Doctors Have The Right Medicine

FROM Tuam to Governor’s Island to Punchestown Racecourse, there are few places Galway band The Saw Doctors haven’t played. The lineup of the band has changed over the years with the likes of Padraig Stevens, Jim Higgins, Pearse Doherty, Fran Breen, John Donnelly, John 'Turps’ Burke, Tony Lambert and of course Mary O’Connor each having contributed in their own individual way to the pop, rock, punk and traditional Irish influences of the Docs’ signature sound.Now, twenty years after they originally came together as young fellas in Tuam, the two constants in the band, Davy Carton and Leo Moran, say they never thought they would still be together, yet alone epitomise an Irish music band success story.“I don’t think twenty years ahead; whatever about back then, I wouldn’t think twenty years ahead now. It’s not something we foresaw really,” says Leo, known to many as the adorable one of the group. “When you’re in your early 20s I don’t think you’re thinking of what you’ll be doing when you turn 40; it’s not something you want to think about really!” Davy, the elder one of the pair, is of the same opinion, explaining that the original line-up of Mary O’Connor, Leo and himself really came about by chance, with a love of writing songs bringing them together. “Mary lived a couple of doors away from me in Tuam. I would have been a good few classes ahead of Leo in school but still we would have known each other through the music and that. We’d have had contact with one another,” he explains of the period which was in 1980.“That would have been the seed of the whole thing really; song writing and that. I don’t know when the switch happened but it just seemed natural to keep...