The Life & Times of James ‘The Rooster’ Corcoran’

Vincent Cross is a descendent of Irish gang leader James Corcoran, who left Dublin for New York in 1844, and founded the Rag Gang in the Bowery, and became famed (or notorious, depending on your POV) for fighting for the rights of Irish-Americans, and as ‘the terror of the East Side police.’ A fully rounded folk hero, then.

The songs are a mix of traditional pieces and broadside ballads, alongside originals drawn from newspapers and Cross’ imaginative engagement with his ancestor. A soundscape of English concertina, bouzouki, minstrel banjo and bodhrán predominates, with Cross’ voice as dry and crisp as old newsprint on the opening ‘A Man After Me Own Heart’, its title drawn from a New York Times headline that read, ‘Ruler of Corcoran’s Roost Goes Bail for a Man After His Own Heart’. The following ‘Creole Girl’ (aka ‘Lakes of Pontchartrain’) is a skeletal mix of banjo, voice, and bouzouki, while ‘The Parting Glass’ provides the melody for an 1860s broadside celebrating Albert W Hicks, the last person in the US to be hanged for piracy. This is musical and cultural time travel, bracing and often thrilling, and closing with the traditional ‘Farewell Sweet Lovely Katherine’, which portrays our hero’s grief at the loss of his wife – the only living person who didn’t fear him.