The Waterboys will play at this year's Hebridean Celtic Festival, Saturday 14th July, in the grounds of Lewis Castle, Stornoway, Isle Of Lewis, Scotland. This is the band's first appearance at the Hebcelt festival since 2003, when their headlining appearance was the biggest-ever gig in Scotland's western isles. The festival runs from 11th to 14th July and weekend tickets, price £70 or £55 with concessions (+ under 14s free), go on sale Thursday 19th Jan here or by phone from (44) 1851 621234. Saturday-only tickets will go on sale once the full line-up has been announced. Check www.hebcelt.com for details.

Mike has guested on the song The Blue Cockade on Australian singer Sarah Calderwood's new album As Night Falls. The song is traditional and tells the story of a young couple separated when the boy falls in with soldiers and enlists in the army. The album can be ordered online here and a preview of the track is available on Mike's soundcloud page.

We've uploaded a couple of rarities to Mike Scott's soundcloud page. The Man Who Sold The World is a 1982 version of the David Bowie song by Mike's pre-Waterboys band The Red And The Black. Vigilante is a new mix of a recording from 2009 featuring Mike and Steve Wickham.

Two Dutch shows have been to the APPOINTMENT WITH THE WATERBOYS tour as follows:

12 March 2012 Ooosterport, GRONINGEN seated show. Buy tickets here.
17 March 2012 Vredenburg, UTRECHT standing show. Buy tickets here

Tickets for both shows go on sale Friday 9th December at 10am local time (9am GMT).

A Norwegian show has been added to the European leg of the Appointment With The Waterboys tour. It is at Kulturhus, Sandnes, Norway on 7th March. Tickets are available now from +47 51602010 or online at www.sandnes-kulturhus.no or www.billettservice.no

The Norwegian shows of the 2012 AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE WATERBOYS tour have just been announced. Details below. Tickets for Bergen and Haugesund are on sale now. Tickets for Oslo go on sale this Saturday, Nov 12. Like all shows on the tour, these will feature the 7-piece Waterboys line-up with Katie Kim guesting on vocals, and will feature two sets: one of vintage Waterboys and one of music from An Appointment With Mr Yeats.

Thurs 8 March: Peer Gynt Hall, BERGEN. Tickets from +47 55 21 61 50 and online here
Fri 9 March: Festiviteten, HAUGESUND. Tickets from +47 52 74 45 45 and online here
Sat 10 March: Centrum Scene, OSLO. Tickets from post offices, Narvesen and 7-Eleven and online here

Two Belgian shows have been added to the European leg of 2012's AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE WATERBOYS tour. Tickets for both are available now.

Tues March 13: C-Mine, GENK, tickets available here
Sun March 18 Ancienne Belgique, BRUSSELS, tickets available here or by phone from +32 (0)2 548 24 24

The first two shows of the European leg of 2012's AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE WATERBOYS tour have just been announced. They are:

March 14: BERLIN Huxley
March 15: COLOGNE Gloria

Tickets for both shows are €40 and go on sale Sunday 6th November from www.lb-events.de or 00492349471940

All the 2012 touring shows will be divided into two sets - one of vintage Waterboys, one of music from the new Appointment With Mr Yeats album - and will feature Mike Scott (vocals, guitar, piano), Steve Wickham (fiddle), Katie Kim (vocals), James Hallawell (keyboards), Marc Arciero (bass), Ralph Salmins (drums) and Melvin Duffy (guitar and pedal steel). More European shows will be announced shortly.

The rest of the Waterboys' spring 2012 UK tour schedule will go on sale this Thursday morning, Oct 27 at 10am. 9 English shows have been added to the 5 Scottish dates already on sale, and the dates and box office numbers are as follows:

Tickets can also be booked using the central 24 hour ticket hotline, 0844 338 0000 or online here Further European shows will be announced soon.

The Waterboys will perform on Later Live With Jools Holland on BBC2 tonight, Tues 25 Oct at 10pm, and on Later With Jools Holland, BBC2, Fri 28 Oct at 11.50pm. Different songs will be played on the two nights, so don't miss either broadcast! After transmission the shows will be archived here and here

Mike is interviewed on tonight's (Tuesday 18 October) episode of Scotland's Greatest Album on STV. The show will be transmitted at 9pm and this week features classic Scottish records of the 1990s, including The Whole Of The Moon which, though recorded in 1985, was a hit in 1991. For those of you outside Scotland, the show will be archived here Listeners can vote for their favourite 3 songs from each decade to be included on STV's imaginary "Scotland's Greatest Album", so if you think The Whole Of The Moon belongs there, vote here after the show. Mike reckons "it won't really be Scotland's greatest album, because the song selection is too arbitrary, but it's a good piece of fun that will get people talking for a few weeks and focussing on some of the great music Scotland's produced."

