The Chieftains team up with Ry Cooder on new album
San Patricio is out on March 5.
The Hot Press Newsdesk, 14 Dec 2009
The Chieftains have announced the March 5 release of their San Patricio album, which is co-produced by Paddy Moloney and fellow Grammy Award-winner Ry Cooder.
It’s a star-studded affair with further contributions from Linda Ronstadt, Liam Neeson, Van Dyke Parks, Lila Downs, Los Tigres Del Norte, Carlos Nunez and more.
The record tells the nearly forgotten story of the brave San Patricio – it’s the Spanish for St. Patrick – battalion, a downtrodden group of Irish immigrant conscripts who deserted the U.S. Army in 1846 to fight on the Mexican side against the invading Yankees in the Mexican-American War.
“The men of the San Patricio Battalion are remembered by generations of Mexicans to this day as heroes who fought bravely against an unjust and thinly veiled war of aggression,” Moloney reflects.
Liam Neeson narrates one of the album’s standouts, ‘March To The Battle’, which features words by Brendan Graham:
We are the San Patricios, a brave and gallant band
There’ll be no white flag flying within this green command
We are the San Patricios, we have but one demand,
To see the Yankees safely home across the Rio Grande…
We’ve disappeared from history like footprints in the sand
But our song is in the tumbleweeds and our love is in this land
But if in the desert moonlight you see a ghostly band
We are the men who died for freedom across the Rio Grande
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