Sham rock and shenanigans: The Saw Doctors fairy tale is making its way to the stage

Ursula von der Leyen has paraphrased them, Petula Clark recorded with them, while Mike Scott of the Waterboys recognised what national radio initially didn’t.

And if Galway writer Trish Forde hadn’t got out her chequebook to buy Leo Moran a shiny Fender Telecaster many years ago, who knows whether Tolü Makay and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra would ever had such a hit with a reinterpretation of The Saw Doctors emigrant’s anthem, N17?

As for Ollie Jennings – who points out that he was not the first manager – he has written himself out of act one of Shamtown, a theatrical interpretation of the life and times of one of Ireland’s longest-running bands.

The “play in progress”, which had a first outing to a small invited audience last year, was previewed again several weeks ago to standing ovations in Galway’s Mick Lally Theatre.

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The script is not only an insider’s guide to the early struggling years of the “shams” or Tuam natives who wanted to gig, but it also recalls how Galway became Ireland’s unofficial cultural capital long before that benighted European designation in 2020 (see panel below).

Only one or two of the seven actors in Shamtown would have been around when Jennings was co-founder of an arts festival in a student city that was young, vibrant and broke. In the north of the county, the sugar factory closure in Tuam was yet another contributor to relentless emigration.

Tuam writer Tom Murphy captured some of the anger and frustration, working with a highly adventurous theatre director named Garry Hynes and the cast of Druid Theatre. Galway’s magnetic energy drew in visitors who stayed, such as comedian Tommy Tiernan, Glaswegian musician Little John Nee, The Waterboys (in An Spidéal), artist Joe Boske and Rod Goodall of Footsbarn theatre company.

The Saw Doctors – who took a break from touring and each other in 2013 - appear to have such an enduring appeal that they sold out 30th-anniversary gigs in London, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow late last year

Spain’s Els Comediants, booked for the 1988 arts festival, inspired the formation of street theatre. An unemployed teacher named Leo Moran from Tuam queued up to join a Macnas workshop run under a Fás social employment scheme, and was directed to the art department by striking-looking “boss man” Paraic Breathnach.

As the cast of Midie Corcoran, Juliette Crosby, Naoise Dunbar, Aisling Kearns, Rickie O’Neill, Roseanna Purcell and Jarlath Tivnan recall, “you couldn’t miss Paraic, swanning around Galway” in painted toenails and a colourful sarong.

Jennings says he relied heavily on a number of people, including singer Davy Carton, for detail on how the band met, and how it evolved from Blaze X, a new wave foursome formed by Carton, Paul Cunniffe (who died in 2001), Jarlath Keating and Paul Ralph.

[ The Saw Doctors, 1991: ‘For about a year, you couldn’t hear anything else on the radio’ ]

Blaze X rehearsed in Carton’s bedroom in St Joseph’s Park, Tuam, with the “Super Ser heater doubling as a drum kit” and Davy’s mother Mary bringing up tea and sandwiches. The script recalls how one evening Paul Cunniffe dashed down a few lyrics on a Beano comic, which became I Useta Love Her. After 2FM DJ Larry Gogan chose another of their songs as record of the week, Blaze X played support to U2 in Leisureland, Galway.

It was in 1986 that Carton got together with Moran and vocalist Mary O’Connor. Jennings’s script explains how the name came about, after a local man hired to sweep sawdust in a local mill proudly proclaimed his job title in the pub. When O’Connor emigrated to London, Moran suggested to Carton that he should sing.

The Waterboys invited them on tour, and their then manager, the aforementioned Paraic Breathnach, wangled a bank loan. Their travels in a blue rented camper van are hilariously interpreted by the seven actors, squashed together on stage and bouncing like bunnies. The camper van rental company was told that the lads were “going on an archaeological dig”.

Mike Scott offered to produce the band’s first single, N17 – which Moran had described as “our Route 66″ – and a Salthill night club owner named Henry Greally offered them a £5,000 loan

Mike Scott offered to produce the band’s first single, N17 – which Moran had described as “our Route 66″ – and a Salthill nightclub owner named Henry Greally offered them a £5,000 loan.

However, Shamtown’s first act closes with a long sigh. Although Larry Gogan had given it a couple of spins, N17 was deemed “too local, too rural, too folk rock for the Dublin DJs”.