Continuing with the Edinburgh theme, author Ian Rankin, creator of the Inspector Rebus series of best-selling crime novels, has compiled a playlist of Edinburgh songs for The Guardian. He included The Whole Of The Moon.

The Waterboys will tour Europe in spring 2012 under the title AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE WATERBOYS. The shows will be split into two halves, with no support act. One half will be, according to Mike Scott, "a killer set of vintage Waterboys". The other will be a performance of most, if not all, of the new album An Appointment With Mr Yeats. As soon as we have band line-up details and further info on the tour we'll post them. The 5 Scottish dates have just been announced. Tickets price £26.50 & £24.50 go on sale TODAY, FRIDAY 15th OCTOBER at 10am from the box office numbers below or online here.

April 3 Glasgow Concert Hall 0141 353 8000
April 4 Perth Concert Hall 01738 621 031
April 5 Aberdeen Music Hall 01224 641122
April 7 Inverness Eden Court Theatre 01463 234 234
April 8 Edinburgh Festival Theatre 0131 529 6000

Dates in the rest of the UK and across Europe will be announced shortly.

Irish national station RTE1 will broadcast an hour-long special on the Waterboys' new album An Appointment With Mr Yeats from 12-1pm today, Friday 14 October. The special, hosted by Ronan Collins, features special acoustic performances of several songs plus an interview with Mike, Steve and Katie Kim. It will be streamed live here (click on "Radio 1") and archived here.

The Waterboys will tour Europe in the spring of 2012 and the first show to be announced has just gone on sale. It is at Dublin's Grand Canal Theatre on Sunday 1st April 2012 and tickets, price £45.50, are available now here. More shows will be announced as soon as we have details.

Mike Scott was interviewed about An Appointment With Mr Yeats on Scottish Televison's 6 o'clock News yesterday. View the clip here

To view the full length non-broadcast version of the interview click here

The new Waterboys album An Appointment With Mr Yeats has been receiving a lot of excellent reviews, and we've posted a couple of our favourites on the band's website. To read click here

Mojo have done a major retrospective feature on The Waterboys in this month's issue. Mike was interviewed by top writer and long-time Waterboys fan James McNair.

Mike Scott will be reading from his forthcoming book KISS THE WIND: A WATERBOY'S ADVENTURES IN MUSIC at Thea Gilmore's Nantwich Words And Music Festival, near Manchester, England. The event is at 7.30pm on Friday 7 October at Crown Ballroom, Nantwich. Tickets, priced £15, are available now from (44) 1270 610751 or online here. Mike's previous reading at Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, Belfast in April was a great success, and the Nantwich event is likely to be the only other opportunity to get a flavour of Mike's book in advance of its publication in early 2012.

The Waterboys will play a short free concert at Tower Records, Wicklow Street, Dublin, Ireland at 6pm on Friday 30th September. The band will play songs from An Appointment With Mr Yeats with a six piece band including Mike, Steve, James, Archie and Katie Kim, and will sign copies of An Appointment With Mr Yeats and other Waterboys albums.

Neil McCormick interviewed Mike Scott about An Appointment With Mr Yeats in yesterday's Daily Telegraph newspaper

An Appointment with Mr Yeats will be released this Friday, September 23rd, in Ireland.

An Appointment With Mr Yeats is released today. If you haven't already bought or ordered your copy, you can order from Amazon or download from iTunes or pick up a copy at your local record shop. The album is available in both CD and 45rpm double vinyl versions. The album was CD of the week in yesterday's Sunday Times.

The Waterboys will be at Rise Records, The Triangle, Bristol at 5pm to sign copies of the new album.

