Saw Doctor takes singing lessons!

It sounds like the start of a funny story – Saw Doctors singer Davy Carton is taking singing lessons – but there was nothing to laugh at when vocal problems forced the Galway band to cancel 25 shows across Ireland and the UK, leaving 30,000 fans disappointed.

It was to be the band’s ‘reunion tour’ after a four-year hiatus and the tickets sold like hot cakes – until Davy came down with a sore throat that turned into something more serious.

“We’d done the first three gigs in Scotland which were fine and then I just got this head cold. I thought I’d just work on through it but it just got worse and worse,” he says.

Much worse, as it turned out – and a visit to ENT specialist Professor Ivan Keogh at UHG confirmed the worst. The tour was off and Davy’s vocal cords needed surgery.

“We’d sold out the Manchester Apollo – 3,500 tickets; two nights at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire – 2,000 each night; Glasgow’s O2 Academy with 2,500,” says Saw Docs manager Ollie Jennings.

There were more; three nights at Dublin’s Olympia with 5,000 fans, three nights at home in Seapoint with 3,000 disappointed fans – 22,000 tickets sold in the UK alone.

The good news is that there was a saviour at hand – Galway-based, Canadian-born vocal coach Michel Durham, whose Durham Voice Studio in the rafters of a small office building in the heart of Galway was to prove the first step towards rehabilitation…and a tour that is almost fully rescheduled already.

Press PLAY ▻ to watch Davy at singing lessons

It’s no surprise that Davy readily admits he never took a singing lesson – not many did in starting bands more than 30 years ago – and those three-hour shows, not to mention a lifestyle that would never be mistaken for a saint’s, wreaked havoc on the voice.

Now however – after just three weeks under Michel’s tutelage and with strenuous exercises, coupled with a little more discipline, the signs are clear to see…Davy is back and better than ever.

See the full story on Davy in this week’s Connacht Tribune