Mon. March 17

If it's St. Patrick's Day season in Boston - and it is a season, not a day - we can expect to see the Saw Doctors in our midst. This year, though, they're out west a bit playing the Calvin Theater in Northampton Monday March 17. They are nothing if not Ireland's folk-rock-Celtic feelgood band of the era. "We didn’t start out and say ‘Let’s make a band that makes people feel good when they leave’ the show,’’ says Saw Doctors guitarist Leo Moran. “I think we’re just lucky. Not all of our lyrics are completely upbeat, but the way we deliver them seem to be upbeat. They’re a strange mixture of light and dark.” They broke through in Ireland back in the late 1980s, with people singing along boisterously to a breakup song “I Useta Lover.” They’ve toured the US steadily over the years – five times in 2006 -and have built a strong base here.
     The quartet’s latest studio album is called “The Cure.” If that’s the case, what’s the disease? “I suppose the answer to that a bit of music is what you need now in then to get in a positive state of mind,” says Moran, on the phone from Galway.  “There are little diseases on the album about relationships and in the way the country’s changing around us … little things you’re being philosophical about.” Indeed, the new album starts with “Out for a Smoke,” where singer-guitarist Davy Carton finds “The darkest clouds were on to me."

  Their latest disc, ”That Takes The Biscuit," is a rarities record that includes studio recordings of the hilarious "I'm Never Gonna Go on Bebo Again" (Bebo is an Irish networking Web site, much like MySpace), the mid tempo fan favorite "She’s Got It," early demos from the late eighties of songs such as ‘Ways of the World’, and several live tracks from the December 2002 London Shepherds Bush Empire show. In all, the new CD features 23 recordings that as a whole serve to showcase the pop-rock-Celtic variety in their sound.

 “We write about what we’re thinking,” says Moran. “I suppose the danger is you get more self-conscious about writing songs. It’s always a challenge to get a new song in the set that will be comfortable besides the old favorites. When you first start writing, you’ve nothing to live up to. You have to allow yourself to make mistakes. Even Bob Dylan had a few bad albums.”
 

 But it is a more serious, somber Saw Doctors than what we’ve been accustomed to. “A little bit yeah,” says Moran. “I was writing those lyrics when I was turning 40, a time when you begin to think about what age you are, about mortality. And there are oher issues to deal with now. One new song we just wrote together in the last month is “Ivana in the Brogue,” about  falling in love with a Polish barmaid. It’s wishful thinking, a bit of fantasy song from a young lad’s point of view.” How did this come about? “There’s a huge influx of immigrants for the first time ever in Ireland from Eastern Europe. Our economy is so buoyant.  It’s like our people went to the States and England in last 200 years.”
      Moran co-leads the band with Carton. Longtime associate (and former Waterboy) Anthony Thistlethwaite joined full-time in 1998 – the multi-instrumentalist plays mostly bass, some sax. E’imn Craddock recently took over the drum kit from Fran Breen.
     Trivia: What do the Saw Doctors have in common with Prince (not the English one, the American musician)? Both played to soldout football stadiums recently during the ultimate game – Prince at the Super Bowl, and the Saw Doctors at a Gaelic soccer final. Moran laughs, and notes that by playing to more than 82,000 people live, the Saw Doctors actually had the biggest audience in-house.

 19 King St., Northampton, 413-586-1039  www.iheg.com