Songwriter SŽamus draws from depths of childhood experiences

Tuam-based songwriter Séamus Ruttledge has recently released Songs To Have With Your Tea, an uplifting album that fuses elements of folk and poetry. The CD is Seamus’ second album, following 2000’s New Boots, New Shoes. Both albums were recorded by Kenny Ralph in Sun Studios, where the Saw Doctors began their recording career.

In the liner notes, Séamus’ children Roshane, Evan and Apphia are credited with co-writing three of his new songs.

“That’s the will made!” he laughs. “I wrote a lot of this when my children were small enough. That youth energy in the house encourages you to pick up the guitar and start writing. I also think that children don’t get credit. Because they do inspire adults; they’re keeping us all sane, really. They’re co-creators in the atmosphere of the songs.”

Séamus’ emergence as a songwriter is a relatively recent development in his life. There is a strong poetic sensibility to his lyrics, and many of his ideas were a long time brewing.

“I was always trying to write,” he says. “Way back I gave Leo Moran a couple of lyrics of some sort or other. He never really gave me a comment back!”

Words had an effect on Séamus from a young age, and many of his songs reflect on the experiences of his childhood years.

“The first kind of impression I got that writing was a really good thing, was with the book Huckleberry Finn,” he recalls. “When I was at St Muredach’s college, that was the book we studied. And I thought this is great, because I can be this guy – I’ve already been this guy.”

When Séamus says he has ‘been this guy,’ he is referring to his early years in an orphanage in Salthill and being adopted at the age of 7.

“I was in an orphanage in Lenaboy,” Séamus says. “I was adopted about 1964 or 5, so I was very conscious of leaving it. In a sense, it was family – they were was great sense of loneliness because I was leaving all these friends behind.

“One girl in particular, I knew her as Mary. You didn’t know anybody’s identity; but her and I had a friendship, a very strong friendship. So we had to part; I had to start up a whole new life in a place called Mayo, on a farm.”

Although it’s well over 40 years ago now, Séamus can still vividly remember leaving Salthill.

“I remember that journey. We went on a train and then someone took us in a green van and brought us out to this country house. There was another boy there called Padraig who became my brother.”

These experiences are referred to in songs like The Secret Child (from his first album) and Orphan Child (from his latest), but does Séamus feel that these early years permeate through all his writing?

“I think so,” he says. “You didn’t depend on having a father or a mother or a legitimate family – you depended on your own self-worth really. So that’s why I write from that background, to affirm that to myself. And even affirm to others of that background. Really and truly, you were born with your own soul and your own dignity.”

Séamus says he first came to Tuam around 1978. He was impressed with original songwriters like Padraig and Joe Stevens, and eventually came to call the town home

“I used to occasionally visit,” he explains. “Then I saw people playing guitar, like Padraig and Joe. I remember Joe singing Roscommon Blues and Padraig singing West Of The Gates. But all this music was happening around me – and they were their own songs. They didn’t have to sing other people’s songs.”

“There’s a sweet security in the streets of Tuam, for somebody that felt like an outcast,” he enthuses. “It’s only in the ordinary things, but they’d have a drink with you or a chat. And also, the fun thing about them; they always seem to be laughing. In that respect, luck was with me.”

The first song Séamus wrote was New Boots, New Shoes. He was encouraged in his efforts by Padraig – and, as it turns out, Leo Moran did make a comment on his work.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.