Crowd belted out the sax bits... it was a BLAST!
I‘Abi was sick but the Dublin crowd sang back her saxophone parts for us’
t’slessthanaweektotheinauguralNight And Day festival. There are only a small number of the 2,000 tickets left for the two-day event at Clonalis House, just outside Castlerea in Co. Roscommon. The sets by John Grant, Villagers and Orla Gartland are hugely anticipated. But the real coup for the organisers is securing the first show by The Zutons in Ireland in almost 15 years. Their three albums Who Killed The Zutons?, Tired Of Hanging Around and You Can Do Anything all entered the top 10. They were and are again an incredibly good band live. Lead singer Dave McCabe tells me, in an exlusive interview, that the shows on one of The
Zutons’ earliest Irish tours are among the most memorable he has played with the Liverpool band. ‘One of the reasons that they stick in the memory is because Abi [saxophone player Abigail Harding] got sick, and we were terrified because we had to do the shows without her,’ he says. ‘We were sh **** ng ourselves. But I remember walking onstage in Dublin [at the Ambassador Theatre] and playing Zuton Fever, and the audience sang back Abi’s saxophone parts for us. Then in Belfast, the crowd sang You’ll Never Walk Alone. They were really some of the best gigs we’ve ever done. Sorry Abs!’
I was at the Ambassador show. A notice on the door at the entrance of the now sadly underused O’Connell Street venue informed ticketholders that they could obtain refunds due to Abi Harding’s absence. The swaying throng inside when I entered the hall indicated very few had availed. At that stage the quintet were in the middle of a run of nine UK top 40 hits from Pressure Point in 2003 to Always Right Behind You in 2008. Among them was Valerie which hit the top 10 in June 2006. The version recorded by Amy Winehouse in 2008 is an undoubted classic. I confess I still prefer The Zutons’ version. I wondered did McCabe, as its writer, feel aggrieved that many might be unaware that it is a song by The Zutons.
‘It’s fine really. That song has a life of its own now,’ he says. ‘We’re all very proud of it, and proud that Amy covered it because she was boss, an amazing singer and a great girl. Her version with Mark [Ronson] took it to a different place and you can only hope for that sort of reaction when you write a song. You look at people like the Bee Gees and their songs get covered all the time – and they wrote things like Chain Reaction, Islands In The Stream, Heartbreaker – all for other people. It’s just music isn’t it? Sometimes the vessel for it is different. It’s all good though.’
Although their third album You Can Do Anything made the top 10 in 2008, their record label dropped them and the band decided to go their separate ways. ‘Sean [Payne, drummer] played with a few people over the years like Lightning Seeds and Michael Kiwanuka. He’s also in the Jaded Hearts Club Band with Matt Bellamy from Muse,’ he says.
‘Abi releases solo stuff as Abi Chan. I’ve played in a band called Silent K as well as releasing my own album called Church Of Miami as Dave McCabe & the Ramifications.
‘We toured and did the whole thing, but really I’m a Zuton and I was writing tunes that really are right for this band.’ Occasional gigs together since 2016 sharpened their ambition to get back together on a permanent basis and for almost a year McCabe, Harding and Payne have been working on a new album. Although it was announced that Nile Rodgers of Chic is on production duties, McCabe is tight-lipped about the process. ‘We’re still working on it, so we don’t want to say too much,’ he says. ‘Obviously it’s our first recording as a band for quite a few years, so we’ve been very precious about it. The way we work, things take time. What I can say is that we’ve been very hard on ourselves and on the songs, to make sure we’re doing something special, otherwise there’d be no point.’
With a name like McCabe and being from Liverpool, it is not surprising he has Irish roots. ‘I sent me DNA off and all of that to ancestry.com,’ he says. ‘So get this; I’m 40% Irish – Ulster, south Down and north Louth; 11% Welsh, 18% Scottish… but mostly Irish.’
The Zutons can expect the warmest of Irish welcomes in Roscommon next weekend.
The Zutons play Night And Day at Clonalis House, Co. Roscommon. The festival is on next weekend (September 24–25). See www.nightandday.ie