An updated version of the Waterboys' Let The Earth Bear Witness video, featuring the new recording of the song from An Appointment With Mr Yeats is now available on youtube

The Waterboys will headline this year's Virginia Pumpkin Festival in Cavan, Ireland, on Bank Holiday Saturday 29th October. Tickets, price €30, are available from the festival box office, (+353) 87 054 0971 or via Ticketmaster from (+353) 818 719 300 and www.ticketmaster.ie, or from Multisound, Main Street, Cavan. For further info click here

British newspaper The Guardian will stream a special preview of the entire new Waterboys album An Appointment With Mr Yeats this Friday, 16th September. The stream will go live early in the morning and Mike Scott will be online between 3-4pm GMT responding to comments on the streaming page. Access via The Guardian's homepage.

With next Monday's release of An Appointment With Mr Yeats fast approaching, Mike Scott and some members of the band will appear in the UK media this week on the following programmes:

We all enjoyed Richard Curtis article about The Waterboys in last Wednesday's Guardian. If you missed it, read it here and be sure to scroll down for the countless wonderful comments from Waterpeople all over the world.

Richard Curtis, director of the movies Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill & Love Actually, has contributed an article on his love for The Waterboys to today's Guardian newspaper. It's a lovely piece of writing, full of affection for Waterboys' music, and Mike Scott has already tweeted how much he enjoyed reading it, though he expressed some mystification at the article's mention of his having made "two bluegrass albums last year"! Yes, we're mystified by that too.

Track 10 of An Appointment With Mr Yeats, the epic September 1913, has been uploaded to the band's soundcloud page.

Photo: Paul Mac Manus

An Appointment With Mr Yeats is now available for pre-order at iTunes, including bonus track The Four Ages Of Man. This track will be available as an individual download from 19 September, when the album is released, but can only be pre-ordered as part of the whole album.

An additional bonus track, Love Song, will be available with the album at Amazon.co.uk from 19 September, both as an individual track and part of the album.

The Waterboys' first single from An Appointment With Mr Yeats, Sweet Dancer, has started to receive radio play. It has been heard already on Radio 2, Radio 3, 6 Music, XFM, Clyde, Radio Scotland and BBC Northern Ireland. And we're delighted to announce that the single is available for download NOW from iTunes Europe. Click here.

We've uploaded a short video of the band performing the mighty September 1913 from An Appointment With Mr Yeats. The film was shot at Dublin's Abbey Theatre last year, and is intercut with Mike Scott interview extracts. To view click here

Due to incredible demand yesterday's special offer of a signed manuscript music sheet to accompany the new Waterboy's album sold out in matter of hours.

As some fans in different time zones had not even had chance to open their emails to read about the offer before it had sold out, Mike and Steve have kindly offered to sign some more copies.

The offer will extend until midnight (UK time) on Monday 8th August. So, if you would like to own a copy of this highly collectable item: (offer now over).

The manuscript shows the violin part from the album's opening track The Hosting Of The Shee, rendered in the Wickham hand, is printed on 135 gsm matt art paper, and is only available with copies of the album sold by Townsend. This is available now for pre-order (delivery at Sept 19 release date). Cost is £9.99 (CD) and £15.99 (double vinyl).

Our friends at Townsend Records have a supply of the new Waterboys album, AN APPOINTMENT WITH MR YEATS, on both CD and double vinyl with a special limited edition manuscript page, each copy individually signed by Mike and Steve. The manuscript shows the violin part from the album's opening track The Hosting Of The Shee, rendered in the Wickham hand, is printed on 135 gsm matt art paper, and only available with copies of the album sold by Townsend. This is available now for pre-order (delivery at Sept 19 release date). Cost is £9.99 (CD) and £15.99 (double vinyl). Click here to pre-order CD, and here for vinyl.

Track 6, WHITE BIRDS, from An Appointment With Mr Yeats is now available for advance listening on the band's soundcloud page. The track is a modern successor to the classic widescreen early Waterboys sound. Mike describes it as 'the pure big music', and we think you'll agree it is momentous!

The Waterboys have contributed In The Beginning Was Love, co-written by Mike Scott and spiritual author David Spangler, to ‘DOWNLOAD FOR GOOD - Music That Changes The World’, an online charity music label which benefits the David Lynch Foundation's work providing meditation instruction to schoolchildren, military personnel, jail populations and at-risk communities.

