The Waterboys, Glasgow review: 'glorious'
Steve Earle added extra magic dust to an already triumphant celebration of a key period in Waterboys history, writes Fiona Shepherd
The Waterboys, Hydro, Glasgow ★★★★
The first thing that hit you on encountering The Waterboys in Fisherman’s Blues Revue mode was how blaringly loud it all was – a common mistake in a venue of this size.
This glorious band, led by the shamanic Mike Scott, were in town to celebrate the magic of a key two-year period in Ireland in the late Eighties when a rolling crew of musicians recorded a staggering 400 reels of music, from which Scott finessed The Waterboys’ most-beloved album and sundry subsequent collections.
The Hydro could hardly be less intimate than those original sessions but the concept for the tour is to freewheel through a bunch of material from across the catalogue in the company of guest “miscreants and villains”. Is one of those guests the magnificent Steve Wickham? Hard to tell on sight without the aid of any of the big screens which would normally be used in a show of this scale, but there was no mistaking the signature dervish licks of the returning fiddler.
He was joined in flamboyance by Brother Paul on keytar, facing off on the storming rock’n’roll of Medicine Bow, while another Fisherman’s Blues player, Colin Blakey, returned to play flute on their epic setting of WB Yeats’ The Stolen Child.
By this stage, Waterboys classics How Long Will I Love You, A Girl Called Johnny and The Whole of the Moon had already been dispensed like good Celtic soul medicine but there were further treats in the second half when gruff country icon Steve Earle joined the band, proving a suitable match in spirit and tradition, whether fronting his own Copperhead Road and My Old Friend the Blues or covering the Rolling Stones’ Dead Flowers.
“I’ve only ever wanted to be in about three bands and this is one of them,” he declared before the band acquired 13,000 extra members for the closing jamboree of Fisherman’s Blues and Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
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