Roamer: Kathy Kelly of famous Irish singing family coming home

Kathy is the eldest sibling of the historic musical phenomenon - The Kelly Family.

Starting as travelling buskers, at their peak they sold tens of millions of records, topped the European charts, played to packed concert halls and starred on TV and radio.

Their remarkable story has been mentioned here before, from their Irish great-grandparents emigrating to Pennsylvania during the famine to Patricia Kelly’s charity concert in Wicklow in 2017.

Debuting as four ‘Kelly Kids’ busking in Spain in 1974, via progressively augmented family performances in Italy and Ireland, by the mid-1990s ten singing siblings (and occasional parents) were taking Europe by storm.

Travelling in a distinctive double-decker bus adorned with enormous Kelly Family signs, their outdoor concerts attracted hundreds of thousands of jubilant fans, reaching millions on TV and radio.

They boasted 48 gold and platinum records and almost toppled Abba from number one in Germany in 1992 “yet, unlike the Von Trapps and Clannad’s Brennan family”, a reviewer noted in 2013, “the Kelly Family has never achieved wider recognition in Ireland, the country they view as their spiritual home.”

Born in Massachusetts in 1963 and brought up in Spain from the age of four, Kathy is now based in Germany “between Frankfurt and Cologne,” she explained, “out in the countryside, which is pretty central to the rest of Germany, Holland and Belgium.”

It’s around three decades since the family group performed in Ireland.

“We did three or four shows here in a couple of venues in the 1990s,” Kathy recalled, “though we did a lot of concerts in Dublin before we became famous in 1977. Back then we played almost every evening for five to seven months.”

She’s returning after all these years for two concerts next month, backed by local choirs; in St Columba’s Church, Kells, on June 1 with the ‘Shooting Stars’ choir from Dunshauglin and in the Cornerstone Church, Bray, on June 2 with the local ‘Beating Time’ choir.

Vintage Kelly Family videos continue to get millions of hits on the web today, with young Kathy singing multi-lingual, multi-national songs. She was equally versatile on the violin, accordion, piano and guitar, instruments still on her repertoire, which is breathtakingly wide.

“I grew up in a family in America with my father and my uncles singing Irish music every day,” she reminisced. “Irish music was our elixir, but not just Irish folk music - I grew up also with European folk, I sing German folk, Spanish folk, I grew up with flamenco, I went to Irish music training, and I did gospel.”

So what’s on the menu for Kells and Bray?

“I’ve had decades of concerts with choirs,” Kathy told me, “but this will be my first time with Irish choirs so we’re selecting songs that are known here, like ‘Sally Gardens’ and ‘Toora Loora Lay’ - beautiful arrangements for choirs, stuff that is Irish, but high end Irish, the classical end of Irish music.”

Kathy is a trained, acclaimed and oft-recorded opera singer; I wondered if that will be on the agenda.

“I’m not going to be singing opera,” she stressed, adding a qualification, “I may do one or two arias, but mostly it’s going to be folk, songs that people know, the old songs, such as Nothing like Home, An Angel and Amazing Grace, things like that, and my own stuff too.”

(Her beautiful version of Nothing like Home is on YouTube, with Kathy accompanying herself on accordion, and An Angel from their family album Over The Hump was a massive hit in Germany in 1994.)

She’s only doing the two concerts in Ireland - “I usually do 60 to 80 shows but I’m trying to keep it low key this time!” - so they’re very special occasions, and not just for the audiences.

“Ireland is where I belong”, Kathy told me. “Ireland is where I feel at home. When I come here I’m amongst my own. It’s a good feeling because if you’re travelling, knowing where you belong gives you a lot of strength.”

Booking details at www.eventbrite.com/.../kathy-kelly-ireland-2024.