'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" - The Times
Saw Doctors' fans go home glowing from a gig crammed end to end with songs about real life. The band work the same live magic wherever they play, from the Royal Albert Hall in London to a convent in the West of Ireland, from the paddock at Sandown Racecourse to the front room of a lucky fan who won a live Saw Doctors concert as a competition prize.
The Saw Doctors is a group of songwriting musicians from the West of Ireland, hell-bent on celebrating, observing, recording and sometimes poking fun at their 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 based around the songs and singing of Davy Carton, Leo Moran, Padraig Stevens, John ‘Turps’ Burke with no little contribution from the late Paul Cunniffe (who had written 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 the River 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’.
The Saw Doctors are:
Davy Carton: Vocals, Guitar
Leo Moran: Guitars, Vocals
Anthony Thistlethwaite: Bass Guitar, Saxophone
Kevin Duffy: Keyboards, Vocals
Rickie O’Neill: Drums, Vocals
