[1][2] He is the son of County Clare fiddler, John Kelly, and has played with various groups including Patrick Street and Planxty.

The first, The Crooked Road,[11] was a live recording of a 1973 concert held in University College Dublin to support Scoil Náisiúnta Naomh Gobnait, a Gaeltacht school in Dún Chaoin, County Kerry then threatened with closure.

[25] In 1989, Kelly released his first solo album titled Capel Street, recorded in Rostrevor, County Down and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

[27][28] That same year, Kelly performed with various artists at the Boston College Irish Fiddle Festival, from which a live album was recorded and released in 1991 titled My Love Is In America.

This album featured the accompaniment of Paddy Keenan (pipes), Zan McLeod (guitar, bouzouki, mandolin), Mark Stone (keyboards, bodhrán) and Daithí Connaughton (flute).

[35] That same year, Patrick Street's recording of "Music for a Found Harmonium" featured on the soundtrack of American comedy film, Napoleon Dynamite.

[1] In 2009, he released his first book of compositions titled 101 Traditional Irish Dance Tunes Composed by James Kelly, Volume 1.

[2] In 2010, the two albums Kelly recorded with Ceoltóirí Laigheann, The Crooked Road and The Star Of Munster, were reissued as a digitally remastered double CD under the title Cnuas.

Later, when I left my home and joined the Military, I paid many visits to the shop owned and ran by, James's father John, who was a very nice man, in my estimation.

I guess that time has moved on and I have moved back to the house where I was actually born in, no hospital for me and it is probably a sign of the times we live in now, all traces, except memories of The Family of James have disappeared from here, with the selling of 3 dwellings, 2 Hilliard and 1 Keogh, those Families were related by a marriage and we have new people living in those houses.