Bagpipes Calling!

(bagpipe music) I'm Andrea Wozny and I love to travel and discover places that celebrate culture. I'm also a bagpiper from Long Island. Today, I'm going to bring you to my favorite place where my band mates and I celebrate St. Patrick's day.

I always feel so at home in this place. Everybody knows a good thing. The community supports original music and there's a place to do it. (bagpipe music) It's like this very old ancient tradition and we're still kinda doing it now.

-

Andrea

Join me and experience the people. We like to say that we are a drinking team with a piping problem. -

Andrea

The place, the sound. Come hear the call of the pipes with me. (gentle bagpipe music) Each year my band's favorite place to celebrate St. Patrick's day is the coastal town of Bayport-Blue Point, Long Island.

I joined this band because I wanted to learn a unique folk instrument and be a part of a music community. I'm going to share with you the great community that I found. We'll start at a place that most embodies the Celtic spirit on Long Island. One that echoes the pubs in Ireland, which are the center of traditional music there.

(bagpipes music) We're here at the Gray Horse Tavern, where we're gonna meet the owner Linda Ringhouse. And then tonight we're gonna see Luke Powers play. He's one of the star players in our bagpipe band. So it should be great night, come on.

This is the main, I would say the heart of the restaurant. Since 1869 this was a room where people gathered and had something to drink and chatted and stuff. So everybody who comes in gets to walk through the tavern. The music here is a huge part of why we're successful.

I'm very lucky to have some good friends who have really taken the quality of music to a whole another level. (soft music) I think the musicians like to play here too, they say so I've known Tom Falco for over 20 years. And I got to meet Luke through Tom. Everybody knows a good thing.

I always feel so at home in this place. It's hard to play music with no one to hear it. The community supports original music and there's a place to do it. When we take our break I love talking to the people here.

So sometimes I have to be told, you need to get back on that stage. You tend to talk a little bit. We always say five Irish minutes. We'll be back in five Irish minutes.

Every time I play there, I really feel like I'm in my living room, and except there, a lot of people that maybe I don't know, and there's a stock bar and there's a whole waitstaff and a professional kitchen, but it's that kind of sense of it's really relaxed. If only we had such a living rooms. But you know, it's different than playing other places. I'm not sure how we do it.

This is obviously a very different kind of a little intimate venue. It's small. It might not be for everyone, but there is no place like it. (bagpipe music) (audience clapping) Slinte, Salute.

I'm really excited to hear you perform tonight. Hopefully you'll be as excited when I'm finished as you are now. Yes. (all laughing) We're playing great, well, we're playing traditional I'll leave it up to the audience to decide whether or not its great.

We're playing traditional music. We're not playing as I call it green beer and shamrocks, crap. And we're not playing Celtic bar rock, which is really just bar rock with an Irish accent. (soft music) I was nine years old when I first heard about them, or when I first heard how they worked.

I made a vow, then I said that's the instrument I want to learn how to play. So when I was 24, I finally got my first set. The rest is and I've been regretting it ever since. Sometimes with the way they can behave reeds and whatnot.

But mostly it's been a very enjoyable journey. (Irish music) Some of the bagpiping, the music may sound strange to our Western ears, but it's an amazing sound. Every bagpipe that I've ever heard, there's something that hooks you in. Maybe sometimes it's the way they look.

Sometimes they're pretty strange, but I think really it's the sound. (Irish music) Most people don't realize that, they always think it's a Celtic or a Scottish or an Irish thing, but every country in Europe, North Africa into the Middle East, into India has at least one type of bagpipe. (bagpipe music) The Earliest representation we have of bagpipe is a Hittite carving, which was many, many hundreds, if not thousands of years BC. So it's been around a long time.

So Luke, we're gonna do a quick comparison of the bagpipes versus the uilleann pipes. I always like to say, they're all bagpipes, right? Every one is a bagpipe. I would say the Great Highland Pipes or the warpipes.

Cause basically that's what the bagpipe is. It's got a bag which acts as a reservoir of air so the sound can be continuous. Most bagpipes have at least one, as we know, the Highland Pipes have three, what we call the drones and the drones do just that. It makes that constant humming sound to back up the tune.

On the Highland Pipes, the drones will go above the player's shoulder, the opposite if you're right-handed player, they go above your left shoulder. If you're a left handed player, they go above your right shoulder. The uilleann pipes they go across my lap. Highland Pipes usually unless you stop them with your finger, they will sound continuously.

Uilleann pipes I can turn them on and off with a switch. I have a little key switch here. (bagpipe music) In the Highland pipes you have a bass drone and two tenors, in the uilleann pipes you have a base drone the long one, you have a baritone and then you have a tenor drone up top. So they all play in octaves of one another.

