BETWEEN THE GROOVES OF ROOM TO ROAM Mike Scott writes

With one exception, all the recordings for "Room To Roam" were made at Spiddal House between January and June 1990. As we'd done two years before on "Fisherman's Blues", we turned the house into a studio, the band setting up in the reverby dining room with its wooden floor and open fireplace (a peat fire smouldering constantly with sweet earthy smell).

The mixing desk was in the Study - a smaller room on the other side of the house. Between study and dining room was a long lounge with french doors opening to the gardens and the view of Galway Bay - this was the "band room" where we jammed. A baby grand piano and all our instruments were left in this room and we had many great times there in between serious recordings in the dining room/studio. One short piece on the finished album is from a session in the band room (as you'll find out if you read on).

The Waterboys by this time were :
Steve Wickham (Fiddle)
Anto Thistlethwaite (Sax, Mandolin)
Sharon Shannon (Accordion, Fiddle)
Trevor Hutchinson (Bass, Bouzouki)
Colin Blakey (Flute, Whistle)
Noel Bridgeman (Drums)
and myself (Vocals, Guitar, Piano)

The recordings we made were as follows (in the order they appear on the album) :

IN SEARCH OF A ROSE
Recorded live by myself on mandolin and Steve Wickham on fiddle. We'd already recorded this 3 times - a solo mandolin/vocal version, a slow oceanic band version and a "regular" band version like the live performances on the '89 tour. None came out definitively so one morning we recorded this "miniature".

SONG FROM THE END OF THE WORLD
My description-in-song of a few days spent at Seamus Begley's house in West Kerry. Trevor plays the rattly bouzouki part that sounds like a banjo. I play the backbeat piano and the electric "Johnny Thunders" guitar touches. Steve's fiddle and Sharon's accordion are the orchestra at the outro. The seagulls at the end were recorded at Rossaveal (where the ferries leave for The Aran Islands). Myself, Anto and assistant engineer Robbie Adams made the "field trip" to record the sound effects.

A MAN IS IN LOVE
Arranged by Colin Blakey who also plays the georgeous flute. My piano and Steve's fiddle at the start. Anto plays baritone sax. The tune at the end - from Colin's repertoire and first played at the end of the song by Colin in an inspirational moment during a rehearsal - is called "Kaliope House". Noel Bridgeman plays the tambourine - it was attached to his hi-hat and he played it as part of the drums, triggered by a foot pedal, a trick I loved.

BIGGER PICTURE
Written on a wild cross-Ireland trip. Anto plays the bass. Myself and Turps from The Sawdoctors did the speeded-up backing vocals. Blakey plays organ and Steve and Sharon are the fiddle orchestra.

NATURAL BRIDGE BLUES
This is from Sharon's repertoire. We played this tune with her all across Europe in sessions while on tour. Eventually it snuck into the stage show. When we recorded it she and Steve got faster and faster with every take. It ended up so fast we had to slow it down for the mix. For the middle section I wanted a party atmosphere so I asked John Dunford to go down into Spiddal village to round up some citizens. He came back with a few dozen people (they're pictured on the CD booklet - the shot where the wee boy has a Mickey Mouse headmask on). We rolled the tapes and started bursting balloons. The resulting "atmosphere" was mixed in to the track. The voiceover is a series of samples of our producer Barry Beckett cajoling us to do good performances. He had a number of marvellous stock phrases like "Y'all have some fun now !", and we took a few of the best and spun them in.

SOMETHING THAT IS GONE
Barry plays the piano. The solo is a backwards saxaphone (Anto) mixed in with backwards guitar (me). I think the string arrangement was mine, at least a chunk of it. Steve realised it with four fiddle performances layered together - a really beautiful job.

THE STAR AND THE SEA
Another miniature. Colin plays "border horn".