You can buy and download In The Beginning Was Love here

Other artists donating tracks include Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel, Ben Folds, Moby, Alanis Morrisette, The Charlatans and many more. Further info here

For more info about the David Lynch Foundation and its work click here

The long-awaited new Waterboys album AN APPOINTMENT WITH MR YEATS will be released across Europe by Proper Records on September 19th. North American release will follow in 2012. The album was produced by Mike Scott and Waterboys' bassist Marc Arciero, and contains 14 new songs created from the lyrics of Ireland's greatest poet, WB Yeats (1865-1939). The songs were premiered at the band's raved-about Appointment With Mr Yeats concerts in Ireland and Britain in 2010 and early 2011, and the tracklist is:

The Hosting Of The Shee
Song Of Wandering Aengus
News For The Delphic Oracle
A Full Moon In March
Sweet Dancer
White Birds
The Lake Isle Of Innisfree
Mad As The Mist And Snow
Before The World Was Made
September 1913
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
Politics
Let The Earth Bear Witness
The Faery's Last Song

All the musicians from the most recent Mr Yeats concerts are featured: Steve Wickham (fiddle), Katie Kim (vocals), James Hallawell (keyboards), Kate St John (sax, oboe, cor anglais), Blaise Margail (trombone), Ralph Salmins (drums), Sarah Allen (flute) and Joe Chester (guitar) as well as Scott and Arciero. The album was recorded in London and Dublin between March and June 2011.

A special preview of track 5, SWEET DANCER has just been uploaded to Soundcloud.

The album will be released in both CD and double vinyl formats. Pre-order the CD or vinyl now on Amazon or CD at Play.com

Downloads on iTunes and Amazon will feature bonus tracks.

To read more about An Appointment With Mr Yeats, including an interview with Mike Scott, click here.

The album cover was created by Nina Hunter from a photograph by Paul Mac Manus.

Mike has co-written the opening track Beautiful Now on New York-based English singer James Maddock's new album Wake Up And Dream, released in the USA on June 21st. The song is one of the several Mike and James have written together, with Mike supplying lyrics and James the music. The track can be previewed here.

More information and details on how to order/download the album are here.

We've been informed that the Northern Lights Festival, Aberdeen, at which The Waterboys were to play on 30th July, has been cancelled. The organisers have posted a short notice on their website. We assume the cancellation is because of low sales and competition from many other festivals. Tickets will be refunded at point of purchase. We commiserate with all Waterboys fans who had planned to attend and hope to see you at another show soon.

Mike Scott will give a talk and musical performance at The Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, London on Thursday evening, 15th September, titled YEATS TO MUSIC / POETRY TO SONG. Tickets for the evening, priced £17.50, are available now from the box office, (+44) 844 847 9910 or www.southbankcentre.co.uk. Mike will be joined by Waterboys piano player James Hallawell and vocalist Katie Kim, and the evening will include acoustic performances of several songs from the forthcoming album AN APPOINTMENT WITH MR YEATS. Mike will talk about Yeats' history of being set to music and the development of the Appointment With Mr Yeats show and album. Album release date, tracklist and purchase details will be announced next week.

Photo: Dave Mitchell

The Waterboys will play at Festival Du Chant De Marin, on Saturday 13th August at Paimpol, Brittany, France. Tickets are available now from the festival box office 0033 2 96 55 12 77 or online here. Other performers include Simple Minds, The Chieftains, and Sinead O'Connor. This will be the second Waterboys show in Brittany this summer, after Festival Interceltique in Lorient on Friday 5th August.

Mike recently gave a fascinating interview to The Quietus about the making of This Is The Sea, In A Special Place and much more. He was talking to writer Wyndham Wallace and you can read it here.

We understand that tickets, all of which were free, for the Tall Ships Festival in Waterford on July 1 have already all been distributed. No more are available. Like many fans we'd expected the show would simply be open to all-comers. But to limit crowds and comply with safety regulations, understandably enough, the organisers have made it a ticket-only event. Unfortunately we didn't know when tickets were being given away, nor how to apply for them, nor were we able to pass on this information. We hope that if you have made arrangements to travel without checking on the ticket situation first that you'll be able to find some tickets, and we suggest posting a request on the Waterboys' forum (access on our Links page) or the Waterpeople group on Yahoo here.

We've been informed that the whole 'Night And Day' series of concerts at Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, UK, has been cancelled, including the Waterboys show on 11 June. The promoters, Tribeca Events, have announced that refunds are available from sales points. All other Waterboys shows this summer are going ahead as previously announced.

