Waterboys return to Wexford stage
THE stature of the National Opera House as a music venue of note has been further enhanced by the announcement of three intimate Irish shows by legendary folk rock band and ‘big music’ exponents The Waterboys - two at Dublin’s Vicar Street and one at the home of opera in Wexford.
Tickets for The Waterboys at the O’Reilly Theatre in the National Opera House on December 5 go on sale this coming Thursday and are expected to be in hot demand as Mike Scott and his band grace a Wexford stage with a full electric show for the first time in many years.
The Waterboys need little introduction to Irish audiences. The band’s fluid line-up and list of guest performers has included a number of Irish musicians down through the years - notably fiddler Steve Wickham and Sharon Shannon - and they’ve recorded a couple of albums on Irish soil, including ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ which many fans consider one of their best.
Mike Scott last appeared onstage in Wexford at the National Opera House in 2010 when touring ‘An Appointment With Mr Yeats’, his interpretation of 20 WB Yeats poems set to music.
But for many local fans, the very mention of a Waterboys’ Wexford gig will stir memories of a cracking post-Fisherman’e Blues Dun Mhuire show in the summer of 1989 when Scott was joined by a classic line-up of Anto Thistlethwaite, Steve Wickham, Trevor Hutchinson, Colin Blakey, Noel Bridgeman and Sharon Shannon, treating the standing audience to everything from ‘The Whole of the Moon’ to a set of reels.
• Tickets for The Waterboys at the National Opera House on Wednesday, December 5, go on sale this Thursday from 9 a.m. at Ticketmaster (limited number), through www.nationaloperahouse.ie and by ringing 053 912 2144.