The 1973 recording finds The Chieftains on their first tour in the U.S., playing an unscheduled gig at Jerry Garcia’s invitation to open for his bluegrass band, Old & In The Way. The evening presented the perfect pairing of Irish traditional music, and its cousin, American bluegrass. Bear’s recordings of Old & In The Way cemented his reputation as a master of live concert recordings. This is the missing half of that story — both sonically and musically — and one of the gems of Bear’s Sonic Journal archive.
The 1976 recording (CD only) includes a second complete concert recorded by Bear, this time at the Great American Music Hall. If The Chieftains arrived in San Francisco as relative unknowns in ’73, they returned in ’76 as a global sensation, headlining before a sold-out crowd at a larger venue. As usual, Bear’s recording captures exactly what it was like to be in the room that night! The Bay Area audience clearly adored The Chieftains (as did Bear), and The Chieftains loved them right back. It was a performance that Paddy remembered more than 45 years later and was thrilled to rediscover.
