This is a night of magic," says an Irish woman, Lorraine McColgan, to her companion during the second half of the Chieftains concert on St. Patrick’s Day in New York. And she’s right. There’s the day that’s in it, for a start. And the fact that this event is taking place in Carnegie Hall, a venue that opened nearly one hundred and ten years ago, with the American debut of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducting a performance of his own work. Almost as long ago now – a whole 37 years, to be exact – Paddy Moloney set out on his quest to take Irish traditional music all the way from pubs and stone floors in the homes of Ireland to "the concert stage." Tonight, somehow, seems like the culmination of all those dreams.

Better still, to promote their wonderful new return-to-roots album Water From The Well, the Chieftains have, arguably, put together a show that’s more true to who they really are than many before it, not least those with the kind of superstar friends who appeared on albums such as Another Country, The Long Black Veil andTears Of Stone. Even so, in Carnegie Hall – and as I later learn, much to the annoyance of at least some members of the Chieftains – the "surprise" guests include Art Garfunkel and his son.

As the old joke has it, to get to Carnegie Hall you need to practice. But there are other prices The Chieftains have paid for paving their own peculiar path to this hallowed auditorium.

The band’s public image – tightly controlled, for years, by Paddy Moloney and similarly sanitised in the relatively recent "official" biography by John Glatt – suggests that they are little more than the bland old men of Irish music, artists who couldn’t possibly have paid soul-felt dues in order to make their music.

If anything, the opposite is true. One of the Chieftains now admits to feeling suicidal after the break-up of a marriage and tells of how he partied with the likes of Phil Lynott, smoking dope that left him stoned on stage. Another believes his TB was made worse by alcohol abuse and claims that, at one point, he was terrified he might never be able to play music again. Yet another had a heart attack that may in part have been due to the gruelling tour schedule undertaken by the band. In other words, this really is a Chieftains interview unlike any you’ve ever read before.

It’s the morning after the Carnegie Hall

concert and Kevin Conneff takes a seat at the table of his room in New York’s Kimberly Hotel and reflects on the start of the journey that took him all the way from "Dublin ‘round about 1962" to being part of what the New York Times describes as "Ireland’s most influential folk ensemble".

"I went to a Fleadh Ceol in Mullingar and, literally, came face to face with traditional music for the first time," he recalls. "I’d never even heard of a ‘Fleadh Ceol’ as there was virtually no interest in traditional music at home. At the time I was your average kid, mad about Little Richard and Elvis Presley but I was gobsmacked by what I heard at that Fleadh Ceol. There were these, what I would have regarded as ‘hick culchies’, wearing brown suits and caps, playing flutes and fiddles and I was just blown away! So, apart from listening to AFN, to catch up on the latest American hits, I started listening to Ciaran MacMathúna’s programmes on Radio Eireann. And going to St. Mary’s Music Club in Church Street, and the Piper’s Club. That’s how it all began for me."

Tellingly enough, as soon as Kevin Conneff really started listening to traditional Irish music, he realised that the rhythms of the bodhran "rocked" just as frenetically as, well, Little Richard singing "Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom".

But despite believing that Irish traditional music "for the most part" is dance music "with plenty of opportunities for people to participate", Conneff also sides with purists who say that "the ultimate in traditional Irish music is the solo player and he, or she, is to be listened to." As such Kevin, surely, must have loved the rapt attention that was paid to his singing during the Carnegie Hall concert?

"Not really," he admits, pinpointing just how mercilessly self-critical the Chieftains are. "There was, generally speaking, a good feeling on stage but my own song I was only reasonably happy with. Also, the bodhrans didn’t sound the way I wanted them to. And for some reason my attention just wasn’t there. One reason may be that we’ve been doing a particular set very successfully, then we get to New York and it seems the world and its wife – if they’re ‘stars’ – have to be included in the programme. And it screws things up."

Art Garfunkel, clearly tense and more than a little precious about himself and his son as they sang ‘Morning Has Broken’, certainly brought a brace of shadows onto the stage in Carnegie Hall.

"Yes, I agree," says Conneff. " And I was more than surprised at the applause he received when he walked on the stage. Before the show I was suggesting that 99% of this audience wouldn’t cross the road to hear Art Garfunkel and I did ask ‘why is he getting two songs?’"