The Waterboys will headline Night And Day At Kirkstall Abbey on the evening of Saturday 11th June, on a bill with Hothouse Flowers and Karine Polwart. Tickets are available NOW priced £35 from www.ticketmaster.co.uk or direct from the box office at 0044 844 847 1742. There is also an afternoon show the day after, Sunday 12th June, featuring Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain, John Shuttleworth and Craig Charles. Tickets for both events combined cost £50.

In A Special Place, the album of Mike Scott's piano/vocal demos from This Is The Sea is out now at all good record shops and online retailers. Click here to purchase at Amazon and here for iTunes. To listen to the album's version of The Pan Within click here

The Waterboys will headline the Ramsbottom Festival, Ramsbottom Cricket Club, Lancashire on Sunday 18th September. Tickets, price £25 (day) or £65 (weekend) are available here. Other artists on the 18th include top roots/folk acts Capercaille, Ahab and Michael McGoldrick - so it promises to be a special event. Other acts over the weekend include The Animals and Badly Drawn Boy.

The Waterboys have just been confirmed for two festivals in Scotland and France this summer:

Sat 30 July: Northern Lights Festival, Seaton Park, ABERDEEN, Scotland. Tickets, price £50 per day or £90 for the weekend are available from the Box Office, 0044 8444 999 990 or online from www.ticketmaster.co.uk

Fri 5th Aug: Festival Interceltique, LORIENT, Brittany, France. Venue is Espace Marine. Tickets from the Box Office, 0033 2 97 64 03 20 or online from Tickenet, FNAC & Digitick. This is the third time The Waterboys have played Festival Interceltique - their previous appearances were 1989 and 2002.

The Waterboys are confirmed for a performance at this year's Latitude Festival, Henham Park, Southwold, Suffolk, England. The band will play on Sunday 17th July and, like all this summer's previously announced festival appearances, this show will feature a 6-piece line-up and will not be a Mr Yeats performance. Other acts over the weekend include British Sea Power, The National and KT Tunstall. Headlining on Sunday are Suede. Full weekend or day tickets are available here.

For further info about Latitude, click here.

Mike will give a rare preview from his forthcoming book, a memoir about his life in music, at The Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, Belfast, on Saturday 30 April. The reading will be held in The Black Box at 6pm and tickets, priced £5.00, are available here The festival runs from 28 April to 8 May and also features Bell X1, Mary Gauthier, Mark Steel and Jeremy Hardy.

For further info about the festival, click here.

We've just received confirmation that The Waterboys will perform a set at the London Feis, Finsbury Park, Saturday June 18th 2011. The event stars Bob Dylan and also features Christy Moore, Imelda May and The Saw Doctors. The Waterboys will be appearing on the Main Stage. Tickets, price £70, are available NOW from

See Tickets
HMV Tickets
Eventim
Ticket Master
Big Green Bus

Mike has uploaded the piano/vocal demo of The Pan Within, from the forthcoming CD In A Special Place, to his soundcloud page. Click here to listen.

We're thrilled to announce the release, on 25h April, of IN A SPECIAL PLACE, an album of Mike Scott's solo piano/vocal demos recorded at the beginning of sessions for the classic This Is The Sea album. These never-before-heard tracks include early renditions of Don't Bang The Drum, The Pan Within, Be My Enemy and The Whole Of The Moon plus several beauties that have never even bootlegged, played live or even rumoured including Winter In The Blood, The Woman In Me, All The Bright Horses, Looking For Dickon and Paris In The Rain. There are 15 tracks in all, each selected for the album by Mike Scott. Read Mike's sleevenotes here. Pre-order IN A SPECIAL PLACE from amazon or play. The album will be released by EMI on CD and download.

The Waterboys have just been confirmed as headliners for Saturday 4th June at The Wychwood Festival, Cheltenham Racecourse, England. Tickets are available from the box office 01993 772580 and here, price £53 day, £115 weekend. Tickets go on sale today, Friday 18th February.

Steve Wickham has organised a charity music night, to run on Friday 25 Feb in Barry’s of Grange, Sligo, Ireland, to raise funds for Trocaire’s humanitarian work in Uganda. Steve will be joined by a host of great trad musicians from the North West including Rodney Lancashire, James ("no relation") Wickham, Collette Sheerin, Kieran Quinn, Eddie Lee, Brian Sweeney, Connie Murray and Felip Carbonell.

