I took a trip in February to work in Southern Florida and was stunned by how different it was from everywhere I have ever been in the US.  I’ve been to Orlando and Daytona Beach numerous times but when I got down to the W. Palm Beach/Ft Lauderdale/Miami area near the tip of Florida and there were coconut palms and banyans everywhere.  

There were iguanas sunning themselves by the side of the interstate and that was one of the indicators of how I was in a completely different range.  This place felt tropical and I heard it said that Miami was really a Caribbean city just an hour South of where I was camping. 

At the Florida Ren Faire where we were playing I was struck by the skill and work ethic of the other musicians in the lineup and how many bands the owner had hired to fill the stages.  There were some powerful groups on the bill and we all gave the audience everything we had in the Florida heat and humidity.  That said, we were playing to a very tough crowd and I have never had a harder time getting a clap or a cheer.  

Something I noticed during the week driving around the area restaurants and shops, was that a lot of the residential neighborhoods were completely walled-off.  When I went out to dinner sometimes to posh places on the beach, there would often be a balladeer, again incredibly skilled and singing these beautiful medleys as the moon rose over the water.  The music would knock me out but I noticed a crowd of 200 folks having dinner, nobody would clap.  Not one.  And I’m not talking about an annoying too-loud balladeer.  This was three nights in a row I heard three different guitar player/singers on the stage with the most perfectly tuned and mixed sound system performing excellent renditions of pop songs with just the right amount of creativity in the arrangements while staying totally faithful to the songs.  Not. one. single. person. clapped….  I walked through the tables from the back with money in my hand to drop in the tip bucket. Sometimes that’s a nice thing to do for a musician accepting tips: throw some money in the hat in the middle of the set and sometimes you’ll start a chain of people following suit.  No one followed after me.

That’s also what it felt like to blow my heart out on the pipes on an open stage with the sun burning down on me and people streaming past offering no reaction.  My new collection of very wide brimmed hats is off to the musicians of FLARF for their fortitude.

Florida Renaissance Festival had been one of the faires where Owain Phyfe used to play. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owain_Phyfe

They have a stage there named in his honor and it made my heart sing to see his picture on display along with another I recognized: wind player Bob Bielefeld

At the end of the day they sang “A Health to the Company” which is like a hymn to me and the way they played I could clearly hear the influence of Phyfe and Bielefeld even if many of the players had never directly met them.  Traditions and sounds pass from person to person that way and it did my heart so glad to hear it.

There was an excellent madrigal group on the stage and they were also actors with a beautiful script talking about the pieces in character.  Another group I became friends with were the band Blue Muse with Misti Bernard and the Lady Victoria and Eric of the North.  Their playing and singing and instrumentals were brilliant in the way they made some of the historic pieces sound so powerful.

It was a month of sunshine at the Florida Renaissance Festival in February and now I’m back home and training for the gigs coming up at the Spring Faerie Ball in Baltimore and the run of TX gigs before St Patricks Day starting with an early show Saturday Night 15 March at the Mucky Duck

A few months ago I was in NYC for a music session in a bar.  I wan’t playing, just meeting a piping colleague for a drink to talk about festival business while the local musicians tore it up with some tunes.  

I had played in this session before and just like the last times the music and energy in the place was sparkling. Everybody in the session seemed like they were giving it all they had in this breathless way, and it always struck me as odd and wonderful how this particular bar had a Celtic jam session that felt like it was right out of a movie.  

At one point somebody in the session recognized me and called me out to play something so I got out the flute and started a tune and pretty soon the place was roaring.  Then the lead guitar player started a song and then, same thing: by the second chorus the whole bar was all in, holding glasses high like we were at a wake for someone we all knew and loved, except we were mostly strangers.

After the session some of the musicians and I went a few doors down to a late-night dive and we stayed there until 4-ish AM with the conversation flowing and a feeling like we were having one of those special nights we remember from being young, except a lot of us were pushing 50 not 20. I noticed this at the time and part of my mind was trying to figure out why the NYC sessions always felt this way, and a night with them felt like one of the best nights of your life.

Then it hit me:

Many if not most of those players had moved to NYC as younger people who had been in school drama programs and worked in or around theater at some point.  A couple of them were still working in the arts at high levels but most were doing other jobs and they had just stayed in New York with their friends.  So the guitar player/singer wasn’t just playing guitar and singing, he was playing the part of a musician in a dark NYC bar. Even if he wasn’t consciously doing it there was some kind of “wax-on-wax-off” instinct him that came into play. Likewise in the dive bar where the conversations never died, there were enough people who had trained in theater improvisation that every sentence led to another building on it. 

It struck me that a good portion of the NYC general public audience at any one time contained people who had some experience acting, and they served as a social cue for everybody else, it’s ok to clap here, it’s ok to call out, and the result was the whole performance felt like we were all having the best time.  

