HOW WE CAME TO SPIDDAL AND THE COMPLETION OF FISHERMAN'S BLUES Mike Scott writes

Spiddal is a village in the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking area) of County Galway, 12 miles west of Galway City on the northern shore of Galway Bay. It's a haunt of artists and musicians of all kinds and it's the place where The Waterboys recorded half of "Fisherman's Blues" and all of "Room To Roam".

I first went there in January 1988. "Fisherman's Blues" was still unfinished after 2 years of work and I needed a break - to get some distance, and to write a few new songs to complete the record. I'd already been digging traditional music since I'd arrived in Ireland and I loved Galway and the West so John Dunford (Waterboys live sound mixer and my general Irish cultural guide) and I drove out to the west of Ireland to find me a cottage or holiday home to stay in for a few weeks.

We searched around the Galway area as far as Doolin to the south (in County Clare) and Connemara in the north. On the saturday afternoon we stopped in at Neachtains bar in Galway. There was a music session in full swing and I knew Brendan O'Regan, one of the musicians. He invited me to join in and between tunes I fell into conversation with a young fiddler sat next to me. He asked why I was in Galway. When I explained, he said "Oh, my old man's got the very place you're looking for". So the next day our new friend the fiddler (Sean) drove us out to Spiddal. As we drove along the coast my breath was taken by the wildness of the land to our right and the beauty of the sea to our left. I said to myself : "This is the land of my soul". Then we arrived at Sean's father's house high on a hill overlooking the whole panorama of Galway Bay, the mountains of north Clare and the distant Aran Islands lying like mirages out on the Atlantic. I couldn't believe how fantastic it was. I just laughed out loud and rented it there and then.

It turned out Sean's father was a renowned traditional fiddler and composer called Charlie Lennon . And within a few days of me moving into the house ("Teach Charlie Lennon" - the house of Charlie Lennon), Charlie was inviting me into the village to play at music sessions in Hughes's bar.
I was made to feel most welcome by the people of Spiddal. Many a winter's night I spent there bashing along with Charlie's fiddle reels on my bodhran (Irish goatskin hand drum), and many a winter's night too I spent up at the house listening to traditional music albums, Irish and Scottish, which I was buying by the dozen on trips into Galway City, immersing myself in a magical world of tunes, styles and sounds. I taught myself traditional melodies, practised for hours on the bodhran and wrote my songs overlooking Galway Bay and the Aran Islands.

The other Waterboys - Steve, Anto and Trevor - all came out to Spiddal to stay with me at Teach Charlie Lennon and we had many wild times, playing in sessions, going "muck" in Galway, and making friends wherever we went. Anto and I went out to the Aran Islands where the piper and occasional Waterboy Vinnie Kilduff was staying for a month. We played music there every night in The American Bar, climbed Dun Aengus, visited the puffing holes and cliffs and savoured the ancient and otherwordly Aran atmosphere.

By the time I had my new songs ready for "Fisherman's Blues", I was so at home in the west that I decided to finish the recording there. So John Dunford and I went on another search - this time for a place to instal a temporary studio. We drove from Doolin to Connemara (again) and looked at castles, empty hotels, grand houses and community centres. But none of them felt right. Then one day we were in Hughes's bar with Alec Finn of De Dannan, a major Irish traditional band. Alec said there was a big house under our noses in Spiddal - "Spiddal House" - and it was owned by a woman who might rent it out to us. We went up and saw the house and it was perfect - a majestic and enigmatic place with gardens overlooking the bay and a long dining room big enough to take the band and instruments. John came to a deal with Mrs Buckley, who owned it then and in early April 1988 we moved the equipment in.

