As an aimless 19-year-old, Clancy met a strange and wonderfully energetic lover of music, Ms. Diane Guggenheim, an American heiress. She had set out to record regional Irish folk music, and her undertaking led to Carrick-on-Suir in the shadow of Slievenamon, "The Mountain of the Women," where Mammie Clancy had been known to carry a tune or two in her kitchen. Guggenheim fell for young Liam and swept him along on her travels through the British Isles, the American Appalachians, and finally Greenwich Village.

In the heady atmosphere of the Village, Clancy's life was a party filled with music, sex, and McSorley's. His friendships with then-unknown artists such as Bob Dylan, Maya Angelou, and Pete Seeger form the backdrop of the charming adventures of a small-town boy making it big in the biggest of cities.

In music circles, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem are known as the Beatles of Irish music. The band's music plays on in jukeboxes in pubs and bars, in living rooms of folk music fans, and in Irish American homes throughout the country. Liam Clancy's lively memoir captures their wild adventures on the road to fame and fortune, and brings to life a man who never lets himself off the hook for his sins, and happily views his success as a blessing.