The year 1988 marked a new musical chapter for The Waterboys, and at the OVO Hydro we returned to that sense of discovery.
Fisherman’s Blues was an album born at an exciting time for music when The Waterboys were among the leading exponents of what became known as The Big Music, alongside the likes of U2 and Big Country. Yet Mike Scott was already looking elsewhere, drawing on Irish and Scottish traditional music, folk, Americana and poetry to create something that moved beyond the confines of rock.
Tonight that journey is revisited with Steve Earle as a particularly natural addition. Earle has spoken of only ever wanting to be in three bands, one of them being The Waterboys, and his presence here feels like a genuine musical fit rather than a special guest for the sake of it.
Mike Scott cuts a distinctive figure, appearing in a cowboy hat, dark sunglasses and spotted shirt, with a slim white belt around his shiny burgundy trousers. “Don’t Bang the Drum” gets things moving with a rollicking charge before the band ease into “Glastonbury Song”. Scott still has the rock-star snarl and pout, and soon he kicks a leg into the air and points his bony finger like an ancient seer. This early crowd favourite has hands raised, couples dancing, and the Hydro is soon starting to resemble a shindig.
“How Long Will I Love You?” was given a new lease of life through Ellie Goulding’s later version, but tonight it is returned to its rawer roots. “A Girl Called Johnny” follows before a piano-led, and much more subtle version of “The Whole of the Moon”. It is deliberately low-key, the song taking something of a back seat to the Fisherman’s Blues atmosphere hanging over the evening. When Steve Wickham is introduced, the fiddle player receives the response you would expect from a musician whose playing has become inseparable from this era of The Waterboys.
“We Will Not Be Lovers” is a ferociously emotional entry into the material, before the Van Morrison cover “Sweet Thing” becomes another highlight, with “Blackbird” woven into the arrangement. The first set closes with “The Stolen Child”, Scott’s musical setting of W. B. Yeats’s poem. It is an atmospheric ending to the first part of the evening.
The second set belongs largely to Steve Earle, who opens with a collection of his own songs including “Copperhead Road”, “Guitar Town” and “My Old Friend The Blues”. The latter has an obvious Scottish connection through The Proclaimers’ version, another reminder of how naturally the musical paths crossing this stage have travelled between America, Ireland and Scotland. Then comes “When Will We Be Married?”, with Scott recalling its connection to 1988.
The song is traditional rather than a Waterboys original, but there is something wonderfully circular about hearing Earle sing it here tonight. The Waterboys had recorded their own versions during the Fisherman’s Blues sessions, while Earle began to perform it, having first encountered the track through The Waterboys. The connection is another reminder of how quickly the music was travelling between musicians on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
“When Ye Go Away” follows, bringing us back to the reflective side of Fisherman’s Blues. The evening feels less like a conventional rock concert; in many ways it would be a perfect fit for the Celtic Connections Festival, a place where musical influences and different cultures converge naturally.
There is something almost mystical about the journey Mike Scott embarked upon with Fisherman’s Blues. The Waterboys could have followed the route taken by U2 and continued towards ever larger stages and bigger sounds, but Scott chose instead to go looking for something older, something rooted in the Celtic spirit and the musical traditions of Ireland and Scotland. That decision brought a different kind of respect from his contemporaries and the likes of Bob Dylan. It is perhaps why a musician such as Steve Earle, himself steeped in American roots music, feels so at home here. The connections run deep, through traditional songs, folk music, poetry and the shared desire to keep looking beyond the familiar rock route.
Fisherman’s Blues changed the atmosphere around The Waterboys as much as it changed their music. It produced a new standard in the title track while bringing fresh interpretations to work by Van Morrison and W.B Yeats. It was a band going in search of something, and more than three decades later, that journey is still taking place. “Strange Boat” performed during the first set perhaps provides the perfect metaphor. We are out on the water again, with no clear destination, carried along by fiddle, voice and something invisible; it’s almost tangible but not quite.
The Waterboys have returned to the old ways, but the journey remains mysterious, the destination forever beyond the horizon.
