THE Saw Doctors could not believe their eyes – or ears – when Anto Thistlethwaite from The Waterboys started playing sax with them.

It was already turning into one of the most bizarre days of the Celtic rock band's early years when they played a marathon set at The Warwick Hotel as a fundraiser for the Galway Arts Festival in 1988.

Eleven miles down the road in the seaside village of Spiddal, The Waterboys had just finished recording their album 'Fisherman's Blues' and Anto had decided the party was not over just yet.

"Anto came in that evening and he started playing along with us," said Leo Moran, lead guitarist for The Saw Doctors.

"The Waterboys were notorious for turning up at places at that time.

"They were pop-up celebrity rock stars around the area but it was a great surprise for us and a great thrill and lovely to play along with that signature sax sound.

"It was surreal but it was great to have such quality and high octane reinforcement at that late stage in the day. It gave us another lease of life as we had been playing for maybe about five or six hours.

"It seemed to go on forever. We probably played every song we knew three times."

That evening at The Warwick Hotel kindled a musical friendship between Leo and Anto that continues to this day and the pair will be at the Parr Hall on Saturday.

The show will see the pair play stripped back versions of Saw Doctors songs

Leo added: "We do some sought after songs but we do them in our own way and then we do some songs that I used to have in my back pocket that didn’t really make the set list of the Saw Doctors.

"Anto sings a couple of songs and we’ve a few new songs so it’s a mixture."

Leo will be playing acoustic guitar with Anto on sax, mandolin and harmonica.

"It does expose the basic skeleton of the songs a bit more," said Leo.

"Our version of Exhilarating Sadness is very slow and very different and I like that in particular.

"World of Good is very different too and people have said they like hearing the songs from a different angle."

Leo was inspired to become a musician by the punk rock movement. He was 12 in 1977 when the punk scene exploded.

The 50-year-old added: "Punk let everybody have a chance.

"You didn’t have to go to music school, you didn’t have to have the nuns teaching you the piano and you could write your own songs.

"It was a huge inspiration at the time. It opened up a world where music could be yours as much as anybody else’s.

"To me, a lot of the songs were simple folk songs with a bit of distortion and attitude

"In some ways I think there’s a bit of a punk in every musician as it’s about expressing yourself and doing it your own way."

- Leo and Anto present From The Saw Doctors at the Pyramid on Saturday. Call 442345 or visit pyramidparrhall.com for tickets

DAVID MORGAN