Kevin Conneff may say that the two hours on stage makes up for the "pain in the arse" touring can be, but the loneliness and inherent dangers of life on the road with the Chieftains surfaced soon after he joined the band. For example, nobody warned him that the band members prefer to stay not just in separate rooms in a hotel but on separate floors. Or that they don’t eat meals together and rarely party as a group. This, the Chieftains claim, is one of the reasons they’ve survived for 37 years as a band. And as friends. But at first, it was a philosophy that was difficult for Kevin to fathom, and he ended up partying with the road crew. So, behind the scenes, during those American tours of the 70s, did Kevin go wild? In terms of drink, drugs and sex?

"You’re looking for the bits that are not in that Chieftains biography, aren’t you?" he grins.

Absolutely.

"Well, I used to go off to gigs by the likes of Bobby Bland, here in New York, in the 70s and I certainly did drink more than I do now," Kevin admits. "Because I was so nervous with the Chieftains, at first. I was in awe of them. Still am. So I had to have a few Canadian Clubs before I’d go on stage. Yet forgetting the words of a song or making a mistake due to nerves is one thing; if you do it due to drink you feel like the greatest twit on this earth. You’ve let the band down and you’ve let yourself down. That happened once or twice so I decided ‘fuck this for a lark, this drinking before a gig’."

What about dope?

"Smoked a lot of dope," he says, smiling. "Not before going on stage. Usually afterwards, with the roadies. Hiding it from Paddy, of course, because I, as a Chieftain, couldn’t possibly be smoking dope, right? In fact, I remember one night me and a few of the roadies went backstage to meet Thin Lizzy in Glasgow and Philip produced some pretty powerful stuff! Dope. And smoking away, I’m thinking ‘I’ll be okay, plenty of time before the gig.’ Indeed, I didn’t smoke too much of it but I’ll never forget the gig that night! I kept ending tunes long before they were due to end! I’d think ‘Jesus, this has been going on for ages’ and I’d end with a big flurry and a bang! Then when I was singing my solo I was thinking ‘how long have I been out here singing this damn song? Am I on a loop here!’ I totally lost my sense of time. And then I became fucking completely paranoid! That put an end to smoking before a concert!"

Was Kevin ever tempted to try heavier stuff. Say, cocaine?

"I did a few lines of coke and it gave me a zip for a while."

Before going on stage?

"On a couple of occasions, yeah."

How did it affect Kevin’s playing?

"I just thought I was marvellous! But once or twice I got the heebie jeebies and that put paid to that. I wouldn’t dream of doing that, ever again. I don’t touch anything now. Just have a few pints."

So what about the "wimmen"?

"Plenty of flings on the road but we weren’t anything like a rock band! We just didn’t attract that kind of ‘groupie’! Though I remember back in the ’70s, I was with this very beautiful woman in a hotel not far from here and, oddly enough, for New York, there were two single beds in the room! And I did a muscle in, in my back, because the beds started moving apart. It’s not funny! The next day I couldn’t even get my case off the conveyor in the airport because of whatever I’d done to my back! But, let’s face it, in terms of women there are a lot of loopers out there! And I’ve encountered some that are dangerous. A Fatal Attraction thing. Which is very appealing, at first. For about five seconds."

Conneff may joke about such matters but his eyes darken as he reflects on how life in the Chieftains "led to the death of" his marriage.

"I got married eleven years ago, have two kids, Peggy, 9 and Ruari, 6," he says. "And this is another side to this whole fucking touring thing. Okay, my wife, Joanie, was a lot younger than I am. When we married I was 44, she was 18, but the constant touring definitely didn’t help the marriage."

She also came from Holland, so to plant her in a new country and then go off touring for months doesn’t help cement a relationship.

"Yes, there were other factors, such as the age difference, but there was no one else involved, for either of us, at the time, though we both have new partners, now," he continues. "Joanie and I split a few years ago. And, to be terribly honest, I went through all the emotional crap and the financial crap that involves. All of which left me feeling suicidal for months. But then I woke up one morning and realised I was over it. I’d come through the worst. And it was ‘the worst’. You think that the break up of a long-term love affair is bad but, by Jaysus, I never went through anything like the break up of a marriage. It’s worse than a bereavement."

