The Calling Course

In late 2022 I started writing the song which eventually became James Kildaire And The Maypole, a song I’d wanted to write for a long time. When it was eventually finished (with the aid of my friend Steve Ryan) I started thinking about perhaps writing some other songs in the same vein, story songs, work songs and maybe, eventually putting them on an album.

In April of 2023 my father passed away at the age of 85, not a bad age for a man who by his own admission was something of a hellraiser in his youth. My father had never taken much more than a passing interest in his family tree when I was growing up and to be honest, neither had I. In later life however, it became something he was (if in all honesty only slightly) curious about.

In September last year I was a guest entertainer aboard a cruise ship travelling between Quebec City and Boston for a month. Ahead of the trip I decided that I would make some effort to research my fathers family history as I knew my grandmother had been born in Nova Scotia and the ship would be taking me there.  Once again, my friend Steve stepped up, trawling through births, deaths and marriages, shipping manifestos, immigration documents and countless other documents in order to put together a story that while unique, was also just like that of countless other working class people.

And so to this album. I wrote all but two of the songs it features while on board that ship during September last year, Inspired, in part by the stories of my own people but mainly by the stories of working people in general.

A friend once told me that songs and poems are like statues of the working class, these songs are mine.