WATERBOYS, SOUL MEN
New sound for Mike Scott
Having logged nearly 35 years as leader of the Waterboys, Mike Scott is well travelled, geographically and musically. Those travels have brought the Edinburgh-born frontman to the U.S. before, but on Modern Blues, he goes deep into the soul of America.
Scott didn’t have to journey far for inspiration when crafting the Waterboys’ 11th studio album. “I listen to American music all the time,” he said by phone from Boston on Tuesday, two weeks into an extensive tour of the U.S. and Canada. “My diet at home is old soul music, mostly.”
And the influence was there right from the start, in the fiery sax of the band’s debut 1983 single, A Girl Called Johnny.
Still, from the grand drama of their early-1980s albums through the joyous Celtic spirit of the 1988 masterpiece Fisherman’s Blues and the restless questing of the last 15 years, the Waterboys haven’t typically been a soul band. But then, with Scott the only constant, the Waterboys can be whatever he wants them to be.
Once Scott decided he wanted an American feel for the followup to 2011’s An Appointment With Mr. Yeats, which was grounded in the poetry of one of the well-read singer’s primary influences, he set about hiring American musicians. The new recruits include Texan guitarist Zach Ernst, “who could play in that late-’60s Memphis soul style,” and Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood, whose extensive discography includes sessions for Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge and Etta James.
Less of a new start and more of a reinvigoration, Modern Blues acknowledges Scott’s history in tracks including Long Strange Golden Road, the 10-minute semiautobiographical travelogue that closes the album. Rooted in a longforgotten verse Scott uncovered while going through old diaries in preparation for his 2012 memoir, Adventures of a Waterboy, it’s a career highlight that can stand tall next to the catalogue selections being reinterpreted live.
“It was entertaining for me going through those old songs, because I have a band that can play in a different way from any previous Waterboys lineup,” Scott said. “I don’t want to say too many song titles, because it gives away what we’re going to play, but certain songs sounded like they really suited that soul groove.”
The presence of fiddler Steve Wickham strengthens not just the Celtic thread that continues to run through the Waterboys’ work, but the sense that this is a band, not a solo project with a blue-chip backing cast.
Scott praises the chemistry shared with his longest-serving bandmate as “a once-in-a-lifetime musical relationship. I never found it with anyone else.”
Their shared history was mined for the 2013 set Fisherman’s Box, a six-disc collection that gives an idea of the ecstatic if dizzying sessions that spanned three years and were whittled way, way down for the original Fisherman’s Blues release. Scott clearly has an excellent memory — he recalls the last time the Waterboys played Montreal, almost half a lifetime ago in 1990 — but delving far into the archives yielded revelations for the bandleader as well as the listener.
Then and now, “it was something good to be lost in, that music. It was great fun at the time,” Scott said. “It had its own life and it just rolled along and pulled us with it.
“I would certainly record in that style again, of making stuff up in the studio. You see, I write differently now, so I’m not sure if my writing would lead me to work like that. But if it did, if I had a whole notebook of lyrics that didn’t yet have tunes, or songs that I knew a band could improvise easily, then yes, I would do it again.”