But what is the "death"? The vision of what the family might have been?

"Exactly. And the death of love. And the damage it can do to children, though, fortunately, our kids are unscathed by the whole thing. But because the children were already used to me being missing for weeks the major difference now is that when I’m home, they live with me, and when I’m away, they live with their mother. That, I guess, is one good thing that comes out of touring with the Chieftains. In that sense, I guess, life on the road was a blessing in disguise."

When Kevin was suicidal did playing music with the Chieftains help?

"Absolutely," he says. "In fact, whereas life on the road, with the band, was depressing at times, I also realised it actually kept me going during that dark period. So did friends. Though, thankfully, I didn’t go back on the drink. It was more that I was looking for things to help me sleep. I couldn’t sleep. And that made the whole period even darker, more of a problem. And made me sympathise, to a great degree, with insomniacs. Because there’s nothing fucking worse than not being able to sleep at night."

Unfortunately for Kevin, the Chieftains were making the album, Tears Of Stone, at this point, which didn’t help him focus his life in terms of work because, as he says somewhat acerbically: "there’s not much use for the bodhran on that album." Likewise, though his own roots may rise, in equal measure, from rock and traditional music, not all "Chieftains plus friends" albums left him feeling blissed.

"I thought Another Country was really natural, a marvellous mix of music and musicians," he says. "But when I took home my copy of The Long Black Veil I actually said to myself ‘what is this all about?’ Take the track I sang lead on, ‘The Rocky Road To Dublin.’ To call that a ‘fun piece’ is the most you can say for it! And at that level alone it works. But I was never meant to be the vocalist on that. Ron Wood was! Paddy even went down to his house to teach him the song but Ronnie ended up getting drunk and didn’t learn it! So what happened during the sessions was that I’d done a ‘ghost vocal’ then he came into the studio and said (English accent) ‘I can’t fucking sing that!’ So my vocal was left on the track!"

But is Kevin saying here, in effect, that amid all the collaborations the music got lost?

"I am, yeah," he says."Though that said, having a song I actually wrote, on The Long Black Veil – ‘Changing Your Demeanour’ – did help pay for the extension on my house! And it is the biggest selling album the Chieftains ever had, so I can’t really complain! And you can call this Paddy’s ‘vision’ or ‘cute-hoorness’ but after that album, people started coming to our concerts who had never been at a Chieftains show. Mostly, I guess, as a result of people like Sting and Mick Jagger. So, in that sense The Long Black Veil worked. In terms of broadening our audience."

Even so, Kevin claims that the ‘Chieftains only’ album Water From The Well, is long overdue.

"And Paddy felt that, too," he says. "But there are deals we have with record companies. One has to be a ‘name’ album and the other is a traditional album. And in the long run, that is healthy. Because when we go traditional we are allowed to be as pure as we want to be. As in Water From The Well."

Born in County Roscommon and coming from a "traditional music background," Matt Molloy elaborates on Kevin Conneff’s claim that Irish traditional music was seen by some gobshites as "culchie music", by pointing out that "there also was the idea that simply because it was Irish music it was inferior, a kind of post-colonial feeling that anything we created, in any sense, just wasn’t worthy. But I was immune to all that post-colonialist crap. I loved the music, from the start and I was going to play and that was that!"

Still, you couldn’t earn much of a living playing Irish music in the mid ’60s, so Matt helped pay the rent by "working in dancehalls". Playing pop music?

"No, picking up bottles and stocking bars in places like the Arcadia in Bray!" he laughs. "Though, while working there, I did get to see, for free, people like Brian Poole, Unit Four Plus Two and Roy Orbison!"

Around that time Matt also played twenty minute sessions with Paddy Moloney in the Old Shieling. Hence his introduction to the man who would later ask him to join the Chieftains.

"Dolly McMahon started up sessions there but we were the poor relations in terms of the boom in folk music, at the time," he recalls. "But Dolly and Bill Fuller liked Irish traditional music and felt it should be on the show. But we really were only the token traditional players. The act that’d play, say, for ten minutes, to open for The Wee Four."

