Things were going well for John Daly back in Ireland. His songwriting attracted the attention of Graham Henderson, producer of legends like the Pougues and Sinead O’Connor.
They’d just finished an album of 14 original songs, and it felt like he was on the cusp of a career in the music industry. Then life threw him a curveball.
“In a nutshell what happened was, she got knocked up.” Unfortunately for John, ‘she’ was an American from North Georgia on a romantic vacation to Ireland. She had no intention of abandoning her family back home to move to a foreign country. And neither did John. “I had a good life in Ireland. I had 5 sisters, 2 brothers, 16 nieces and nephews, and a whole bunch of cousins. And we were all super close, so it was very hard to leave that behind.”
But the thought of missing his son’s childhood was unacceptable. So he began the arduous process of immigrating to America by applying for a special fiance Green Card. “They poked and prodded, x-rayed and interrogated me.” But for all those unpleasantries, there was still no guarantee they would allow him to move. “In Ireland you apply through the embassy in Dublin, and if you aren’t selected in the 10% of applicants, you can’t apply for another five years. I would have missed so much of my son’s childhood.”
John was allowed to move, but approval of his Green Card would take two years. Until then there were major restrictions: he couldn’t visit Ireland, and he wasn’t allowed to work – at least not legally. To provide for his family he picked up a variety of odd jobs and side hustles, working as a landscaper, a dog groomer, and a guitar teacher.
All that changed the day John finally got his Green Card. “I remember I was in my car, and I saw I had a letter from the US government. When I opened it my Green Card fell into my lap, and I just started bawling. The whole experience of being a father and being alone in a foreign country just came pouring out of me.”
By 2016 John had transitioned into a stable career in the healthcare industry, and relocated from North Georgia to downtown Chattanooga. There he found some musically inclined neighbors and assembled what he fondly recalls as “an old man band.” They played a few modest gigs of cover songs, and though that particular band was short-lived, it opened the creative floodgates for John. After a lengthy hiatus from music, he found himself once again writing original songs.
Maggie Carruth O’Connor, violinist for Crooked Wits and the organizer of Chattanooga’s TED-X, made it her personal mission to recruit a top-notch band to bring John’s songs to life. Within a month, he had enlisted the help of Grant Fletcher on drums, Jeff Grizzard on lead guitar, and Joel Krautstrunk on bass.
“We had our first rehearsal in March of 2023, and I was shocked,” he laughed. “I couldn’t believe how great they were. They knew every note, every stop, every song ending.”
So after a 17 year detour through immigration and fatherhood, John Daly and his new band, the Banshees, are picking up right where he left off. It’s been a long, and at times bittersweet journey. “I desperately missed Ireland for the first ten years. But once I moved to Chattanooga in 2016, that feeling began to dissipate.”
His eyes grew misty as he conveyed the love he feels for his adopted homeland. “All this stuff you hear in the news about America, left vs. right, the divisiveness – there’s a general consensus that Europeans don’t like Americans. But Irish people love America, and I am so proud that my kids are Americans. I didn’t want to come here, but I did. And now I love this place.”
The Banshees will perform at the Woodshop Listening Room in St. Elmo this Thursday, December 14th. Doors open at 7, and music begins at 8.