support slot on what was, at
that time, the most revered up-coming rock and roll tour of the country.
Things must’ve somehow pleased the Scot along the way and in Sligo, before
the tour was completed, he offered the itinerant songsmiths the six-week
Spring tour of Great Britain, starting in February 1989. Padraig’s coy
acceptance of the offer came in four words ‘We’ll pencil it in.’
With Pearse Doherty, the bassist since the start of the Irish tour, in his
last year in Science in Galway University and Davy working as a fitter and
thefather of three young boys, the youngest awaiting holy water and a name,
things were not pure and simple. The philosophy adopted was – ‘Let’s notend
up looking back in twenty years time telling people in a pub what we could
have done wan time’
That decided, Pearse’s mother smuggled his good bass down from Donegal (his
father didn’t know he was in a band) and Pearse packed his sciencebooks with
the rest of his gear so he could do some study along the way(!!!) Davy asked
for six weeks off work and was promptly told by his boss that if hetook six
weeks off he could have every week afterwards off as well. Davy courageously
chose to take the six weeks and flew over to London a couple of days later
than the rest of the band, Christopher having now been christened, for the
start of an epic escapade.
Mike fulfilled his tour-time offer and produced the band’s first single,
‘N17’, which features the then Waterboys’ saxophonist, and now Saw Doctors’
bassplayer, Anthony Thistlethwaite, in the outro; it was a feat of
indescribable dimensions how a man could play a sax so well after being in
the pub all day.
The single got on the radio a handful of times and a second single was to be
released to fulfill the two-record deal with Solid Records. With Philip
Tennant, whom they had met through Mike and who had engineered ‘N17’, now on
the producer’s perch, they went to the haunted Loco Studios in Wales and put
down three tracks – ‘It Won’t Be Tonight’, ‘I Useta Lover’ and ‘Sing A
Powerful Song’.
After debates, theories and shit-talk, it was eventually decided that ‘I
Useta Lover’ would be the second release from The Saw Doctors. They plugged
away at gigs around Ireland and scored an early afternoon slot at the
coming-of-age Irish festival of its time, Féile, in Thurles, in County
Tipperary,in the August of 1990,. The Welsh ghost must have brought them
luck for that Sunday evening they learnt that ‘I Useta Lover’ had somehow
entered the Irish single charts from where it slowly climbed, taking seven
weeks to reach the Number One spot and remaining on top for the following
nine weeks. The Saw Doctors were now known the length and breath of the
country and beyond.
Things got fast. A Channel 4, Steve Lock directed, documentary, ‘Sing A
Powerful Song’, was shot in Manchester and at their homecoming gig in the
Gaelic Football Stadium in Tuam, and it aired in both Britain and Ireland.
They made their first trip to The United States in 1991, a journey they have
made almost eighty times since.
Through the nineties they chalked up well-received appearances at numerous
prestigious festivals including Witnness, Oxegen and Slane in
Ireland,Glastonbury, T in the Park, the London Fleadh in Britain as well as
at its Fleadh cousins across the Atlantic in New York, Chicago and San
Francisco,and garnered a reputation for being a powerful and exciting live
band, playing diligently through Ireland, Britain and the USA, with the odd
trip to Australia,Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Holland, France and
Belgium thrown in. A handful of singles briefly dented the UK Charts through
the nineties, the three most successful breaking into the Top 20 – ‘Small
Bit Of Love’, ‘To Win Just Once’ and ‘World Of Good’.
With four studio albums in their record shop section, ‘If This Is Rock And
Roll I Want My Old Job Back’, ‘All The Way From Tuam’, ‘Same Oul’ Town’
and‘Songs From Sun Street’, The Saw Doctors went where no band had ever gone
before and bravely entered the new millennium. Upheaval in the line-upsaw
long-time drummer John Donnelly and long-time bassist Pearse Doherty move
on, joined shortly afterwards by keyboardist Derek Murray and theteam-sheet
took a while to settle again, with first Jim Higgins and then Fran Breen
occupying the drumstool and Kevin Duffy pressing the black andwhite keys.
For a number of tours a brass section with Danny Healy on trumpet and Richie
Buckley on sax augmented the show, as well as the addition of Mouse McHugh
on backing vocals. They released their sixth studio album, ‘The
Cure’,recorded in Cuan Studios in Spiddal, near Galway and were presented
with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Meteor Awards of 2008, with the
line-up of Davy Carton, Leo Moran, Anthony Thistlethwaite, Kevin Duffy and
Éimhín Cradock.
Throughout the noughties The Saw Doctors gained an ever-increasing and
enthusiastic following on the Irish college scene, ensuring a young and
lively new audience in their home country. In 2008 they filmed a
documentary, “Clare Island to Cape Cod’, the centerpiece being their, by
then, eagerly anticipated annual August appearance at the Melody Tent in
Hyannis, MA revolving on the stage, surrounded in 360° by banks of loud and
sweaty Summertime fans.
With their distinctive version of ‘About You Now’, The Sugababes’ hit, a
chance cover from the ‘Rockin’ Roulette’ section of The Podge and Rodge Show
on Ireland’s national TV station, RTÉ, The Saw Doctors scored an Irish
Number One in October2008, their first Number One since ‘Hay Wrap’,
seventeen years previous.
Over the following year and a half this squad recorded the band’s seventh
studio album – ‘The Further Adventures Of The Saw Doctors’ which is probably
their most consistent collection of songs to date, barely making it into the
‘record shops’ before the concept of an album, and the outlets that sell
them, veer dangerously close to becoming obsolete.
The end of 2011 brought another surprise hit for the band - having included
a verse and chorus of 'Downtown' in the show-closing 'Hay Wrap', the band
noticed that, like 'About You Now', 'Downtown' captured the imagination of
the audience, making it a potential contender for the Christmas single. On a
long-shot, producer Phillip Tennant got in touch with Petula Clark's manager
and a recording session was arranged in London where the old 60's classic
was re-vamped and recorded - 'The Saw Doctors featuring Petula Clark'! The
lively duet made it to number 2 in the Irish singles Christmas chart and
actually made it to number 1 in the i-tunes section of the count.
The beginning of January 2012 saw Éimhin passing on the drumsticks to Mayo
man, Rickie O'Neill, the first green and red blooded member in the annals of
the team; Éimhin and Rickie had been working together towards the end of
2011 on making the transition as smooth as possible, and smooth it was -
Rickie already having put in storming performances at The Glasgow Barrowland
and The Manchester Apollo amongst other shows on the December leg of the
British and Irish tours.
Loved and revered by their loyal fans, many of whom have been recruited by
already fan friends, or friends of friends of fans, if you know what I mean,
and often reviled by haughty urban-based media style council as being too
rural (Tuam!), painting pictures that the begrudgers believe, from their
lofty perspective, don’t exist in the real world, The Saw Doctors continue
with a resilience and an effervescent energy that has them lined-up for a
six week coast to coast adventure across North America this Spring.
In their own words…..
‘Born into a repressed, catholic, conservative, small-town,agrarian,
angst-ridden and showband infested societywe’re trying to preserve the
positive elements of our background and marry them to the sounds which
haveculturally invaded our milieu through TV, radio, 45’s, fastfood
restaurants, 24 hour petrol stations and electric blankets’
