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Wednesday, March 05, 2003

By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic

America was in the throes of its first multiplatinum bluegrass revival last May when The Chieftains returned to Nashville to cut a second album's worth of a music steeped in what Irishman Paddy Moloney likes to call the bluegrass-greengrass connection.

	The Chieftains, from left, Sean Keane, Paddy Moloney, Kevin Conneff and Matt Molloy, go "Down the Old Plank Road" to the Benedum Center tonight. (Barry McCall) The Chieftains Where: Benedum Center, Downtown. When: 7:30 tonight. Tickets: $29-$49; 412-456-6666.

All the Grammy-winning hype surrounding "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" made it an especially "appropriate time," Moloney says, to pick up where the group left off in 1992 with a Grammy-winning success of its own, "Another Country."

"It's a natural for us," Moloney says, because the sound of Irish music is so close to bluegrass music to begin with. "And it was always my intention to go back and finish the project."

This time, the group came away from its sessions with 22 songs, enough for "Down the Old Plank Road/The Nashville Sessions" and a sequel.

"I don't know what I'll call the second one, but I've got equally as good artists -- Rick Allison, Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless, John Prine, Joe Ely, Jerry Douglas and a great track from the late Chet Atkins," Moloney says.

Guests on "Down the Old Plank Road," which earned the group its 21st and 22nd Grammy nominations, range from Bela Fleck to bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs.

"I was very honored when Earl Scruggs -- an 86-year-old man -- just comes in with his wife. She rang me up and said, 'You've been looking for my Earl. He can come on Friday.' So we had to push everything aside and in comes the godfather of the bluegrass banjo."

Tonight at the Benedum Center, the Chieftains bring their tour in support of "Down the Old Plank Road" to Pittsburgh. And Moloney promises a show with lots of guest appearances, from Canadian dancers and Allison Moorer to Derek Bell's old chair.

Bell, whose sense of humor was as integral a part of the Chieftains' appeal as his skills on piano and harp, died in October in Phoenix while recovering from surgery. While the band canceled the remainder of its shows for 2002, they gave no thought to replacing Bell.

"You couldn't find another Derek Bell," Moloney says. "He was an extraordinary character, a wonderful concert pianist. Everybody just loved him. He had no enemies in the world. So I haven't actually replaced him at all."

They've soldiered on, though, picking up a special guest on cello, Caroline Lavelle, and returning to the road.

"This entire tour is a tribute tour to our dearly beloved Derek Bell," Moloney says. "A dear, dear friend of mine. It was heartbreaking. I canceled everything up to Christmas and started to rethink. And rather than going down the road of having somebody sit in his seat playing the harp, I decided to bring in a cello, a sound I was going to do in the '60s when I started the band. So I found this girl who's very dynamic and quite beautiful -- long, blond hair. Derek would have enjoyed her so much."

They'll be joined in their tribute to Bell by local harpist Gretchen Von Housen, a "wonderful harper" they met through the Irish-American Harp Society.

There's not much chance of her being the only musician from Pittsburgh on stage at the Benedum Center, though.

Moloney, in fact, would like to pass along an invitation to local musicians.

"We'd love to have them on stage at the end of the show," he says. "It's something we do everywhere we go. If they could make their way to the hall two hours before the show started for soundcheck and we'll sort out a few tunes. On any traditional instrument at all. At the end of the show, you can have a big crowd on stage. I know Atlanta we did two years ago and 32 musicians showed up. The promoter nearly went wild."

In addition to honoring Bell, who'd been a Chieftain since '72, this tour marks the 40th anniversary of the group.

"It's a big dream come true," says Moloney. "Who would ever have known? A bunch of traditional Irish musicians and that's still the thing we do. It's been a hard slog. But we feel so satisfied that we've achieved what we set out to do -- just spread the gospel of this great music, this great folk art. And people have realized that there's more to Irish music than 'Danny Boy' and 'Mother Machree' and all those tear-jerkers that I suppose are a tradition in themselves now. But this great tradition of Irish music -- like the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in the '50s -- and I always thought, 'Well, God, if they can get Carnegie Hall, why not us?' And we've done it 22 times now. So there's a great feeling and great satisfaction there. And it's all great fun."