A LIFE OF SUNDAYS
Written in Galway between gigs. Steve plays the organ. Colin plays the african finger piano at the "change" verse. Noel Bridgeman does the second voice in the "same thing" verse - what a great singer ! The little spoken fragments in the fifth verse are from tapes made in the "band room". In one Sharon Shannon mentions her friend "Mary Custy".
The electric guitar solo is me but on the second round I'm joined by Colin playing flute through a wah wah pedal and a distorted amp - the wild teeming burbling cacophonous sound. On the third round we play the riff from "Buffs" by The Sawdoctors. The voiceover is the writer Liam O'Flaherty from a Claddagh Records recording of him reading his book "The Ecstacy Of Angus". He says : "Then he journeyed to the west, to Arranmore, beneath whose towering cliffs and magic caves the great god Manannan held court for the ocean sprites, mermaids and fishes that inhabit the seven seas." Arranmore is the old name for Inishmore, largest of The Aran Islands (where O'Flaherty was born). The recording of "We All Live In A Yellow Submarine" is from a music session in The American Bar.
The fiddle tune that follows is written by the great Scottish fiddle composer F. Scott Skinner, comes from the repertoire of Colin Blakey and was played during a jam session in the "band room". Someone who is defintely not Noel plays congas. Colin, Sharon and probably Steve play
fiddles. The piano is myself or Anto.

ISLANDMAN
This song is my painting-in-words of the British Isles.
The dijeridu was played by Ken Samson, a friendly Maori who lived in the coach house at Spiddal House and did security for us. Steve Wickham's is the voice on a telephone line. He's reading from the book "Glastonbury - Avalon Of The Heart" by Dion Fortune. The basic band recording of Noel, Trevor and myself on piano was made at Windmill Lane 2 studios in Dublin just before recording began in Spiddal. When the main song kicks in I'm playing a Steve Reichian pattern on an electric piano and manipulating the tone controls at the same time - hence the crackling, random fragments of sound. A different lead guitar phrase interprets each line of the lyric. Dunford and I played the "cocking the snoot" tin whistles after "London sprawls across my rump".

THE RAGGLE TAGGLE GYPSY
We'd already relased a live version of this, on the 'b' side of a single. This version is faster and lighter. It's an ancient song, known all round The British Isles in various versions and under different titles ("The Gypsy Laddie" etc). Steve knew it from the Planxty version, and he taught it to me. We were also impressed by the wild versions done by Colin's previous Scottish group We Free Kings.

HOW LONG WILL I LOVE YOU
One of many songs I wrote in Spiddal. Colin plays Hammond organ. Steve's fiddle and Sharon's accordion are the orchestra. I play the wah-wah guitar phrases and the guitar solo. Eoghan O'Neill of the Irish band Moving Hearts came and played the bass part for us because Paul McCartney wasn't available. (Trevor must have been on furlough). Turps from The Sawdoctors does the harmony vocal. Anto plays sax and the Mediterranean mandolin at the outro. Barry Beckett plays the piano.

SHE'S ALL THAT I NEED
This was recorded the previous Summer (89) in Ringsend Road Studios, Dublin. It's an improvisation over a piano motif of mine with Colin's flute, Sharon's box and Steve's fiddle foremost. Anto is playing mandolin. The vocal/lyric was added in Spiddal.

UPON THE WIND AND WAVES
A week before we went to Spiddal to begin "Room To Roam" I was at Steve's house in Dublin. He said he had a little song to play me and switched on a cassette demo of "Upon The Wind And Waves". The lyric recalls a day the band spent on a Greenpeace boat on San Francisco Bay during our '89 tour. I loved it and asked him to do it on the album. When we recorded it, Steve sang and I played a mini-chord organ. The sea sound effects are from one of our recording field trips around Spiddal and environs.

SPRING COMES TO SPIDDAL
This began life as a poem (written on returning to Spiddal after a trip to Aran in early 1988). Noel Bridgeman plays bodhran. The "ragtime" arrangement was Steve's idea. Roddy Lorimer (trumpet) and trombonist Neil Sidwell came in to do the job. A gifted Dublin musician called Kieran Wilde played the mischievous high clarinet. They did the session then went for a game of football in the gardens.

