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Interview
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Republican, Interview >>
Calvin Theatre readies for return of the Saw Doctors
Published: Wednesday, March 02, 2011, 6:10 AM
By George Lenker
Saw Doctors guitarist Leo Moran says that one reason it takes the band so long between albums is because he sees performing live and songwriting as completely different enterprises, for which he needs two distinct mindsets.
“It’s funny you become like an actor in a play when you’re touring, and it’s a different headspace than being a writer, which is like being the playwright,” he said in a telephone interview from Ireland last week. “And it takes me a bit of time to go from one to the other.”
Since the Docs play an average of 100 gigs or so every year, often in spurts of three weeks at a time, this need for a transitionary period makes writing new songs a bit of a challenge sometimes. The band brings its latest tour to The Calvin Theatre Sunday at 8 p.m., in support of its latest CD, “The Further Adventures of the Saw Doctors.”
The new CD took five years to complete, a time period Moran would like to shorten for the next record.
“Five years seems to be our cycle. I’d like it to be quicker, but between doing tours and writing the songs, it just always takes longer than we want,” he said. “This time it started slowly, but once we started booking the studio for a week at a time, that became our system and we were able to put together enough songs to record each week.”
Of course, the band inevitably ended up with more songs than it needed for the record, but choosing which one’s made the cut wasn’t difficult, Moran said.
“We had a few extra songs but none that would have fit on the album well,” he said. “There was no contest when deciding the ones to use.”
The band, which has been playing for 25 years in one form or another, still finds ways to keep old songs fresh for themselves, even those that have been played thousands of times live. This is what keeps Moran and Saw Doctors co-founder, singer Davy Carton, so enthusiastic after all these years. (The band is rounded out with bassist Anthony Thistlethwaite, keyboardist Kevin Duffy, and drummer Eímhín Craddock.)
“I think part of it is that we love being there and it’s a still a joy to share these songs with people who have come to hear them,” Moran said. “As long as the songs are juggled around in the set so not they’re played at the same time in the set each night, it doesn’t become repetitive and they also can be rearranged to sound a bit different, which we have done with some of the older ones.”
One older tune the band recently rearranged is “Red Cortina” off the Saw Doctors’ 1991 debut album. The group released a new, a capella single of it last year as a Christmas charity fundraiser. Moran said he got the idea from singer-songwriter Joe Jackson.
“I had seen Joe Jackson on tour once where he did ‘Is She Really Going Out With Him’ as an a cappella version. It really struck me as such a fresh way of presenting an older song,” he said. “Luckily, it worked for ‘Red Cortina’ which could almost be a ‘50s pop song anyway.” 03/03/11 >> go there
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