Chieftains Opening for OAITW

A book by John Glatt entitled The Chieftains: The Authorized Biography (St. Martin’s Press, 2015) describes Chesley Milliken arranging a meeting between Garcia and The Chieftains, who were touring the US in autumn 1974. After their local gigs, Garcia invited the Chieftains “to open for his own bluegrass group Old And In The Way, who were playing a show at the Boarding House to be recorded for a live album. Garcia also arranged a radio show with the legendary Tom Donaghue [sic].” Paddy Moloney recalls that “Jerry sent a limo for us and we did the show, which was San Francisco’s top-rated radio programme. Jerry interviewed us and we talked and played tunes and discussed the music. Later in the week we opened for Jerry’s bluegrass band and it was a wonderful evening of music.”

This interested me for several reasons. First, of course, Garcia’s grandfather William Clifford was Irish. Second, I have heard snippets of rumors that when he went to Ireland with Deborah in the summer of ’93, he picked some tunes in some pubs and such, and I had even thought that maybe he did so with the Chieftains. (It appears not, since the bio would have mentioned it.) Third, of course, lots of the white roots music Garcia played ultimately derived from various isles off the northwest coast of Europe, not just the sea shanties and all that but also bluegrass as a Scotch-Irish-American compound, so I am just interested in this crossing as a meeting of musics. And, finally, this was just specific enough regarding timeframe –OAITW was recorded on 10/1/73 and 10/8/73– but also necessarily mistaken (because it was said to be autumn 1974), and so I wanted to try to gain clarity.

Well, I have found it. 1974 is indeed wrong.

If he’s right about OAITW being recorded, and the Chieftains gigs happening before that, then we should be closely prior to 10/1 or 10/8/73. Through the magic of digitized newspapers, I find them playing the following:

• 9/29/73: The Gaelic League sponsored a gig this night at 8 PM in the Scottish Rite Memorial Auditorium, 19th and Sloat in the city. (! ad: SFC19730928p57)
• 9/30/73: concert at the Oakland Auditorium Theatre, 8 PM (! listing: SFSECDB19730930p07)

So far, so good.

Then I started Googling around for a list of “Live From the Record Plant” KSAN broadcasts, and found none. (Someone, please get on that!) It took me some fine-tuning on the search syntax to find what I was looking for, but I found it.

• 10/7/73: 11 PM, KSAN (94.9) – The Chieftains (! listing: SFSECDB19731007p22)

Even though “later in the week” would normally be understood to mean more than one night later, there was still space for the Chieftains to open for OAITW the next night at the Boarding House. So I queried Peter Rowan, and he affirmed that The Chieftains opened for OAITW on 10/8/73.