Musicians and Actors don’t always get along, and I’ve never had any experience or desire to do any acting myself, but that night I started to understand how everything in our lives would be better if more kids had acting training.  It’s not so we can have more professional actors.  It’s so a higher percentage of people in the room at any time have training saying “Yes! and here’s how I can build on that…” and more people knew how to pay attention, and knew how to consider how another person would feel, what they would do, and more people would be striking a balance between whats better and what will just work to get us through this scene. Acting is a high form of intelligence as any biologist would tell you, and everything in our world would be better if more people at a young age exercised their ability to take momentary social risks to make everything better and were engaging their imaginations to do so.  

UPCOMING SHOWS + Video link

The Post-Covid Land Rush is on and we have some wonderful pub, clubs, concerts, and festivals to play in the next few months! PLEASE COME SEE US!!

Saturday, 7 August
Boyd’s Jig and Reel
Knoxville TN

Sunday, 15 August
Festiva Concert Series
Greenwood SC

Friday/Saturday, 20/21 August
Maine Highland Games
Brunswick ME

Saturday/Sunday, NINE WEEKENDS 
28 August – 24 October
Maryland Renaissance Festival
Crownsville MD

Friday, 5 November
McGonigels Mucky Duck
Houston TX

Saturday, 6 November
MacFarlane’s Celtic Pub
Lake Charles LA

Below are some pictures from the recent Grandfather Mountain Highland GamesWeekend, as well as our newest video “The Taoist Tale” shot by David Quillin and Rachael Rodgers, edited by Rachael Rodgers. Rachael has been our good friend since 2015 on our first Western Tour and she is currently the music director of the Edgewood Celtic Festival and her own Turquoise Trail Concert Series. She is an excellent photographer as you can see! Thank you Rachael Rodgers for your support!!!

We went West in 2020 and made a video!!! It was a lot of fun to record the song and use Frances’s arrangement and my original reel in it. 

VIDEO LINK HERE. Scroll down for pictures!

It was fantastic to share the stage with Wolf Loescher again! We are looking forward to doing a lot of big festivals with him and helping out a bit on his successful solo project.

Wolf and Frances and I also had some help from our friends Colin Shoemaker, Alex Stewart, and Richard Kean. It’s always great to be with friends playing together!

See you all somewhere on the road I hope!!!! Until then PIPE ON!! ~ EJ

2014 was an incredible year.  I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the job of a bagpiper, and I finally came to this conclusion:  My role is to soak up tunes, play with passion, create new music, and share what I’ve learned with others.  It is a role of mentorship and learning, a role of teaching about music, culture, and tradition.  It is a role where I have the privilege of bringing music to the real lives of people – in their living rooms and their yards, in churches as they grieve for lost ones, in weddings as they celebrate a new chapter, at festivals as little ones hear the bagpipes for the first time – as well as to play for old friends and new across the country and abroad.
This year I traveled from coast to coast  and abroad, absorbing music of many styles. I was able to share some of my knowledge and perspective with a young man from Brittany who traveled to do an internship with me in Asheville, arriving on the first night of Grandfather Mountain.  We embarked on a month-long internship of instrment making, playing tunes, and learning about the music business.  I also had the opportunity to mentor a local high school senior who was interested in the bagpipe. Together we made a practice chanter that will accompany him to his next role in the US Air Force and hopefully to a habit of taking in and passing on mentorship throughout his life.

I became the Entertainment Director for the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games.  For the first time ever, bands were paid to perform.  We sent a message to the great Celtic players and the music loving audience that there is a festival that values them. I look forward to continuing that role in 2015.

I played great festivals and concerts including the Texas Scottish Festival, the Maryland Renaissance Festival, the Upper Potomac Pipers’ Weekend, the MacCrimmon Trophy at the Lorient InterCeltic Festival, the Pipers’ Gathering in New England, and St. Andrews Day in Big Spring, TX.

I hosted many friends at my home and workshop in Asheville, NC.  My workshop had taken on a new appearance and meaning as I started working with tools from John Kidd’s workshop, allowing me to release some great new instruments to help other pipers deliver great sound.

As we begin 2015, I am excited to announce that the Piper Jones Band will be recording and releasing a new album!  I am busy writing new tunes and recording with the amazing bouzouki player Frances Cunningham.  The album will be engineered by Grammy Award winner Randy Miller, who also engineered The Willow and multiple Clandestine albums. We are hoping to release it in March as one of the headliner bands of the North Texas Irish Festival.

Funding an album is always a challenge.  So many of you have asked if there is a way to help, and the answer is YES!  I am taking preorders of the CD which will also help defray the cost of making the album.  The link is below. I want to say a huge thanks in advance to all of you who have supported me, as well as Celtic music, over the years.  Your help guarantees that this art form will continue to be shared with others and will inspire young people to continue the tradition.

I look forward to seeing you on the road!

EJ

Today I  went to play for a funeral. This is kind of the opposite of some of the bagpipe jokes you may have heard, where the piper arrives late. It turned out I was exactly one day early to this service and it took me a while to figure that out.

Usually when I’m hired to play for a gravesite service I get there and start playing early. That way people hear the pipes as they are driving up, getting out of their cars, and walking to the gravesite. I usually change tunes when I see the hearse doors open and play “Going Home” while the deceased is borne to the grave, then stop when everyone seems to be in their places.