Tickets are available from Barry's, phone 00353 71 9173 111. The show starts at 8pm and a live stream, starting shortly after, will be available at www.livetrad.com

Mike Scott will play a 15 minute set at DUBLINSWELL, an evening celebrating Dublin's status as a UNESCO City Of Literature. The show is at 7.30pm, Friday 18th March, at the CCD, Spencer Dock, North Wall Quay, Dublin 1 and participants include: Glen Hansard, Roddy Doyle, Cathy Kelly, Paula Meehan, Joseph O'Connor, Damien Dempsey, Sebastian Barry and many more.

Tickets, priced €18, €21 & €25 are available from 0818 33 32 31 or www.tickets.ie/dublinswell

The Waterboys will play at Katalin And All That Jazz, Uppsala, Sweden on Thursday 18th August. This will be a six-piece band show and comes immediately before the group's back-to-back festivals in Gvarv and Aardalstangen, Norway. Tickets, priced 575 SEK + service, are available from Wednesday Jan 26th from 0046 771 707070 or www.katalin.com / www.ticnet.se

Mike has uploaded three new tracks to his soundcloud page:

SVENGALI BLUES recorded 2006

I'M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY recorded during the first day of the Fisherman's Blues session, 23 Jan1986, and uploaded to mark the 25th anniversary of that date

BURLINGTON BERTIE AND ACCRINGTON STANLEY - a strange Waterboys 'b' side from 1993

The UK premiere of An Appointment With Mr Yeats in Glasgow this Sunday, Jan 30th, is sold out. Some seats are still available for Liverpool (Feb 1), Warwick (Feb 2) and London Barbican Theatre (Feb 3 & 4). Click here to buy tickets.

Three summer festivals have just been announced. The Waterboys will appear as a six-piece, with new lap steel and guitar player MELVIN DUFFY augmenting the band. These will be regular shows, NOT "Mr Yeats" performances.

14 May: BEARDED THEORY, Kedleston Park, Derbyshire, ENGLAND
Tickets (Adult: £68, 12-16: £32, 5-11: £22, Under 5: Free) available from www.quaytickets.com and Festival Box Office: 08432 081835
Further info: www.beardedtheory.com

19 August: KARTFESTIVALEN, Gvarv, Telemark, NORWAY, billed as the world's first organic music festival. Tickets: £50 from 0047 815 33133 or www.billettservice.no

20 August: MAALROCK FESTIVAL, Aardalstangen, NORWAY. Tickets: from 0047 815 33133 or www.billettservice.no

English musician and composer Kate St John will join The Waterboys for their upcoming performances of Appointment With Mr Yeats in the UK (Jan 30 - Feb 4). Kate was invited to join the ensemble by Mike Scott and will play oboe, sax and cor anglais. Kate has played with Van Morrison, Damon Albarn, Philip Glass, Marianne Faithful and many other artists.

WORD magazine invited visitors to their website to write their own verses for The Waterboys' classic And A Bang On The Ear. A lot of people did and you can read their stories in verse here

Three exclusive new tracks have been added to Mike Scott's soundcloud page, all available for listening now:

THIS IS THE SEA - a killer ten minute version of the Waterboys meisterwork from a show at Melkweg, Amsterdam in 1997, featuring the Still Burning band: Mike Scott, James Hallawell, Ian McNabb, Fingers Ralston and Geoff Dugmore. Available for download.

GIMME SHELTER - A mash-up of the intro from the Stones' 1969 original with the London Symphony Orchestra's 1990s cover.

PAS LA GUERRE - A track from French star Cali's 2008 album L'Espoir featuring Mike on guest vocals.

Access the tracks individually, with notes by Mike, by clicking on the song titles above, or access the whole playlist here

The glossy large-sized 28-page concert programme for the band's current Appointment With Mr Yeats concerts is now available to buy online for €10 plus shipping. The programme features Paul Mac Manus' beautiful photos from the Abbey Theatre shows as well as interviews, song lyrics, musical manuscripts and more.

Meanwhile a fan has set up a Facebook page for An Appointment With Mr Yeats

Mike Scott was interviewed in Dublin by Michael Moravek of the band Planeausters.

