Music has always been a sanctuary for ‘rock and roll soldier’ Tom Barry.

The Tipperary native, who lives in Tonabrocky just outside Galway City, says his passion for composing started in childhood but has provided him with solace through his struggles with mental health – and has given him immense joy in recent years as he embarked on a career as a singer-songwriter.

The married father-of-three served for 23 years in the Defence Forces – a career that brought him on peace-keeping missions to Liberia, Kosovo and Afghanistan – before retiring in 2016 as a Commandant in the Engineering Corps.

Music was his earliest love, though, explains Tom as he recalls his days at boarding school in Cork when, despite a proficiency for maths and agricultural science, “all I cared about was singing and playing music”.

Tom’s life started in Dublin, when he was born to a single mother in the 1970s and spent the first year of his life in a mother and baby home. He was adopted in 1976 and raised by his adoptive family in Tipperary.

“I grew up in Clonmel and I didn’t know much about that part of my life until relatively recently. I knew I was adopted from about the age of 11, but I only found out all the other parts later in life.”

Tom met his wife, Kathleen, while at university in Galway where he was studying civil engineering in UCG at the same time as serving in the army, and it has become his home.

Caption: Tom Barry…singing ex-soldier.

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