Before everyone gets there I find Ceol Mor, the old music, seems to feel right. The tunes are each about ten minutes long and have slow phrases.

Today, since no one showed up and I was all alone, I started to play my tune “Beloved Scotland” and stopped at the end of the first movement. I called the funeral home hoping I was in the right place. Funeral was tommorrow. Okay then. Oops.  I had noticed that some of the markers were very old so I thought I would just strike up again and finish the tune among the graves. While I played this old tune I marveled at some of the dates on the stones, and the fact that many people of the same last names were buried there. When the tune was finished I looked for a long time at some of these headstones and got just the merest picture of the lives that have been lived near here.

I noticed that some of the markers were not carved. They seemed to be stones from the field with no names or dates on them. Maybe they had been carved at one time and the rain slowly wore away the marks. I saw one field stone that looked as though it had been written on at one time but the marks were too worn to read. Today I thought about what life might have been like for the people who settled here from Scotland or Ireland or England. I wondered how the experience of realizing they needed to come here must have shaped them and their children.

There were many graves of children and many couples from so many different times.

Tomorrow I’ll go there again and I’ll be engaged with the service but I was glad to be able to be there today and look closely.

Update: Today (the next day) I played for the actual funeral and processed from the church up the hill to the grave, leading the family carrying the deceased, to the tune “Closer Walk With Thee”. It was a tune they requested and has been sung by Patsy Cline and many others. I stood playing as everyone made their way up the steep hill and the minister led them into the pavilion that had been placed over the grave. As he delivered the service and recited the 23rd Psalm I noticed that all the headstones in this part of the graveyard had the same last name. There were stones marked with names born in the 1850’s and generations after that. I looked into the pavilion and there were at least three generations of living relatives in attendance including some teenagers. It was a very moving service and I was so grateful to be there. It is amazing to think of the people who have one by one buried their relatives in that church yard for so many years.

Ten years in….

I’ve been making smallpipes for ten years now and I remember in January 2004 trying to make a self-imposed deadline for my first customer. Making pipes, bellows, and reeds at that time before so much instruction was on the internet was a hard thing to repeat, and trying and failing to make a deadline was stressful.

Now ten years later, what’s different? I finished 5 sets this month (one of which is for me), having started them all back in July. I’m also a lot better at it than I was ten years ago. I’m faster and do things more elegantly. I have better tools. I have a helper to do some of the work with me.

I went off to Houston for New Year’s and spent some time with friends before going to the Western Texas Hill Country for a music retreat with Clandestine where we were led through some new arrangements by Scottish songwriting legend Brian McNeil. If I had been home I would have been working steadily toward making the deadlines for my customers waiting at the Sheperdstown workshop the next week. Clandestine played a Friday show, sold out the Mucky Duck a couple of days later. The next day I set out to make the familiar 16 hour drive back to Asheville where I had six days to complete these five sets. Luckily they were all well underway and I had help this time from my partner in crime Rosalind Buda. I cancelled all other plans on the schedule and spent the week working on these sets every minute I wasn’t eating or sleeping. Six days working every minute. No practicing. No returning phone calls.  I had hoped to make it up to Sheperdstown on Friday for the first jam of the weekend but at 2 pm I was still nailing bellows together. At 10:30pm, after six days holed up in the house working a quickly, smartly, and very efficiently, I finally put the last instrument in its box. The pipes were done and all I had to do was shower, pack up, and drive 7.5 hours to my first class at 10 AM the next day. I stepped out of the house at 12:30 in the middle of the night and into an inch of new snow, with a white frozen road in front of my driveway. Now I’ve got about 9.5 hours to make an 7.5 hour drive. In the snow. With 80 miles of frozen mountain highway in front of me. I ended up going 20mph behind a big truck in the driving snow on a completely frozen unsalted interstate for an hour, tires sliding trying to get up an overpass. I pulled into Sheperdstown the next day right at 10:00am having slept a few minutes pulled over on the road. I asked myself when could I get a little sleep with classes, a concert, a jam session that night? Never, and stop asking was the reply I felt come from inside.

Ten years experience I have now trying to balance pipemaking and performing. I’m a lot better at it now than I have ever been. I quit taking deposits some time ago to try and alleviate the stress of deposit-driven deadlines. There are still deadlines though and customers attending workshops need instruments by a certain date.  Now that I’m looking back on a decade of instrument making I realize how much this job, and the job of touring musician have taken away from the other job of actually creating music and building a repertoire that pushes forward.

2013 was a year full of great concerts and adventures. I’ll revisit some of the highlights in the coming weeks now that I have time to go through pictures and write about it. I wish I had had time to do this months ago but the year was just so full and there was no time.

I’m on a bit of gig-hiatus now that 2013 is over, the new shop space is put together, and the last of the smallpipe deadlines are delivered on.  I’ve been in a years-long cycle of not practicing while trying to get instruments made, then going out of town for a tour and not being able to practice while on the road, then getting back home to weeks of smallpipe deadlines, then going out of town again for more gigs, then coming back as fast as possible to get pipes done…. It’s time to interrupt that cycle of not making time to practice. I’ve got some great things planned for this year and it’s time to train for what’s to come.