Mike Scott talks to Graeme Thomson about An Appointment With Mr Yeats in Scottish newspaper The Herald

Four new tracks have been uploaded to soundcloud:

My Love Is My Rock In The Weary Land – a towering instrumental mix of the track from The Waterboys 2000 album A Rock In The Weary Land

The Whole Of The Moon – the fabled “gay disco” cover version from 1999 by Boys Of A New Age

Un Monumento – Mike Scott’s edit of a classic piece of Morricone spaghetti western soundtrack music

Straight With The Medicine – a direct-to-cassette demo of a terrific unreleased Waterboys song

or access them all plus all previously uploaded soundcloud exclusive tracks here

3 new tracks have just been uploaded to soundcloud.

You're A Big Girl Now ~ the Bob Dylan song, recorded live by Mike, James Hallawell and the mOare Music Festival house band a week ago

Garbage Truck ~ a children's song recorded a few years ago for Mike's 3-year-old godson Casper Hawkins

On My Way To Big Light - Mike's 1999 collaboration with Latvian singer Ainars Meilavs

The Scottish town of Huntly, birthplace of Victorian novelist George MacDonald, has adopted MacDonald's phrase "Room To Roam" as its motto. The phrase was memorably enshrined in the title track of the 1990 Waterboys album of the same name. And in 2008 Mike Scott collaborated with artist Jaak Coetzer and the people of Huntly in a project to recast the song Room To Roam as the town's anthem, hence the title's investiture now as motto. Some Scottish newspaper coverage here.

An encounter between Mike Scott and James Dean Bradfield inspired a song on the new Manic Street Preachers album Postcards From A Young Man. For more info click here and scroll down to the song "I Think I've Found It".

The Waterboys will play a regular show - not a Mr Yeats show - at World Forum, Den Haag, Holland on 20th November at 20:15 hrs. This is The Waterboys' first show in Den Haag for three years and the band's only show in Holland this year. It will be a seated concert featuring the festival line-up of Mike Scott, Steve Wickham, James Hallawell (keyboards), Marc Arciero (bass) and Binzer (drums). Tickets priced €45, €43 & €39 go on sale at 10am September 3rd and will be available here or by phone (callers from Holland only) at 0900 300 1250.

James Hallawell, ace keyboard player and veteran of Mike Scott’s late '90s band, has joined The Waterboys and will be performing at all the band’s shows, beginning with The Electric Picnic on September 3rd and the Appointment With Mr Yeats Irish tour in November. Says Mike: "I'm thrilled to have James on board. He brings a truckload of skills to the band: brilliant playing, charisma, arrangement and studio smarts, a sense of danger. And he's an old friend, one of the greatest Waterboys that never was – and now he is!"

To read Mike Scott’s blog “From All You Need Is Love to My Sweet Lord” all about the heyday of the spiritual hit single, 1967-71, click here

At the request of Irish music magazine www.state.ie Mike has compiled a mix tape called ORCHESTRAL POP FANTASIA, containing favourite tracks, obscurities and mash-ups. "The theme is that every track has to have an orchestra on it" says Mike, "so there's some Ennio Morricone, a Beatle moment, flashes of Scott Walker and The Last Shadow Puppets, and a lot of other stuff I love, all interwoven. It lasts just over half an hour - perfect for listening to while cooking a meal or taking a bath."

Orchestral Pop Fantasia by statemagazine

Headstrong's fantastic dance remix of the classic Waterboys track Trumpets is released this week on the new Headstrong album Timeless Part 1. The mix was done by Don Jackson, and both Mike Scott and Anto Thistlethwaite love it. "He makes my young voice sound incredible", said Mike, "as good as I've ever heard it sound". The album is available on CD from Amazon, Napster, Limewire and other outlets, and from Headstrong's label Sola Records also from iTunes and Beatport.

You can preview the track here.

Mike Scott has just opened a page at the music-sharing website Soundcloud where you can hear exclusive Waterboys songs plus various mysterious and wonderful tracks and mash-ups from Mike's home studio. More stuff is being added all the time and there are around twenty items on the page at time of writing. Tracks can also be uploaded to your own site or blogspot. To access click here

The Guardian has an article on setting poetry to music and features an interview with Mike talking about the "Mr Yeats" songs. The article can be viewed here.

The Waterboys/Sharon Shannon single SAINTS AND ANGELS, remixed by Mike Scott from the version on Sharon’s current album Saint And Scoundrels, is now available from iTunes Ireland. The single was due to be released Dec 4th but was mysteriously delayed by iTunes. We apologise to all of you who tried to download it over the past week. Meanwhile, those abroad will soon be able to purchase SAINTS AND ANGELS at the Waterboys own website store.

