‘One of Britain's top gigs’: Guitarist Saul Davies talk about James’ fourth appearance at Scarborough Open Air Theatre

Saul Davies on stage with James during their last visit to Scarborough Open Air TheatreSaul Davies on stage with James during their last visit to Scarborough Open Air Theatre
Saul Davies on stage with James during their last visit to Scarborough Open Air Theatre
Indie greats James return to the Yorkshire coast next month for their fourth show at Scarborough Open Air Theatre.

The Manchester legends – who gave the world such timeless anthems as Sit Down, Born of Frustration, She’s A Star and Come Home – head to the historic venue on Friday July 26.

Ahead of the show, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Saul Davies took time from his busy schedule to talk to reporter Louise French about what makes returning to the Open Air Theatre so special.

Do you like coming back to Scarborough?

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James (Saul Davies front right)James (Saul Davies front right)
James (Saul Davies front right)

It’s one of the best venues in Britain, we’ve never done a bad show there, I don’t think.

It’s an amazing place to see us in – it’s one of Britain's top gigs as far as I’m concerned

You look at the quality of the artists that are doing shows there and I think that speaks for itself.

It’s a viable part of Britain with loads and loads of kids who love music, so guess what, it’s a great event and that’s why you have so many fans going back there

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What about the town itself, do you ever get time to go and put your feet in the sea before the show?

“No, what I do, every single time I’ve been there is, I love running, and I always run along the front when I go there, so I will do that.

Tell me about the songs, are you looking at playing a lot from the new album Yummy?

I think we will play some stuff from Yummy, the songs are sounding great and we’re ultra aware that people will have heard these songs because it went to number one and all that stuff,

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We’re not stupid, we know that because of where it is there are some casual visitors, so we’re not going to sit there and play a whole new album.

We’re aware that people are going to be coming to hear some of the songs that everybody knows.

We’ll get it right I’m sure, we’re treating it more like a festival than our own show.

Do you find that people go to more than one gig on a tour?

Yeah, I like to go to all of our gigs!

Do you know what? There’s a lunatic hardcore that you see at the front and you think to yourself, hang on a minute, it was difficult for me to get here, how did you get here?

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They must have some kind of weird James portal that they go in!

How have the warm up shows been?

We managed to mess up almost everything and it did lead to a moment where we were standing on stage looking at each other going ‘err…. What we doing?’ … but we got better and better apparently!

The thing is we didn’t mess up any of the new songs, and we played 10 new songs. But we did manage to mess up a song that we play quite often called Nothing but Love because we changed the arrangement and then we promptly forgot it.

“They went bonkers anyway, people were happy to be in the room with us.”

James will be joined at Scarborough OAT by special guests Reverend and the Makers and GIRLBAND!

For tickets visit ticketmaster.co.uk

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