Not surprisingly, Matt Molloy admits that "such gigs were far from gratifying," musically speaking. "You knew what the crowd wanted and you could do it in your sleep. And there really wasn’t that much interest in Irish traditional music. It was more the folk music they wanted. People like Paddy Reilly. So you just played your set and got the hell out of there."

And you drank. Matt Molloy, like Kevin Coneff, believes musicians walk a "tightrope" when it comes to using drink or drugs.

"There definitely is the belief that if you have a few nips it gives you that edge," he says. "Or, if you’re on tour – and I saw myself do this, to a certain extent – you just get tired because you stay out late, drinking, one night, then get up early to go to another city and you’re probably not eating well, either, so you take a drink to give you a ‘boost’ before a gig. To get you into the mood. But it’s a slow spiral downwards."

Did Matt ever feel his drinking fucked up the Chieftains music?

"It fucked up me. I finished up in a TB ward as a result of it," he says, adding that this illness also was a consequence of "the smoking."

As for the music?

"Well, like Kevin says, okay, you can deliver some terrible gigs but you also can play some great music when you’re out of it. Whatever you use in that sense – be it drink or drugs – does break barriers, help self-expression, make you not so aware of the audience. And it can help you focus more on your instrument. So you can, definitely, at times, play better on drink or drugs. Let’s be honest about this.

"But, to get back to the question of health. You do get sick and tired of getting up sick and tired every morning. You get to a point where you say ‘am I going to do this all the time? My health can’t handle this every night of every year, I can’t do this anymore, I have to make a decision.’ That’s what I did. And now I just don’t drink before a show."

Is that also because Paddy Moloney has gone on record as saying he doesn’t like members of the Chieftains drinking before a gig?

"Oh, he doesn’t, does he?" Molloy responds, slapping his own hand as if being reprimanded by Moloney. "There’s a lot of things Paddy doesn’t like, but give me a break! We’re all big boys now! Yet he’s right in a way. If you have one of the team that’s over the top it does make the rest of the guys nervous. As you saw last night in the Carnegie Hall, there’s a lot going on during our shows and if somebody drops the ball it can screw the whole thing up. We all have to be aware of that.

"But what draws people into the whole drink and drugs thing is that you go out and do a solo and you just know you’re not getting the edge on it and that you can do much better. So you take, whatever, say, an extra whiskey. But that only works for a while. Then you have to have another one. And another one. Then, suddenly you’re in trouble. With yourself, with other members of the band, with family. So you finally decide ‘I’m going to cut this dead and just drink on my own time’."

Molloy suddenly smiles to himself.

"And now, when I go to the bar (his own, Matt Molloy’s in Westport, County Mayo) as opposed to playing on stage with the Chieftains, I like to get playing after the first pint. And have a few as I play. In fact I really enjoy playing – and drinking – in session situations like that. I can play and drink for hours. No problem. I can play and drink as long as I want."

So is playing – and drinking! – in this setting – what Matt Molloy really relishes?

"I do relish it, yeah, I would have to say."

As such, isn’t Matt articulating here the downside of the Chieftains’ declared aim to bring Irish traditional music from the pub to the concert stages of the world? Isn’t it a "long way" from Mayo to Carnegie Hall in this sense too?

"I think what you’re saying is probably true," he admits. "But I still enjoy what I do in places like Carnegie Hall. Yet last night I did feel there was a ten per cent I didn’t give. It wasn’t that I was in bad form. I felt I played pretty good but maybe simply because it was Carnegie Hall I didn’t give my best. I could be full of bullshit and say ‘I know I played wonderfully’ but I’m being perfectly honest with you now."

In other words, a gig we, the audience, probably perceived as astounding, at least three of the Chieftains saw as less than their best?

"Maybe that’s a good thing," Matt argues."Because it shows we are still aware of what our best is. And if you strive to hit your best – every time – you will continue to improve. And know, in your heart, when you have, and haven’t reached those heights. Better that than codding yourself thinking ‘sure, I’ll always be brilliant.’ My attitude, in fact, is that by the time I’m really good enough at this I’ll be too old! But every single member of the Chieftains does like to cut it, musically. Yet the point is that – as with any band – when you start off you’re full of vim and vinegar and five out of every six nights you do crack it. But, as you get on in your career, and life, you probably get a really good one only every one in five."