A successful appearance at the first Féile music festival in Thurles, Co Tipperary, and the release of I Useta Lover, originally sung by Blaze X, turned their fortunes around – but that’s all for “act two”, Jennings laughs.

The finished script will also reflect some of the stifling atmosphere of that time. The Catholic Church held such sway that when the band were billed to play Féile on a Sunday morning, they were preceded on stage by an 11am Mass.

[ I Useta Love Her: How the song that rhymed Mass and ass became an Irish anthem ]

The play was directed by Andrew Flynn of Decadent Theatre, who grew up in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, and so says he gets the nature of a small town. He believes the script has an “innocent beauty” and a “universal quality” that audiences will respond to.

Musicians Matthew Berrill, Conor Clancy and Emily Donoghue were hired for a score that includes the band’s epic numbers, N17, Same Oul’ Town and Red Cortina, and are of a younger generation that might find the lyrics somewhat outdated.

However, The Saw Doctors – who took a break from touring and each other in 2013 – appear to have such an enduring appeal that they sold out 30th-anniversary gigs in London, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow late last year.

Sitting in the audience for one of Shamtown’s previews was a visiting US academic who might have been baffled by some of the allusions. However, Prof Vance Maloney, a psychologist at Taylor University in Indiana, commented that it “speaks to the human condition, particularly the songs of friendship, hard work and wanting to win just once”.

“Small towns are the same everywhere,” he says. “My personal hometown, Kennedy, NY, consisted of just over 350 people in rural western New York state. It takes vision, risk, insight, intelligence, will and discipline to make it happen. The story of the Saw Doctors does just this.

Also in the audience was Leo Moran, who says he is now enjoying a period where he can play music “without trying to be more successful or more famous”.

Asked to comment on Shamtown, he says it is “like a near-death experience ... not quite reading your own obituary, but close”.

Galway’s European Capital of Culture ‘embarrassment’

Shamtown received seed funding from Galway City Council arts office, the Town Hall Theatre Galway Patron Scheme and the Arts Council. However, it requires another injection to complete the script. Both writer and director believe it is almost ready to stage in full.

Jennings may have been a founder of the city’s arts festival, but he receives no special favours when it comes to grant aid. Ironically, he was one of many who watched from the sidelines as largesse for Galway’s European Capital of Culture was approved and somehow spent.

Some say that his vast experience should have been tapped by the organisers of Galway 2020, when it started to go wrong. As Páraic Breathnach had warned when he described Galway 2020 as a “fiasco in the making” back as early as June 2018, “if you are bringing in a ship to Galway and you run up on rocks, you make sure you have the local pilot with you next time”.

A recent Galway City Council meeting on Galway 2020 was the first opportunity for city councillors to probe what went wrong. Galway city manager Brendan McGrath provided councillors with 37 documents, and attributed the problems to its communications strategy, which was “badly offside”, creating a “void” filled with negativity.

Councillors also heard that Galway 2020 was still operating, had refocused on other European and cross-funding schemes, and would draw down a million euro in taxpayers’ money this year. Quizzed by councillors, McGrath rejected any suggestion that the limited company set up to run the event was “hiding anything”.

Yes, 2020 has cast a cloud, but there’s still nothing quite like the arts festival

—  Theatre director Andrew Flynn

Many artists – hit by high city rents that drive parents into the county and their children abroad – are still angry over the handling of a programme with a quoted cost now of more than €23 million. Long before the pandemic scuppered its programme, Galway 2020 was hit by a series of resignations. Its nadir was cancellation of its opening ceremony in “The Swamp”, so named for a good reason, due to Storm Ciara.

McGrath’s argument that the problem was all down to communications is a “gross oversimplification”, in the view of the Saw Doctors’ Leo Moran. Questions remain as to when the promised “cultural legacy” is going to materialise.

As theatre director Andrew Flynn says, there is an “embarrassment” about it among artists now.

“Ninety per cent of artists in Galway for whom it was an opportunity, saw nothing from the capital of culture,” he says. No new venues were built, though the European capital of culture administrators had always made it clear the monies were not for infrastructure.

“Yes, 2020 has cast a cloud, but there’s still nothing quite like the arts festival,” says Flynn. “I will never leave Galway, and it is still a place that artists will want to gravitate to.”