COULTER OUT TO CONQUER AMERICA : THE GREENIN’ O’ THE POPS ORCHESTRA OF IRELAND

It’s a long way to Tipperary . . . especially if you’re in Kingsville, Tex., pop. 29,000. But Phil Coulter isn’t complaining--the Irish musician isn’t even homesick.

Coulter is having so much fun, even East Texas looks good. Kingsville is merely one of 68 stops in 78 days, part of a new adventure in the life of this veteran songwriter/pianist/producer/arranger: the debut American tour of his Pops Orchestra of Ireland.

“The venues have been so different, and the audiences as well,” he said. While the tour has been “truly invigorating,” it hasn’t always been glamorous.

“If a group like this is to play the plush spots such as Carnegie Hall or the Kennedy Center or your Ambassador Auditorium (where the orchestra appears tonight), you have to do the schlep right across the country. One night we’ll play to 1,700 in Mississippi, the next in front of 400 in a Texas high school.”

And the audience reaction? Standing ovations every night, Coulter claimed. And not just from his transplanted countrymen. “The Irish do tend to come out of the woodwork. We had a good Irish turnout in Lafayette, La. But I didn’t encounter too many of them in South Carolina and Texas,” he said.

“People come for whatever reason, but they leave as converts.”

Coulter pointed out that his 19-piece orchestra offers a lot more than variations on “Danny Boy,” which will open the Ambassador concert. “There’s a good Irish flavor, but it’s not an ethnic flavor. I take our music out of the pubs, without taking away the Irishness. But we also travel beyond that. We go from Jimmy Durante to ‘Hill Street Blues.’ ”

The current tour comes as a logical move after the orchestra’s swift conquest of Coulter’s homeland. “Since I put the group together three years ago,” he said, “a lot has happened. We’ve outsold everyone in the history of the record business in Ireland. Our last release sold more than Springsteen, Michael Jackson and U2 combined.”

Coulter also boasted that his song “The Town I Loved So Well,” which serves to close his shows, has become “a sort of national anthem in Ireland. It’s about my hometown of Derry--but it’s not a political tune. We cross all those boundaries. The young people in this orchestra (average age 24) go across the board of all religious and political persuasions. We’ve given concerts in both Protestant and Catholic churches. But I’m not a crusader, don’t get me wrong.”

Coulter, 44, prefers to think of himself as “an old warhorse.” He’s played keyboards for such pop figures as Van Morrison, Richard Harris, Chet Atkins, Anita Kerr and Tom Jones. He’s penned songs for Waylon Jennings and Elvis Presley. “I’m the only non-American who wrote a hit single for him,” Coulter said, in reference to Presley’s “My Boy.”

“I guess you can say I’ve been rehearsing for this tour for 20 years. But I’m still learning every day. I’ll tell you, it’s not often you can discover, at this stage of the game, a whole new experience that excites you.

“I haven’t had this much fun since I was writing and producing for the Bay City Rollers.”