Next month, legendary punk outfit The Pogues will embark on their first North American tour in 13 years, the first since the passing of vocalist Shane MacGowan in 2023. On September 8th, the third date of the tour brings original Pogues Spider Stacy, Jem Finer, and James Fearnley to Franklin Music Hall for the first time since March of 2008 (back when it was the Electric Factory) to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Pogues’ sophomore LP, Rum Sodomy & The Lash, playing the album in its entirety, in addition to B-sides and fan favorites. Stacy, Finer, and Fearnley will be joined onstage by a plethora of talented musicians, including Bad Seeds drummer Jim Sclavunos, Lankum’s Darragh Lynch, Lisa O’Neill, and Pretenders lead guitarist James Walbourne, who toured with The Pogues during their mid-late-aughts reunions. I recently got a chance to chat via Zoom with Spider Stacy, co-founder, tin whistle player, and vocalist of The Pogues, who tells me about how this reunion and celebration of the band first arose, his favorite (and most vivid) memory of Rum Sodomy & The Lash, and one particularly amusing memory from the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection.
*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Izzy Cihak: Last year the band got back together for the first time in a decade, and you’ve played a handful of really big shows since then, most notably the dates celebrating Rum Sodomy & The Lash, which you’re about to bring to the States. How have the shows been going? What have been some of the standout moments and highlights?
Spider Stacy: Really, the whole thing has been a complete rush from the off. The very first show that we did was at a place called Hackney Empire, in East London, which I guess you guys would call an old vaudeville theatre, this beautifully restored building that dates from like 1880. That all came about when I was approached by Tom Coll, the drummer from Fontaines D.C. He and a friend were putting on this weekend of Irish music at a little folk club nearby. They asked if I’d like to do Friday evening, like curate something to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Red Roses for Me, the first album, just using the people they already had for this really low-key weekend. I thought, “Yeah, that sounds quite easy!”
We had just announced it without any sort of guests, just, “This weekend it’s happening and on this Friday this is going to happen.” And Friday night just sold out like that! It was a small club, but there was another like 1,500 people, besides the ones that actually bought all the tickets, so we were like, “What’re we gonna do?” So, we moved it across the road to this theatre. And then we had a bit more of a budget, so I got James and Jem, the other guys from The Pogues, and I was just able to put together a show to really properly celebrate the album, mark the anniversary.
It had also only been a few months since Shane’s death. There were all these things at play, and it just went so well. Nadine Shah — one of the standout performers that night on an absolutely transcendent version of “The Auld Triangle” — said afterwards, “Sometimes you do something like this and it can just fall completely flat on its face, it can be a complete fucking disaster. This wasn’t that! This was extraordinary.” And it really was, you could just sense the whole thing from the crowd.
We’d had, of course, nearly 14 years of The Pogues reunions, up until 2014, and we got some really great audiences and everything when we were doing those shows, but this was something else again! This was more like something from the 1980s, the immensity was just really off the scale. And it was interesting because the age range of the audience we’d seen, since the reunions, people were coming that were original fans, but they’d be bringing their kids who were maybe 20. This has always been a factor, as each successive generation has come up, there’s been kids who’ve been listening either because of their parents or their friends, just the way people acquire music. Somebody turns you onto something, like, “This band are fucking great!” or, “This is a really important band.”
I guess this is also more so the case nowadays, or over the past 20 years, because there’s this real proper sort of history and architecture in place. Back in the ‘80s the history of the architecture was very much there, but it was all still being added to it; it still is, of course! I think we’ve remained a band that, our music, our songs, still continue to resonate with people. There’s a real power that exerts a pull on people right through to this day and age, never mind that this was music that was made in the 1980s.
Izzy: How are you, James, and Jem enjoying playing with all of these amazing musicians?
Spider: There’s this whole new wave of really fantastic musicians and singers coming out of Ireland, working to a greater or lesser degree in that field of traditional music. All these people who are taking it and doing these interesting new things with it, and really taking some deep dives into uncharted territory, but things that’ve always been suggested by some of the things that are latent in Irish music. You look at someone like Lankum and the way they’ve gone almost that doom metal route, which is clearly kind of there. It just lends itself to that kind of landscape and it all fits in, broadening the mesh, as well.
You can incorporate all these different things. There are all these people that have come out, over the past 10 years, and all seem, in one way or another, to be like, “We love The Pogues!” You get these bands as different as Fontaines D.C. (I mean, it was Tom Coll who really set the whole thing in motion.) and Kneecap. We’ve been able to use that. You’ve got Lisa O’fucking Neill saying, “Yes, I would love to do that! Thank you very much!” John Francis Flynn, Darragh from Lankum… It’s kind of this wealth of riches, this embarrassment of riches [laughs].