When Matt joined the Bothy Band was he ever tempted to stay with them?

"No, because the joke about the Bothy Band was that every concert was going to be their last," he says, laughing. "That, and the amount of money we were making – it was so little! – you wouldn’t want to plan too far! But it was a great time, a great learning curve and the music made by the Bothy Band still stands. The music we made was strong, because everyone in the band had their individual strengths."

Such as?

"Well, Donal Lunny obviously was the thread linking it all. He’s just a brilliant musician. Then you had the likes of myself, Tommy Peoples, Paddy Keenan and later, Kevin Bourke as well as Michael and Triona – both of whom were a great source of music from the Donegal Gaeltacht. And we used to work very fast. I’d come in with a set of tunes, we’d sequence them, Donal’d get to work, with Triona, and before you knew it they’d have put a frame on the rhythm section."

A rhythm section that, incidentally, appealed to a lot of rock fans, right?

"Yeah. It was brilliant. For sure. Because mixing the rock elements and the traditional elements was done in the kind of sensitive way that hadn’t been done before. Sensitive to the music. In other words, it wasn’t done for the effect of ‘this is rock ‘n’ roll’ or ‘this is a new attitude to traditional Irish music.’ It evolved naturally. What I mean is that the audience came to the Bothy Band rather than the Bothy Band making music to try to appeal to a new audience."

All of which seems like a coded dig at Horslips?

"Well, I wasn’t overly mad about them," Matt admits."That probably was music made simply to appeal to an audience, to tap into what was going on in Britain. They definitely were short on the traditional music angle and long on the rock end of things. Though Johnny Fean is a good traditional player. But the real reason people were concerned, at that time, was because Irish traditional music was on a very delicate footing. A lot of us were afraid it was going down the tubes. So you had purists who’d say a band like Horslips was giving out the wrong impression of what the music was about. And they were."

But, as Kevin says, weren’t the Chieftains, from the start, subject to similar criticism from purists?

"A lot of that is just begrudgery," Matt responds, angrily."And even if they object to everything the Chieftains do, Sean Keane has a bunch of solo albums and so do I, let them go check out that music. I’ve no time, at all, for that kind of attack on the Chieftains. In fact, I feel we’ve nothing at all to prove to anyone, as a band, or individually. I certainly don’t feel I’ve anything to prove. Apart from what we were talking about earlier. My own high expectations for myself. You cut your own furrow. The day you start looking over your shoulder and wondering about what other people are thinkin’ or doin’ is the day you should say to yourself – fuck ‘em! Do what you do and take the consequences. Stand by what you do and be proud of it."

Van Morrison, who recorded Irish Heartbeat with the Chieftains, once, apparently, told Chieftain Derek Bell that he was "under Paddy Moloney’s apron strings" and, as such, killing his potential as a musician. Morrison even suggested Bell should leave the Chieftains and work for him. Did Matt ever feel "musically restricted" in this sense?

"Paddy does wield a lot of power insofar as the control of the band is concerned, which is fair enough," he says. "But as long as I can express myself musically, through solo albums or the occasional gig, I don’t have a problem with that. You see, I was in two other bands, the Bothy Band and Planxty. I was always my own man. And I always will be. But, at one point, I did decide to add another string to my bow. And that probably stemmed from the TB days when I realised I had no insurance and it dawned on me how fuckin’ insecure the whole thing was. The Chieftains never really made money until after the success of The Long Black Veil. Before that it was just endless touring and earning money abroad that we had to pay the top tax rate on when we brought our earnings back to Ireland. That, in itself, always pissed me off because I thought if we’re the ‘official’ Ambassadors for Ireland, selling this country wherever we go, there must be some way we can be compensated for that. As in, not being taxed so much that we end up virtually bankrupt! Either way, when I got TB I realised that, basically, I had nothing. And I didn’t know if I was ever going to be able to play again. I didn’t know how far the TB had got me. I was 29. So it was a fuckin’ wake-up call. For sure. That’s when I said, if I ever got the opportunity I’d get another kind of insurance. So I bought the pub."

