The group Patrick Street evolved from a tour of America in 1985 by Andy Irvine, Kevin Burke and Mícheál Ó Domhnaill. "This tour was such fun and so successful that we decided to expand the outfit into a four-piece by adding Jackie Daly," Irvine wrote. They released their first record in 1986, and the first track was the song Patrick Street.

Bob Bickerton reworked the words of the song. "I set the song in the gold rush on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand and put a few extra twists in the tail as it were. Andy heard about the song after I had performed it at the Wellington Folk Festival and I gave it to him the following summer when he was touring here."