THE TRIP TO BROADFORD
Written by a Clareman called Kieran Donnellan, this tune was part of the Sharon Shannon repertoire. We had played this as a prelude to "This Is The Sea" at some shows in 1989. For this recording Sharon is accompanied by Colin on piano.

FURTHER UP FURTHER IN
In May 1989 Steve and I had played on sessions for Sharon's first solo album in a pub/hotel called Winkles in Kinvara, south of Galway. The sessions went on far into the night and I can still remember standing alone at the door of Winkles at dawn in a light drizzling rain listening to the wild, longing, fateful sound of Sharon's box and Steve Cooney's guitar coming from inside. They were playing a sad march that cast a deep spell over me. Within days I set a lyric to this half-remembered dream tune, and when Sharon joined The Waterboys we played it together as "Further Up, Further In".
Many characters from the Waterboys story are woven into the lyrics. The song is played by Sharon (box), Steve (fiddle), Colin (tin whistle), Anto (mandolin), Trevor (Bass), Noel (Drums) and myself (electric piano).

ROOM TO ROAM
The accordion music that precedes this is from a field recording in Hughes's bar in Spiddal. I don't know who the musicians were. The barman whose voice cuts through so clearly was young Seaneen from Carraroe, west of Spiddal.
The tune and chords of "Room To Roam" were written by me around the beautiful lyric by Victorian Scottish novelist George MacDonald. (It's in his book "Phantastes" as has often been stated.) All The Waterboys added distinctive touches ; Colin's alpine flute melodies, Steve's hurdy gurdy fairground fiddle, Anto's oompah sax (underpinned by Trevor's double bass), Sharon's girl-on-a-magic-carpet-ride accordion and Noel's marching drums. The backing choir that enters halfway through comprises Seamus Begley, his sister Eileen and their friend, the late Diarmuid O'Suilleabhain, a master Sean-nos (old style) traditional singer from County Cork. They are pictured in the CD booklet singing their parts under 2 large microphones. Diarmuid is in the flat cap, standing up. (You can read about Diarmuid and the craft of his singing in the book "Traditional Music in Ireland" by Tomas O Canainn.)

THE KINGS OF KERRY
A jig written by myself, Sharon and Steve backstage at a rock festival and named in tribute to Cooney and Begley, veritably the "Kings" of Kerry (and Irish) music. To my delight Colin played backwards mandolin on this. He worked out the musical notation of the tune, then wrote it the wrong way round and played along with the tape of the recording turned backwards. When we turned the tape round the right way again there it was - a psychedelic backwards jig.
The "lilters" on the track are myself, Steve and Sharon. Colin plays the "cock crowing" sound effects on a gadget he had.

Three other tracks were recorded during these sessions which were not included on the album. They were :
1) "A Song For The Life" recorded for the BBC TV series "Bringing It All Back Home" and included on the compilation album of the same name.
2) "The Windy Windy Road" (pronounced like reWIND), a lyric of mine written to a tune called "The Hut On Staffin Island" written by John Cunningham of Scotland and part of Sharon's repertoire. Recorded by Sharon, Anto, Trevor, Noel and myself. Still unreleased.
3) "The Inchicore Reel", a tune of Steve's done in lilting vocal fashion by Steve and myself. Unreleased.

The album was finished on June 8th 1990. After another end-of-album party (this one in the back yard of Hughes's bar) we decamped. I paid a few short visits to Spiddal that summer and in the summer of 1991, but then I moved to New York and didn't see the West of Ireland again for a long time. After a break of seven years I returned in 1998 to sing on an Irish TV show called "Sibin". There was a grand session in Hughes's bar afterwards with guitars and fiddles to the fore and, of course, it was like I'd never left. I still think of Spiddal as "home", and feel blessed whenever I'm able to be there.