The Waterboys Present An Appointment With Mr Yeats

The Waterboys, founded by the group’s visionary and sole constant member Mike Scott, have been blending different styles of music – Celtic folk music and rock – since 1981. With their ambitious forthcoming record set for release in North American in March, An Appointment with Mr. Yeats, Scott sets the brilliant poetry of William Butler Yeats to music. The result is an amalgam of such Waterboys’ gems as This is the Sea and Fisherman’s Blues.

In an interview with John Healey, Mike Scott describes the challenges of collaborating with one of the world’s greatest poets: “I’m well aware I’m sculpting with words of the very highest quality, and this spurs me to write music at the peak of my own abilities and expression… Yeats wrote a hundred years ago and sometimes I come across a word that’s fallen out of common use. When that happens I’ll replace the word, not changing the poet’s meaning or intention, but rendering it clear and understandable in our own times. Or sometimes the structure of a poem doesn’t work as a song. In such cases I’ll remove a verse – again if this doesn’t adversely affect the poem or undo its meaning – or shift lines.”

Mr. Scott will perform with The Waterboys in New York’s Town Hall in March for the American premiere of this compelling 14 song cycle.