Harris Jones ('Mother Jones') about whom he wrote a song, "The Spirit of Mother Jones", which he recorded and released on his 2010 album Abocurragh. On 1 August 2012, Irvine performed in Shandon, County Cork, for the inaugural Mother Jones Festival which celebrated the 175th Anniversary of the birth of Mary Harris; he performed at the Festival again on 1 August 2013. Like other artists contracted to perform at Féile Iorrais (a community festival in Erris) in August 2007, Irvine was disgusted to learn that Royal Dutch Shell were partly sponsoring the events. Shell's plans for the Corrib gas project have been the subject of controversy in County Mayo. Irvine pledged to donate part of his fee to the Shell to Sea campaign. Music career 1960s: Dublin, Sweeney's Men, Eastern Europe Move to Dublin and transition from acting to folk music In 1962, when his two-year contract with the BBC's 'Rep' ended, Irvine moved to Dublin and continued earning a living as an actor for a while, playing at The Olympia, The Gaiety, The Gate and The Eblana. He also performed at the Pike Theatre, where he played the role of Jerry as one of only two actors in Edward Albee's The Zoo Story, and where he also appeared as Tethra (the Irish god of war) in Moytura by Pádraic Colum, during the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1963. In late 1963, he had a part in a few episodes of Down at Flannery's, a forerunner of the popular RTÉ soapTolka Row in which he appeared for five episodes in the role of Jim "Beardie" Toomey, the boyfriend of Laurie Morton's character, Peggy Kinnear. One of his last acting performances was at the Olympia Theatre on 28 September 1964 as Sir Peregrine in Sir Buccaneer, a musical by G.P. Gallivan. However, he very quickly noticed that a burgeoning folk scene was emerging, centred around the Baggot Street–Merrion quarter of Dublin's city centre. "As soon as I found my feet there, I thought, 'That's it, goodbye acting!. After discovering Irish music through Séamus Ennis on Peter Kennedy's BBC programme As I Roved Out and through Ciarán Mac Mathúna on Raidió Éireann, Irvine studiously spent many hours at the National Library, scouring old songbooks like the Child Ballads and Sam Henry's Songs of the People, as well as A.L. Lloyd's Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. He also drew inspiration from Ewan MacColl,