Is the pub – where one of the tracks from Water From The Well was recorded – the real profit-making project in Matt’s life?

"Absolutely," he smiles. "And let’s hope that continues. But as for my track on the album, it was, as you say, recorded where I’ve been living for years. And the musicians who are guesting on it have all played in the pub. So it was just a natural thing, for me to record that, in the context of this album, which I really do love."

Sean Keane, when he speaks of needing to go back to the "source of your music" in the DVD for Water From The Well, could be referring to his own music-soaked upbringing in Dublin in the ’50s.

"Music was almost the first sound my brother and I were aware of," he says. "There were only the two of us and when we’d go to bed every night, there was music. The sound of fiddles or my uncle playing the pipes. It was taken for granted in our home."

That said, Sean Keane actually started out studying not Irish traditional music but classical music!

"It was a way of learning the fiddle," he explains. "I studied, initially, with Johnny Fox and he had no great interest in traditional music so I studied classical fiddle with him. Everything from learning the scales to how to hold the fiddle and the bow. And studying classical composers like Beethoven. Then, from the age of twelve to eighteen I went to the College of Music in Chatam Row."

Given that one defining feature of the Chieftains music is the way they brought a "classical" sensibility to Irish traditional music – as in the arranging skills Paddy Moloney picked up, in part, from Sean O’Riada – how does Sean feel his own classical base affected the overall sound of the group?

"I wouldn’t say it, necessarily, affected what I brought to the Chieftains," he replies, "but it definitely affected my view of tone, proper scale structure in tunes and the overall sense of going for the right note rather than going for a rough approximation, which is used a lot in terms of triplets and rolls. Particularly rolls on the left hand where, instead of playing the full phrase some people tend to roll through it. Or take the short cut. Studying classical music, on the other hand, gave me a deep and abiding appreciation for melody."

As in the purity of line that still comes through when Sean plays.

"I hope it does."

But is that line so pure that when Sean plays a solo, he is actually transported to some sacred musical space?

"It’s hard to analyse," he responds, fumbling. "You are aware there is an audience there and know you have to get this melody out to them but, at the same time, the moment you get it right you are transported to a world beyond it all. You might even sense, from the audience, that they’re not too interested in what you’re doing but you still go there. Like, last night, for example. Kevin and Matt, as you say, may have felt they weren’t fully connected to the audience, at this level, but what I felt, coming from that audience in Carnegie Hall, was totally positive energy. Definitely. When I went out there I felt totally motivated. And that, too, is ‘Water From The Well’. Otherwise you may as well stay and play at home. For yourself!

"And as for the idea that the Chieftains set out to bring Irish traditional music from the pub onto the concert hall stage, the real point is that Paddy wanted to perform on stage and formed the group to perform the music, which he saw in a particular way."

As in, a "classical" context in the way that Sean O’ Riada did?

"Yes," says Keane. "Sean analysed and broke down the session setting and gave every instrument its turn but it got to a certain point where Sean said ‘that’s it. I’ve done what I wanted to do, brought the music to such a stage’. Whereas Paddy was already hammering away at the Chieftains since 1963. As we all were. In various projects. So he picked up the gauntlet and brought it all that much further.But he rarely gets credit for this fact."

It’s said that Sean O’Riada originally introduced Sean to the Chieftains as someone who "plays like an angel and looks like a Greek God?"

"If your tape recorder could capture colour it would capture a very deep red right now!" says Sean. "My Jesus, that quote is an embarrassment!

"Actually, I didn’t hear about that comment until years afterwards, when Thomas Kinsella, the poet, told me! So, thank God, I didn’t have to live up to that image at the time! But those days were great because they were new, we were young and suddenly having hundreds of people at our concerts rather than tens. That, alone, apart from the parties, was a wonderful feeling. Then when the travelling started we thought ‘this is it’ but as Kevin and Matt said to you, the novelty soon wore off. And we are all affected by that. Especially when family comes into it. It’s very hard to deal with the fact that your family is 3,000 miles away, at home. But I married at 22, so I had a great foundation there. Fortunately. Because my wife loves the music as well. Although she often cursed it!"