The base drone, the base drone is an octave lower than my low D. The baritone is the same and the tenor is an octave above. And for me, which makes the instrument really cool, You have these three, basically they're stopped chanters called regulators. No one knows why they call them regulators, but they do.

And basically they're stopped chanters that you play using your wrist. You can play little double stops with them. (upbeat music) I'm not breathing into them. This is a modified similar to a fireplace bellows, except instead of having the air being shot out the front, which you would do when you're trying to pump up a fire, there's a tube which goes across my belly and connects here, which goes into the bag.

They've been described as a cross between a bra and a whoopee cushion. (both laughing) Pretty accurate. They're probably close to 100 different types of old world bagpipes. And they're all old world.

(bagpipe music) (guitar music) For me, I play guitar. I try to play guitar and it was very difficult for me to sort of transfer that, like it's such a different, string instrument and the bagpipes and all that. It's just like an octopus, you know, You're trying hold it it's weird learning all these things, and it's not really make sense, but once you strike those up and you get the drones and they're in tune and they resonate, that's like a primal thing. (bagpipe music) There's something really special about that.

And when that happens, like, yes, you know, it sounds good. And then you just gotta learn how to tune once you get it all tuned you're in business. Yeah, it felt like I was almost training for long distance running. It's like, you just gotta keep working on it and working on it.

And then one day it kinda clicks and like, okay, you can actually make a sound out of these things. (bagpipes music) All right. Fresh off the stove Beautiful, beautiful. Some corned beef and cabbage I always say, this is...

And potatoes for you guys. I always say this Long Island's best pub for both food, music, and friendship. There is nothing like the Grey Horse Tavern, the most special place on the island. That is true.

Really. - Thank you so much. Well enjoy. Thank you.

- Thank you. We'll see you out there playing in a little bit. Thank you, Linda. All right.

That was good. Look at this meat its just It's just falling apart. It goes well with whisky too A bunch of bagpipers diving into a plate of corned beef and cabbage. (bagpipe music) (audience clapping) You speak Gaelic.

Can you talk about why you wanted to learn Gaelic? It was the music it was the songs that drew me to the Irish language. I wanted to be able to sing these Irish language songs, but I couldn't pronounce them. (singing in foreign language) Eventually you just fall in love with the language.

It was the great hunger, which almost led to the complete destruction of the language. The great hunger also known as the potato famine affected nearly 2 million people from 1845 to 1852. I believe it's something around 85% of the island of Ireland spoke Irish before the great hunger, when the great hunger struck the poorest people in Ireland, and much of Europe were Irish language speakers. Irish was not allowed to be used it was not allowed to be taught in schools.

Of course it was not used in business. So they were the most likely to be the ones to be affected either by starving or emmigration. Approximately 1 million Irish died from starvation. And another million were forced to leave their homeland.

(soft music) And then afterwards there's a period called the Irish Silence, which lasted from the end of the famine I would say until the language revival in the 1880s, 1890s, where Irish parents stopped speaking Irish to their children. They looked at their language, almost like a death sentence. They figured our children can not lead happy lives in this country. Especially if they have this language, they need to learn English so that they can go to Canada, so they can go to America, go to Australia or somewhere else.

Throughout the Famine years 75% of the Irish coming to America, landed in New York. And by 1850, New York had more Irish born citizens than Dublin with over half a million. So the number of Irish speakers just dropped precipitously. And today I believe it's somewhere less than 5% use it as an everyday language.

And really it's not that long ago, 1845 is 170 years ago in historical terms that's not very long ago at all. My family, along with many other Long Islanders are descendants of these immigrants. Which ones having left Ireland never returned. (soft music) Just down the street from the Grey Horse Tavern and up the road from the water We begin our St.

Patrick's day celebrations with our band Northport Piping Drum. It's a beautiful early Sunday morning. And we're here for the Bayport Bluepoint parade on Long Island. And we're here at our good friend Kathy's house for big, beautiful Irish breakfast that we're gonna be having with all of our band family.

Hi. - Hello. Good morning happy St. Patrick's day, Good to see you.

Come on in. I'm just amazed every year when I get the call, hey, you guys coming for breakfast? Like, wow, they're inviting us again. Wow, this is the street.

We're doing something right. There are some warm things this year. Yeah we love this day. It's our favorite day of the whole year.

We love having you guys. It's not just like bagels and cream cheese and a cup of coffee. It's like full on stuff. Like a lot of cooking, a lot of preparation.

And like you said, open up their home to us. (soft music) Oh, wow. I didn't think everyone was gonna get there that early, because I was pretty amazed that people showed up that early the first time, but man, that was nice. Whiskey before breakfast.

I used to practice in the house until my daughters were both born. And then I got ousted to the garage and I used to practice in the cold freezing garage. And then I just, it was all about just cause I just enjoyed playing. I could barely carry it.