Izzy: I know that you’d been playing a lot of these songs in recent years, but I’m guessing in preparing for these dates, you revisited some of the album tracks and B-sides for the first time in quite some time, so I’m curious if you’ve found yourself liking or enjoying playing any of the songs more than you remembered?
Spider: Yeah! When we were doing Red Roses, I kind of got it into my head that I really didn’t like “The Battle of Brisbane,” I really didn’t like that polka! But, actually, it’s great! It’s the instrumentals, again… Rum Sodomy & The Lash has got three instrumentals on it, so that’s quite a lot, but they all work really well in different ways, but “The Wild Cats of Kilkenny” has been a revelation to play live. I always really liked that one, but it’s lost nothing of its intensity.
Izzy: This is a big question, but what are some of your most vivid memories of the album from four decades ago, in terms of the writing, the recording, and the touring and promotion surrounding it?
Spider: The thing that I remember most is actually the launch party for the album. Our press officer was a guy called Philip Hall, a guy who died too young, it’s really sad. He was a really lovely guy, he won press officer of the year, and it was the year that Rum Sodomy & The Lash came out, and it was really on the back of the launch party. There’s an old World War II warship anchored in the River Thames, HMS Belfast, a cruiser. We had the party onboard HMS Belfast. We were all dressed in this collection of rag-tag naval uniforms and we came across to the warship to this launch from the other side of the river, went up this rope ladder… I can’t believe we did that [laughs]. We played a set and it was just this like drunken mess of a show on this battleship, it was fucking great [laughs]. I really remember that very, very clearly. The actual recording of the album, that’s all sort of a bit of a blur. It didn’t take very long to do it, the songs were all there, nothing was written in the studio or anything like that. It was all stuff that we had worked out, so we just kind of went in and did what was necessary.
Izzy: Considering that this is a Philadelphia-based publication, I have to ask if you have any thoughts on or memories of the city? I know you have played here a handful of times relatively recently, in addition to all the dates The Pogues have played here over the last several decades?
Spider: I’m seriously, seriously not blowing smoke up your ass, but I actually love Philadelphia! I think the Philadelphia crowd has always been one of the best in the States. The city itself, I like the vibe, I think it’s a cool city. It’s got that kind of rough edge that you get in East Coast cities, it’s a proper city! It may be considerably smaller than New York, but you get the impression that Philadelphia doesn’t think so [laughs].
There was one time we played in Philly, during the reunions, we drove down from New York and there was this freak blizzard. It was really, really intense, that bit from New York to Philadelphia and not really anywhere else, but very, very intense. We got there and Philadelphia was like shutdown, most people who bought tickets didn’t come, but there was still like 300 or 400 people who did…
Izzy: Was it at the Electric Factory?
Spider: Yeah! The Electric Factory…
Izzy: That’s where you’re playing this time, it just has a new name.
Spider: Oh, right! Great! That’s also, I believe, where somebody came into the dressing room with a bag of Philly cheesesteaks, and I remember having a bite, and being like, “Ahh, I don’t really like that… I’ll just have a bit more… Nah, nah, I don’t know about that… I’ll just have a bit more, though,” and I ate about five of them, as you do [laughs].
So, there was this freak blizzard. We played because people had turned up, and then we had to get back to New York. We’d been using a car company, and all their guys we like, “No, we’re not working tonight, it’s a fucking blizzard!” And the guy who ran the car company knew all these guys in Philly who were cops, so we had off-duty cops driving us up to New York, like snowplows. And cops are really good drivers! That was a fun journey [laughs].
Izzy: The Philadelphia show has Ted Leo opening, who’s amazing and I’m glad we lucked out with that! What are your thoughts on him and his music? I think he’s played with you a few times before…
Spider: He has! I really like him! It’s Ted! It’s really from the heart and he’s the kind of people we need more of!
Izzy: Finally, what’s next for you? What are you hoping and planning for after these dates, whether relating to The Pogues and this kind of celebration tour, or anything else?
Spider: I guess we’re gonna have to, at some point, start thinking about If I Should Fall from Grace with God, which is 40 in 2028… So, we sort of have to ask ourselves, “Do we continue to be tied to anniversaries… or specific anniversaries?” I mean, people celebrate their 39th birthdays, don’t they? Hopefully we’ll carry on for a while doing this and doing stuff we haven’t done yet!
*Get your tickets here.
