Room to Roam is no orthodox trad album. According to Scott, it was an attempt to create The Waterboys’ very own version of The Beatles’ kaleidoscopic opus, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). He laughs and checks himself. “I didn’t mean the peak of all Waterboys music. I meant an album where all the different influences and elements – pop, rock ’n’ roll, country, trad music and so on – blended in a colourful mix that would be an almost psychedelic thing.”
Prior to making Room to Roam, Scott had added drummer Noel Bridgeman, Scottish whistle player Colin Blakey and accordion prodigal Sharon Shannon to the core Waterboys quartet: Scott, fiddler Steve Wickham, saxophonist/mandolinist “Anto” Thistlethwaite and bassist Trevor Hutchinson. They comprised the ‘magnificent seven’ which gives the box-set its name.
Kicking off at Glastonbury, they toured Ireland, Britain, Europe and North America throughout the second half of 1989. Each Waterboys show was a riot of reels, gospel numbers, jigs, jives, country tunes, covers. Away from the audiences, the party continued in buses, dressing rooms, pubs and hotels. “We were dizzy with music,” says Scott. On one flight between Cork and Brittany, the cabin crew got caught in the whirl, dispensing with the customary safety warnings. The unbuckled band were still playing to passengers as the plane hit the runway.
Following six months of touring, the expanded Waterboys line-up made Room to Roam at Spiddal House, the faded Anglo-Irish pile on Ireland’s wild western coast where they had recorded the second side of Fisherman’s Blues. “We lived in holiday bungalows within a mile of the house,” says Scott. “We cycled to work every morning along the seafront.
“The first thing we’d do was meet up in the kitchen and have these hearty breakfasts – bacon, sausages, all that – then go to work. The dining room was the studio. The middle room, the lounge, was the band room. That’s where all the jamming happened. We’d finish around 10 o’clock, then go down to Hughes’ Bar in Spiddal for the last pint. What a joy!”
