Welcome to the pond

If you've been reading my blog lately, you know that tonight is the night I'm going to see The Chieftains perform live in concert. I'm incredibly excited about it and I thought I'd post a little about why this concert is so important and what my history is with the band.

The Chieftains:

• Have been performing and recording with various lineups for over forty years
• Have won several Grammy awards
• Have collaborated with artists ranging from Van Morrison to Alison Krauss to Ziggy Marley
• Are the most famous traditional Irish band in the world
• Are the first thing many people think of when they hear the words "Irish music"
• Can play the pants off just about anyone, but prefer to learn from other musicians how to fit into those pants and vice versa

That, my friends, is who the Chieftains are. The "leader" of the band, Paddy Moloney, is a musician's musician and has an insatiable appetite for learning about different styles of music from all around the world. He's in his sixties now but has the energy and curiosity of a young man. Paddy and his Chieftains are coming here, to my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, to perform. I don't know if they've been here before and I don't know if they'll ever come here again. This may be my first and only chance to see them and I'm very glad I could make it happen!

The Chieftains were the first Celtic music group I was interested in. I had heard the name when I slowly began exploring Celtic music and kept it in the back of my mind. In the summer of 2000, when I visited a friend in Arizona, we were browsing in a mall record store. I was going through the listening stations and one of them had The Chieftains' "Water From The Well" album available. I put on the headphones and pressed play, and absolutely loved what I heard. I was so engrossed in the music coming through the headphones that I almost started to dance right there in the store!

I think it was that Christmas that I went to Barnes and Noble and purchased a copy of "Water From The Well" for myself. It was the first Irish music album, or Celtic album for that matter, that I ever purchased. It started in me a love of all things Celtic and was the foundation of my current love of the amazing music of Ireland, Scotland and Cape Breton. The Chieftains started it all for me, and I've loved them and their music ever since.

I'm sure you all can now see why this concert is so important to me and why I was so excited when I heard about it. I'll post again tonight with a concert report! It will be a bit different than my usual concert ramblings. I really don't know their repertoire well enough to recognize every song they're going to play. They have literally thousands of tunes to choose from and I will likely not recognize them all let alone know their names, so I'll be talking more about the general atmosphere of the concert. I'll write again when I return!