Alt rock legends The Waterboys are ready to storm The Alban Arena this month. The band were formed in 1983 by Mike Scott and shot to fame with albums such as A Pagan Place and This Is The Sea, which included their biggest hit The Whole Of The Moon.

For the concert, the band have handpicked a selection of vintage songs and tracks from their most recent album, An Appointment With Mr Yeats, which draws on the rich culture and history of Ireland, combining lyrics from the master poet with barn-storming guitar licks.

Mike Scott talks about the album:

"I was standing sidestage at Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1991, while participating in a multi-artist tribute to Yeats. I'd prepared several Yeats musical arrangements, figuring all the other acts would too, but in the event they all just did their own songs. I was surprised by this and thought to myself there and then that Yeats deserved a show all to himself.

"The idea then slumbered for many years during which, now and then, I'd set another Yeats poem to music. Then in 2005, The Waterboys fiddler Steve Wickham did a show of his own at the Yeats Summer School, which is an annual event in Sligo where Steve lives. He did our version of The Stolen Child in his set and told me about it.

"Suddenly, my old idea of an all-Yeats show sparked back into life and I started writing the music. Most of it came in a fabulous avalanche of songs and arrangements - 15 or 16 in a month. For the first time I had enough for a full show and the reality began to take shape."

When did you first become aware of W B Yeats?

"At home, growing up in a house full of books, but I didn't read him for myself till I was a teenager, when I found the poem News For The Delphic Oracle on a family bookshelf. I didn't understand the poem, but I loved it.

"Years later when The Waterboys first toured Ireland, I bought myself a volume of Yeats' poems in a Dublin bookshop. That's when I started to become deeply familiar with his work. I like the combination of passion with Yeats' sculpted, almost surgically exact writing. And I like his subject set: love, metaphysics, politics, Ireland and myth."

Your interpretation of The Stolen Child seems to be the first W B Yeats track on a Waterboys record - Fisherman's Blues. Is that right?

"Yes. The Stolen Child was the first time I specifically adapted Yeats, though I had hollered the words of his poem The Four Ages Of Man over the outro of our song Spirit during live shows a couple of years earlier.

"I set The Stolen Child to music for the same reason I've since set dozens of Yeats' poems to music: the words suggested a tune in my mind. I guess I was lucky that it happened to be such a special poem that would draw a great performance from The Waterboys and capture peoples' imaginations. The track was recorded in its entirety before Tomas Mac Eoin's vocal was added, yet his contribution indelibly stamped the track; such a rare voice, full of a broken, noble humanity."

The Waterboys play The Alban Arena, Civic Centre, St Albans on Wednesday, May 16 at 8pm. Details: 01727 844488, www.alban-arena.co.uk