Timmy Curran had a problem.
Almost everything in his life was great. He broke into the pro surfing tour at the age of 16, met the love of his life shortly after graduating high school, and was living the good life, travelling the world and basically having a blast. He was ranked as high as sixth in the world on the World Championship Tour and became a leading figure in surfing’s aerial revolution in the late 1990s. His full-on backflip was known worldwide simply as “The Flip.”
Everything was good except his songs. He came from a big Irish-American family that burst at the seams with music – family reunions and holidays were known as “Curran hootenannies” – and he’d carried a guitar with him everywhere since the age of 13. The problem was…well, he just wasn’t very good. He’d write songs and play them for family and friends, and by song’s end he’d wish he’d kept it to himself.

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