We didn't live in Spiddal House while recording. Everyone stayed in various holiday homes around Spiddal. The band, myself and american drummer Jay Dee Daugherty stayed in three different houses on the same road as Teach Charlie Lennon ("Baile an tSleibhe"), a mile or so from the village. The crew stayed in another house closer to the recording ("The River Road"). Every morning we would cycle along by the sea front, down through Spiddal village and up the Moycullen Road two hundred yards to Spiddal House then spend the whole day making music. No rock band has ever recorded in more convivial or idyllic surroundings, nor in an area so full of creativity, culture and magic. We got the cake and the cherry on top !

The recordings lasted 8 weeks, with a week off two thirds of the way through (Trevor, Steve and I went looking for Pan on the Aran Islands). We recorded a dozen songs, seven of which appeared on the final album. Several fantastic Irish traditional musicians came and guested on various songs, including Brendan O'Regan, Alec Finn and Charlie Lennon, all part of the journey that had brought us to Spiddal House. Brendan turned up unannounced one evening and led Steve through take after exacting take of "Dunford's Fancy" - that's the two of them you can hear flying away on the record. Alec Finn came and played the rippling bouzouki on "When Ye Go Away". We needed a fiddle part for the instrumental section of the song - and there were three fiddlers in Spiddal House that day. Each of them - like men in a fable - had a try. Steve played high, beautiful and sonic. Alec Finn's De Dannan colleague, the great Frankie Gavin played a robust, masterful reel. But it was my landlord, Charlie Lennon whose part made it to the final record. He composed a capricious and mischievous tune called "The River Road Reel", played it over the track with a swaying lilt and blew us all away.

We needed an accordion on "And A Bang On The Ear", so someone was despatched into Galway to find another De Dannan member, the brilliant Mairtin O'Connor. After a long search he was found "in the Claddagh" (the ancient fishing village on the harbour in Galway), and brought out to Spiddal House. You can hear him on the third verse ("Deborah"), the following instrumental where his accordion and Steve's fiddle play a luminous duet, and again at the final verse.

When we recorded "Jimmy Hickey's Waltz", an instrumental written mainly by Steve, we couldn't get the feel right (might have had something to do with the Scottish stand-in drummer whose name can be found in the album credits). We asked John Dunford to nip down to Hughes's bar and find us some waltzers to dance while we played. John returned with 4 pairs of willing Spiddal waltzers who quickly told us that we were playing too slow for dancing. We sped the piece up, they waltzed and the tapes rolled. You can hear them talking at the start of the track, and their clothes swishing as they dance.

The extract of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" which closes the album comes from a tape recorded late at night during a party at my rented cottage. Steve, Anto and myself are all playing - and Steve sings his own Irish-placename lyric. Brendan O'Regan was also there and almost certainly plays bouzouki.

The last song to be recorded was "The Stolen Child", during the last week of May. This song cast a spell over us all. I don't know whether it was Colin Blakey's pannish flute playing, or the words of Yeats' poem, or the approaching midsummer but those last days at Spiddal House were like a waking dream. Some images stay with me - Colin, Trevor, Padraig Stevens and myself playing on the roof of a wing of Spiddal House (as "The Woodland Band" making the far-off faery music in verse two of the song); Tomas Mac Eoin arriving to do the "Stolen Child" recital and bringing the spirit of a yet older world with him; Steve Wickham recording his overdub fiddle for verse three and between takes improvising music so high, I've never heard the like since.

There was a wild party on our last night in Spiddal which began at Hughes's, continued in a friend's garden and finished in the "band house" on Baile an tSleibhe with revellers - band and villagers alike - dancing till dawn.

Then we all went back to Dublin, or London, or elsewhere and it was like getting flung out of paradise !

In late 1988 we toured the "Fisherman's Blues" album and took the music we'd made in Spiddal round the world. In between runs of shows I came back to Spiddal as often as I could, renting one of the now familiar holiday homes, hanging out, writing songs. And when the band was ready to record a new album, we came back to Spiddal House. That album was called "Room To Roam" and its story is in the songs...

Photographs: Steve Meany, Cyril Byrne, Mike Scott