The Bottom Step

A true story from 1960s Birmingham — a bare backstreet house, jam jars for cups, and a mother who turned the bottom stair into a stage.

In the 1960s, a Birmingham mother moved her family into a bare three-roomed backstreet house. No furniture, no cups — the children drank from jam jars and ate their bread sitting on the bottom stair. But that stair became something more. "Sing us a song," she'd say. "Step up on the stage and sing for us." And one by one, her children stood on the bottom step and sang.

The Bottom Step is a true story — my story. The house was real, the jam jars were real, and the mother who turned the lowest stair in the house into a stage is real. As the family grew to five children, that little house with nothing always found room for more, sharing a bed and a bowl of porridge with Irish lads who came over for work with nowhere to lay their head.

This song is for my mom, who taught us that when you have nothing, love is everything — and that the first step up in all this world is the bottom one.

Your download includes the full song as a high-quality MP3.

Music and lyrics by Michael Tierney. Created with the help of AI as a creative tool.

The Ginger Biggles Label