(both laughing) I could barely carry the drum when I first started, it was probably bigger than me and weighed about as much. Someone mentioned mimosa. So yeah and now, yeah, 15, 16 years later, I'm still playing. Why did you wanna learn the pipes?

I just always, always loved Celtic music and bagpipes from the time I was a little girl. And that's why I dragged you to every Irish parade from the time you were three. Yeah maybe that's why I got into it. (bagpipes music) You're a really great player too.

How long did it take for you to kinda get to be top-notch. It took me longer than most. That's what we all say though. But I was just determined not to give up, you know?

And I said, I'm gonna keep going. If it's gonna take five years. I'm gonna be five years older regardless. I might as well keep at it.

And then over time it just happens. It's really one of the nicest things that people do for us. We come, we stay too long. We drink everything and eat everything you now that's how it is.

So we want to just thank Nick and Kathy for having us, it's become a tradition for our band. (cheering) Hip Hip Hooray Hip Hip Hooray Drink up. Pipes seem to really get people stirred up. One of the theories was that they were originally an instrument of war possibly to call out commands.

Depending on what tune was played would either be relaying directions to captains or to troops on the ground about where to attack. So the sound of the Highland pipes really goes through you. Circle up! At this point band we are Arctic Pipers we're well experienced Arctic Pipers.

The cold is nothing for us. If you're complaining, just look to your left, look to your right, grab a flask and it will be better. Let's take our drones up everybody. Let's hear a scale, drones up.

(bagpipes music) (audience cheering) Thank you, thank you. Okay, we just finished our amazing breakfast at Kathy's house. So now we're just walking down the street and we're gonna go around the corner to line up for the parade. And we're just gonna hang out there for a little bit and wait to start marching.

We also just finished tuning and just playing a few songs to warm up our pipes cause it's a pretty cold day out today. It's like 32 degrees, not as cold as yesterday, but really cold. Here's my favorite Piper right here. See that's what I need, I need the whiskey.

Want some? (band music) Gotta try and keep them warm in the freezing cold. When you listen to it, you kinda have a connection to a long time ago. It's just this like, old, very old ancient tradition and we're still kinda doing it now.

(bagpipes music) It's kind of an emotional rollercoaster in good things and maybe not so great. And how many times do people they'll say with a smile, they say like, oh, every time I hear the pipes, I think of this and it makes me cry. I think that's important too, for a band to carry themselves well and look good and be in step. And all those things are important because people listening to you and watching you, are thinking about all these things.

(bagpipe music) So yeah, you're gonna walk straight and you're gonna stand straight and you're gonna play well and you're gonna play together cause that just kinda gives the instrument and the whole music, sort of the respect that it is due. We just finished our Bayport-Blue Point parade. And now we're gonna hang out in the Grey Horse Tavern for the rest of the afternoon. For the most part, after the parades, we all hang out and have a beer or two, almost all of us.

You don't see other pipe bands doing that. This is the heart and soul of the band Oh my God! (both laughing) I'm gonna choke now. I am far from the heart and soul of the band, but I am a active member.

An active member An active member... There's just many hearts and souls in this band. It's in a eclectic group of crazy Pipers. We like to say that we are a drinking team with the piping problem.

That's our slogan. That's what lured me into the band anyway. And a couple of people I went to high school with, which was great. And so, when did you start playing the pipes?

I started playing the pipes in 1999. I started coming down for the lessons with the band. Our band was always so small that we're very fortunate to have what we have now. We have a great group of people and a lot of energy and a lot of musicians, which we never had.

Yeah, and it is more of a "family band" in that it welcomed like someone like me, who's not traditionally associated with, I guess the fire department or the police that has a bagpipe band. We have people, all different kinds of people we all sort of come together. We have a good time and that's what makes it, it's like spice of life kinda stuff. (upbeat music) They're gonna play one tune and we're gonna play on the second tune, okay.

We're not gonna march down the stairs. (all laughing) We'll come from the back room. I know those guys and we were gonna be here and I figured, why not? You know, let's do it.

The guys in the band the first time we did, weren't so sure that they believed me, that it was gonna work out okay. And frankly, I wasn't really sure how it was gonna work, but... Now that's the highlight of our St. Patrick's day season.

Yeah totally It's a no brainer when my good musician friends say, I'd kinda liked to do this thing at your place. I don't even ask them what it is. I say, when do you wanna play. (bagpipes music) To find places in communities that give people the chance to get together and explore music is quite special.

And on Long Island, St. Patrick's day ends up being a day that everyone participates in. Music is inclusive, no matter what the tradition. And when we find a place where we can all celebrate together, it feels like we're coming home.

(bagpipe music)