An Irishwoman's Diary

Loyalty has a substance and status in the west of Ireland that some poor unfortunates east of the Shannon don't quite comprehend. Invariably, it puts logic and reason and healthy debate to the test. One of its basic rules: unless there is a heinous crime involved, never make public criticism of "one's own".

Which is why my great ambivalence about the Saw Doctors was something I kept to myself. Yes, I Useta Lover and N17 were great, rollicking tunes, and, yes, the seductive verse of Clare Island appealed to the sensitive side of one's soul - never mind putting Louisburgh's Roonagh pier on the map. But how could any self-respecting Irish European rave about a band that rhymed "Mass" with "ass", and provided raucous anthem chants for the Galway and Mayo GAA teams?

Making it to Top of the Pops, and becoming the subject of socio-political analysis by several esteemed commentators was the final blow. These lads had been great fun, and now they would think they were famous, or worse, and lose the run of themselves. They would start wearing sunglasses in the rain, preach to political leaders about world peace, and travel to Rome to meet the Pope.

This from a group that could sing "Bless me father, for I have sinned/She had big brown eyes and silky skin/ Bless me father, I couldn't resist/ Father, you have no idea what you missed!"

But thanks to the band's manager Ollie Jennings and the film-maker Steven Lock, I have been disabused of such doubts. The Rustic Vaults pub in Tuam, the beach on Clare Island, Rabbit island on Lough Corrib and a Celebrate Brooklyn festival in New York are some of the locations for a highly entertaining and enlightening documentary, directed by Lock, which tries to explain what this band's music is all about. "Slightly pagan, I suppose," says Labour Party president Michael D. Higgins. "Just great crack," says comedian Tommy Tiernan.

"We see ourselves as a community-based band, really," guitarist, singer and poet Leo Moran says - for what's small-town local can be small-town global. Moran quotes the playwright Tom Murphy, a fellow Tuam native, who once told him he had met every character he needed to meet when he was growing up there. The same is true of his songs, which feature characters like the late Tommy Kaye, stage name for disc jockey Tommy Kavanagh, who held discos in Tuam's Phoenix Ballroom during Lent, and Ray Buckley, the angler and anti-rod licence campaigner who shared Moran's passion for the Corrib - and whose deathbed wish to have his ashes brought up the lake to Inchagoill island inspired the haunting number Carry Me Away.

At the same time, the band members were obviously sensitive to the critics who wanted to highlight their limitations. "We wanted to see if the music would travel," says Davy Carton, singer, guitarist and fellow song-writer. And it did, to the extent that 15 years of touring has built up a substantial following across both the Atlantic and the Irish Sea. In the documentary, Lock's camera captures several US fans in Brooklyn recalling their trip to Ireland the year before, and how they "did the N17".

The fact that the Saw Doctors were not writing about a "rural idyll" where there were "self-milking cows and carrots popping up out of the ground" probably helped strike such chords, Michael D. Higgins explains. Their lyrics represented a society in transition, still fresh with the memories of unemployment, poverty, religion and emigration. The journalist John Waters talks about the perfection of each composition, and expresses surprise that there was never any real attempt to imitate the band or re-invent what it was doing. The spirit that created those first songs remains, and if the group ever feels it has to write to a formula, its members will become "monkeys", Tiernan says.

Nor has their time spent abroad exacted a price. Their hinterland may have changed - the N17 is on the National Roads Authority (NRA) map, and the agency is itself being decentralised to Ballinasloe. But the musicians have remained true to themselves. Going abroad several times a year and returning to observe the changes may allow them to do that, the film-maker Bob Quinn observes.

"In 100 years time, if someone was singing one of our songs in a pub, that would be success for us," Davy Carton says, and he clearly believes that as long as he and Moran can keep writing music, the band will continue. For all that small-town atmosphere, Tuam, and neighbouring Galway city, have a cosmopolitan mix and an evolving and dynamic music network among the asylum-seeker and refugee communities. Emigration may have trickled off, but growing disparities between rich and poor and the challenges of integrating cultures place new demands on artists and writers who employ humour and irony to deliver their message.

"Celebrations of the end of repression, past, present and future," is how Michael D. Higgins describes the band's performances. Several of these are due to take place over the next few days - at Dublin's Olympia Theatre tomorrow night, and the National Entertainment Centre in Killarney, Co Kerry, on Tuesday.

The band returns west for a special New Year's Eve gig in the Black Box in Galway, with guests Noelie McDonnell, The Shambles, Gurt and Ri-Ra.

Lock's documentary, A Different Kind of World, is scheduled for broadcast next Wednesday, New Year's Eve, on TG4 at 8p.m.