Paddy Moloney, frontman and piper for the Chieftains, has gone west. He was 83.
Reports Mother Times, quoting Himself in The Philadelphia Inquirer:
“Our music is centuries old, but it is very much a living thing. We don’t use any flashing lights or smoke bombs or acrobats falling off the stage. We try to communicate a party feeling, and that’s something that everybody understands.”
I’m grieved to learn that Paddy has left the party to which he brought so much feeling. In his honor let us banish misfortune.

Sigh. All the best upstairs, Paddy.
Happily, he left us a ton of music to remember him by. But still, damn.
Mast head was a very nice gesture.
I’m trusting he’s pouring his third Guinness upstairs in heaven before the Devil caught wind of his departure.
People are not really dead until they are no longer remembered and spoken about with love
I just viewed the WGBH link. Wow, just wow…
I never saw the Chieftains perform live. Andy Irvine and Paul Brady, yeah, at a small club in Corvallis. And the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem, in Denver. They were selling Guinness in the lobby at intermission and soon the crowd was roaring along with them.
But I have a ton of Chieftains albums, vinyl and digital, and I can even play some of the tunes on flute and tin whistle. Just well enough to scare the cat and annoy the neighbors. Can you imagine what it takes to play them as well as Paddy and the gang? A lifetime, is what, and then some.