Welcome Here Kind Stranger
album by Paul Brady
Welcome Here Kind Stranger is a 1978 album by Paul Brady. After leaving The Johnstons, Brady toured with Planxty until they disbanded in 1975, and recorded a duo album with Andy Irvine in 1976.
Welcome Here Kind Stranger
Welcome Here Kind Stranger is Brady's first solo album and his final folk recording before switching to mainstream rock. Its title is a phrase taken from one of the album's songs: "The Lakes of Pontchartrain". The album was initially released (vinyl and cassette) on Dónal Lunny's Mulligan label (LUN024) in 1978 and was voted "Folk Album of the Year" by Melody Maker magazine.
Release history
The album was never officially released on CD due to a breakdown in the relationship between Brady and the Mulligan label and remained out of print for many years, until finally re-mastered by Aidan Foley at Masterlabs and released in 2009 on Brady's own label, PeeBee Music.
Overview
The songs on Welcome Here Kind Stranger are highly arranged – instruments are heard then disappear as they are replaced by others. Brady added musical accompaniment to his interpretation of "Don't Come Again", a song recorded by Hugh Shields of Eddie Butcher and his wife Gracie singing it in 1975. "I Am A Youth That's Inclined To Ramble" is Number 788 in Sam Henry's Songs of the People. The lyrics of "Jackson and Jane" are from Robin Morton's collection Folk Songs Sung in Ulster, for which Brady wrote a new melody.
“Welcome Here Kind Stranger” enters the record as album by Paul Brady. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Welcome, Here and Kind can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Welcome Here Kind Stranger” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Welcome, Here and Kind provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7980618. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1975, 1976 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Welcome Here Kind Stranger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.