The Owsley Stanley Foundation’s ninth release of Bear’s Sonic Journals: The Foxhunt features the Chieftains performing live in San Francisco in 1973 (CD & vinyl) and 1976 (CD & digital only).

“I love them both! They contain lovely subtleties that don’t normally happen” — Paddy Moloney, August 2021, after listening to Bear’s tapes.

Celebrating 60 years of The Chieftains and the life and music of Paddy Moloney, the Owsley Stanley Foundation presents Bear’s Sonic Journals:  The Foxhunt, The Chieftains Live in San Francisco 1973 & 1976.

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 & Digital release 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.

Paddy Maloney, the founder of the Chieftains, sat for two full days of interviews with OSF for this release while listening to the entirety of Bear’s recordings of The Chieftains. In keeping with his outsized, charming personality, he warmly reminisced about these shows, his early days with The Chieftains, and his relationship to Jerry Garcia, who helped introduce the band to America. Sadly, Paddy passed away at age 83 shortly after these sessions, which turned out to be his final in-depth interviews. The extensive liner notes pay loving tribute to Paddy, while bonus tracks on the CD edition include moving audio excerpts from those last days.

Sonically, the Oct 1, 1973 Boarding House show is cut from the same cloth as Bear’s 1973 master recording of Old & In The Way at the same venue from the following week, long revered for its startlingly life-like recreation of the stage and its acoustic detail. The Owsley Stanley Foundation’s first release was a series of performances by Doc & Merle Watson, recorded by Bear at the same venue in May 1974.  Stereophile magazine described that release as “the most extraordinary Doc Watson ever captured on tape. Ever.” Taken together, this recording of The Chieftains from that same time and place completes a Boarding House trilogy which showcases Bear’s mastery of recording bluegrass and its Irish progenitor.

Presale, ships September 2, 2002

The "Save The Music!" campaign seeks to raise money to enable the digitization, preservation, and release of Bear's Sonic Journals, a trove of over a thousand live concert recordings from the heart of the psychedelic era. Donations are much appreciated, and are in fact essential to our ability to preserve and release future recordings!

You can donate via our secure form, or send checks made out to the Owsley Stanley Foundation to: Owsley Stanley Foundation PO Box 625 Occidental, Ca 95465. We were officially granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by the IRS in December 2012. All donations to the Owsley Stanley Foundation are fully tax deductible.