Why? Because it set a distance between herself and that ‘Greek God’?

"Well, she laughed at that as much as I did," says Sean. "But she was born and raised in the middle of music as well. And when I met her it really was like meeting a soul-mate. We met at a club in Dublin, where we used to go for set dancing. And that has been one of the real blessings of my life. But it still doesn’t make it any easier for her, in terms of the travelling! I can’t imagine what it must have been like, rearing three children – and as Matt says, this probably goes for most of the rest of the lads as well – when we were away. In fact, we’ve been touring like that, since October 1975. And I got married in ‘69, which doesn’t leave much time for me to focus, full-time, on the marriage."

But did Sean ever feel ‘if I don’t draw back from the Chieftains I’m gong to lose the woman I love’?

"There always was an element of not so much losing each other but that the whole thing was becoming a hell of a strain," he responds. "And we did question that a lot. And this helped to solidify the relationship. As in, we looked at both sides of it all, asked questions like was I going to be happy if I gave it all up? Was Marie gong to be happy with me in a job I didn’t like or wasn’t going to be good at? Those questions were always there.

"But, that said, I don’t really feel that my wife, children and I have less of a relationship than we might have had if I wasn’t a member of the Chieftains. And there have been certain rewards – such as the family coming to France for family holidays – which, if I was in a regular job, wouldn’t have been the case! And my family are impressed, to a certain extent, by aspects of my ‘fame’ in the Chieftains. Like when we meet certain stars. A few years ago, all my daughter wanted – as a mature lady! – was an autograph of David Letterman! That’s their perception of my life in the Chieftains, as long as they have daddy around, I guess!"

Which will hopefully be for a long time since Sean has amended his lifestyle following a heart attack.

"That happened five years ago, when I was 49 and it was brought on by stress," he reflects. "It also was an alarm bell. Something that made me take stock of the whole situation, re-adjust my life. As in, saying, ‘okay, this is what I do, I play music’ but from that point onwards I also started to exercise again. And just be more careful in terms of my life. In fact, I had two suspected heart attacks, both at home."

Shifting his focus to Chieftains recordings that took place around the same time as his suspected heart attacks, Sean Keane admits that many of the Chieftains’ collaborations with "special guests" were "arduous, to say the least." Other such recordings were, he says, "worthwhile." But surely during those sessions that produced Chieftains tracks such as ‘The Rocky Road To Dublin’, the purity of line-loving Sean Keane must have asked himself if this, patently commercial project, really was what he’d committed his life to?

"It’s funny you mention that track," he says. "Because it is, possibly, one of those very tracks where, as Kevin says, the music might have been teetering on the brink of being lost. And if he says that track is ‘fun’ that, too, is as far as I’d go. That’s all it was."

Where, in contrast with all this mutual superstar-wanking, would Sean Keane say he’d played his purest musical lines?

"Probably on my own solo albums like Jig It In Style" he says. "And the first solo album I made in 1975. As for the music I’ve played with the Chieftains, I really couldn’t pick any specific recordings. Because it’s been a journey of delight since we started recording. At times I do think ‘where the hell are we going next?’ but something new always turns up. Like Water From The Well, where we go back to the very source of our music. This album really, was an absolute delight to make.

"In fact, it’s albums like this that make my life with the Chieftains seem totally worthwhile. At points, we all wonder is it time to walk away from the band, give it all up? But then I think ‘what if I did and they came along and made an album like this without me? Wouldn’t I be kicking myself in the arse!’ That’s why, looking back, I realise I really was in the right place at the right time, in 1968, when Paddy Moloney invited me to join the Chieftains.

"In fact, to give Paddy his due, he’s the biggest ‘small man’ I ever came across! He’s huge. As in, his way of piping, his demeanour, his way of handling people. Not only that, Paddy’s as tough as they come, as far as business is concerned. That, too, is why the Chieftains have survived for nearly forty years. We wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for Paddy Moloney. That’s why I trust him, implcity. Even if I don’t agree with everything he does."

In Part 2: Paddy Moloney answers his critics – within and without the Chieftains and more candid talking from Derek Bell and Martin Fay.