Bruce Springsteen visits his Irish ancestral roots as the E Street Band plays Dublin

Bruce is loose among his ancestral roots.

Freehold native Bruce Springsteen is taking in the sights and connecting with the locals of County Kildare in Ireland as the E Street Band plays three shows at the RDS Arena in Dublin on their European tour.

The Boss' kin on his father's side came from Kildare in the mid 1800s. Springsteen, 73, made a surprise visit to the Creative Performance Academy in Kildare on Thursday, May 4, where a singing group composed of 12-year old boys were rehearsing.

“I walked into the corridor and it was Bruce Springsteen. He said he'd like to come and watch,” said owner Katie Burke to the BBC.

Springsteen watched the kids perform a few songs and then posed for a picture with the group. Also in Kildare, the Boss hit The Burrow, a pub in Rathangan, where genealogist Megan Smolenyak has traced Springsteen's roots to. The Boss led the ladies of the town in an a cappella version of his 1984 hit, “My Hometown.”

Springsteen subtly changed the melody and tempo, and the denizens joined in.

“You guys, I’m firing the E Street Band and I’m hiring you,” said Springsteen to laughter.

Prior to his Kildare jaunt, Springsteen visited Shane MacGowan of the Pogues in his Dublin home. MacGowan, who has used a wheelchair since breaking his pelvis in 2015, is suffering from encephalitis.

“It was really really exciting and monumentally inspiring to spend time with @springsteen yesterday,” said MacGowan's wife in an Instagram post. “He radiates a very very beautiful energy, he is like an embodied angel! It’s great to see that someone can find work that they are lit up with and that they can spend their whole life lifting peoples spirits through their work and stay so enthusiastic and energetic and full of gratitude and grace and appreciation for the work and for everything and everyone in their life.”

The Springsteen and the E Street Band dates in Dublin are May 5, 7 and 9. The Boss has Irish, Italian and Dutch ancestry. A chapter is titled “The Irish” in his memoir, “Born to Run.”

“We are the afflicted,” Springsteen wrote. “A lot of trouble came in the blood of my people who hailed from the Emerald Isle. My great-great grandmother Ann Garrity left Ireland at fourteen in 1852 with her two sisters, aged twelve and ten. This was five years after the potato famine devastated much of Ireland, and she settled in Freehold. I don't know where it started, but a serious strain of mental illness drifts through those of us who are here, seeming to randomly pick off a cousin, an aunt, a son, a grandma and, unfortunately, my dad.”

Springsteen's dad, Douglas Springsteen, passed away 1998 at the age of 73.

More: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's Newark homecoming show was worth the wait

More: 'Glory Days': New memoir, approved by the Boss, reflects on baseball history in Freehold

In Freehold, 'Glory Days' exhibit opens

Back in Freehold, the “Glory Days: Baseball in Our Hometown” exhibit opened May 6 at Borough Hall. The display is based on the new book, “Baseball is in My DNA: The History of Baseball in Freehold, New Jersey, 1857-1973,” by Glenn Cashion.

He's a Freehold ballplayer of note and a cousin of Springsteen, who is no stranger to the borough's playing fields himself. The exhibit features images and artifacts depicting how deeply intertwined Cashion's family, who are of Irish descent, is with his hometown and his favorite sport. There's also a video on the backstory of the Boss' ode to baseball, “Glory Days.”

The exhibit is jointly sponsored by the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music at Monmouth University; the Monmouth County Historical Association; and My Hometown: The Bruce Springsteen Story Center, the museum planned for the Freehold Borough firehouse on Main Street. It's free to view during regular business hours, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays at Freehold Borough Hall, 30 Mechanic St.

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Chris Jordan, a Jersey Shore native, covers entertainment and features for the USA Today Network New Jersey. Contact him at @chrisfhjordan; [email protected]

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Bruce Springsteen visits Irish ancestral roots while on tour