A memorial page for Waterboys bass player Mark Smith has been set up on Facebook, where people can read and leave messages about Mark. Several of Mark’s Waterboys colleagues have posted memories. To visit, click here

Mike has written a short piece for an Irish website about the room where he writes and works. To read, click here

Followers of Mike Scott’s Twitter page will know he spent much of Summer 2009 tweeting in Nadsat, the futuristic language invented by Anthony Burgess for his great novel A Clockwork Orange. Mike also invented many of his own Nadsat words and has compiled an illustrated Nadsat-English dictionary, more complete than the lexicon found in some editions of the book, and it is available online here.

Mike has written the introduction to The Gentleman And The Faun, a collection of vintage lectures and articles by the late Scottish mystic R. Ogilvie Crombie, published this month by Findhorn Press. For further information and to purchase the book, click here.

We're very sorry to inform you all that our friend and colleague, Waterboys bass player Mark Smith, has died unexpectedly at his home in London. We don't yet know the cause of death, but are told Mark was found dead on his sofa and as far as we know, he died peacefully. No foul play is suspected. Mark played on stage with Mike Scott only a few weeks ago at the Groucho Club in London and had been active since then, playing with various bands, musicians and friends around London. We will all miss Mark very much, not just for his fabulous bass playing but for his friendship and his wonderful, dry humour.

Mike was interviewed recently at Dublin’s Odessa Club by Darragh Doyle of culch.ie. They discussed the upcoming Waterboys show An Appointment With Mr Yeats and much more. Click here to view.

A rare film of Mike reading on of his poems, My Love For Her Is Fire, is up on youtube. Click here to view.

LET THE EARTH BEAR WITNESS, The Waterboys’ video/song tribute to the Iranian protesters is now uploaded to youtube with the song’s lyric, written by W.B. Yeats, in Farsi (Persian) subtitles. View it here.

Mike Scott, his wife Janette and Waterboys’ webmaster Ian Barratt have created a 3-minute video titled LET THE EARTH BEAR WITNESS in tribute to the Iranian protesters. The film shows fantastic images of the uprising in Iran to a soundtrack of a split-new Waterboys with a lyric by the great Irish poet WB Yeats. Says Mike: "Let The Earth Bear Witness is inspired by the amazing scenes of hundreds of thousands of Iranian people standing up for their rights and freedom. I took the words from two old Yeats poems, in which he was writing about Irish freedom fighters. But his words apply to any freedom fighters, anytime, anywhere in the world."

The film is live on youtube now and can be viewed here.

We’re working on a version with subtitles in Farsi and this will also be posted shortly. If you find the film inspiring please pass on or tweet the link to everyone you know.

LET THE EARTH BEAR WITNESS words by W.B. Yeats

They shall be remembered for ever
They shall be alive for ever
They shall be speaking for ever
The people shall hear them for ever

Let the sea bear witness
Let the wind bear witness
Let the earth bear witness
Let the stars bear witness!

Two brand new Waterboys tracks are available NOW to download at our website store here. The Passing Of The Shee and Vigilante form a double ‘a’ side download single available only on our website, price £1.49. The Passing Of The Shee has lyrics by Irish author J.M. Synge and was set to music and recorded by Mike Scott to mark the centenary of Synge’s death a hundred years ago today. Vigilante is a brand new Waterboys song, featuring Mike on most instruments and Steve Wickham on fuzz fiddle.
Samples of both tracks can be heard on the store, and the full-length Passing Of The Shee is available to listen to (but not download) on our myspace player here.

We’ve just uploaded a brand new Waterboys tune to myspace. The Serpent’s Head is a deliciously slithery Steve Wickham jig, eloquently played on fiddle, treated and mixed by Mike Scott with backwards tapes. To listen click here.

After nearly ten years of music Richard Naiff is leaving The Waterboys, though it is understood he may be involved in future projects from time to time. Richard is currently spending time with his family after the birth of his son Sam last summer, and as soon as we hear about Richard's next musical projects we'll keep you posted. Mike Scott said: "Richard has been a wonderful colleague and friend, a musical wizard, and a great Waterboy. We wish him all the very best in the future and will be staying in touch with him."