Nearly Forty Years in the Making: The Waterboys Bring the Fisherman's Blues Revue to Valencia!(Exclusive interview) • 24/7 Valencia

There are albums that define a band, and then there are albums that redefine them entirely. For The Waterboys, Fisherman’s Blues was the latter. Released in 1988 after frontman Mike Scott relocated the band to Ireland and immersed himself in Celtic folk, traditional country, and the music of the land, it was a record that abandoned the anthemic rock of their earlier years for something wilder, rootsier, and more alive. It became the biggest record of their career and one of the most beloved British albums of its era. Now, nearly four decades later, the story of those sessions has a second chapter, and Valencia is where it arrives in Spain.

Atlantic Rain: The Lost Fisherman’s Blues Recordings

Between 1986 and 1988, The Waterboys recorded close to 400 multitrack tapes during the sessions that would eventually become Fisherman’s Blues. Many of them, recorded at half speed to maximise tape capacity, were filed away with minimal information, marked only with notes like “instrumental,” “jam,” “soundcheck,” or simply “unknown.” For decades they sat untouched in the archive.

Then, between 2024 and 2025, Mike Scott decided to go back in. What he found was, by his own description, extraordinary. The result is Atlantic Rain: The Lost Fisherman’s Blues Recordings, a triple album released through Chrysalis Records that rescues 25 previously unreleased recordings from those legendary sessions. Among them are compositions never before published, including Come Back To Galway, Light Shine On Me, Endless Store, and the epic Man With The Wind At His Heels, alongside brilliant covers of Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, and Willie Nelson.

Scott has been characteristically direct about what he found. “We made so much music at that time, with hundreds and hundreds of individual recordings, that I’m still discovering magical things,” he has said. “This collection of tracks contains the best I’ve found so far.” In his own social media posts, he has gone further, stating simply that it is as good as the original album. Rock and Blues Muse, in one of the first critical responses, noted that the first disc and much of the second offer new evidence of Scott’s extraordinary compositive and interpretive ability, showing a band at the peak of its creative powers.

The Fisherman’s Blues Revue

The album release is not the only reason to pay attention this summer. On September 3, The Waterboys bring their Fisherman’s Blues Revue to the Roig Arena in Valencia in what will be their only concert in Spain in 2026, a co-production between Houston Party and Just Life Music.

The show has been conceived as a full tribute to the Fisherman’s Blues universe, with the band performing songs from the original album alongside the best of the newly recovered material from Atlantic Rain. It is not a standard tour date. It is a once in a generation event built around one of the great records in modern rock history, performed live by the people who made it.

Mike Scott will be joined on stage by the return of legendary violinist Steve Wickham, whose fiddle playing was one of the defining sounds of the original album and whose presence alone makes this Revue something categorically different from a standard Waterboys show. Joining them is an exceptional guest: American singer and songwriter Steve Earle, who brings his own songs to the Revue alongside guitar, mandolin, and vocals. Earle, one of the most respected figures in American roots music, has spoken about his relationship with The Waterboys with characteristic directness. “I only ever wanted to be in three bands,” he has said. “The Rolling Stones, NRBQ, and The Waterboys.” The full band is completed by Brother Paul on organ, Famous James on piano, Aongus Ralston on bass, Eamon Ferris on drums, and Norwegian musician Roar Øien on lap steel.

Why This Matters

For anyone who cares about the lineage of rock music, the folk revival of the 1980s, or simply the idea of what a live concert can be when it is built around something genuinely significant, the Fisherman’s Blues Revue at the Roig Arena on September 3 is one of the most compelling shows to come to Valencia in years.

Fisherman’s Blues was a record about finding something true by leaving behind what was comfortable. It was made in Ireland, in rented cottages and makeshift studios, by a band that had walked away from commercial success to follow something they could not quite name. The music that emerged, fiddles and mandolins and Scott’s voice at its most open and searching, captured a particular kind of wandering spirit that has never gone out of fashion, and the fact that nearly forty years of additional recordings were sitting in a vault all this time only deepens the story rather than complicating it.

Atlantic Rain is not a cash-in archive release. It is, by all early accounts, the real thing. And The Fisherman’s Blues Revue in Valencia this September is the chance to hear that story told live, in full, with the people who lived it.

Read an exclusive 24/7 Valencia interview with Mike Scott of The Waterboys: https://247valencia.com/the-waterboys-play-fishermans-blues-album-live-at-roig-arena-in-valencia-on-3-september-exclusive-24-7-valencia-interview-with-mick-scott/