Post-St. Patrick's Day Blues

Well, St. Patrick's Day was a week ago today and I'm suffering from a case of the post-St. Patrick's Day blues. It's that lonely time of the year when the fun and energy of St. Patrick's Day is still so fresh in my mind that I want to do it all over again tomorrow, yet I know I have to wait a whole year to do it again!

So in case you haven't figured it out, my St. Patrick's Day was another rousing success. I decorated my drones with green beads, donned my new tie dotted with 4 leaf clovers and met up with the band for tuning at 2pm. By 3pm we car-pooled off to our first gig. At 5pm we boarded a bus and in total we hit 10 bars between 3pm-12:30.

Highlights for me included all of the family and friends that came out to see us. At just about every stop I saw someone I knew. In general, the people were wonderfully enthusiastic at every stop. At our very first gig a bunch of women came up and insisted on having their picture taken with me because I was the only girl in the band. This was fun as typically the girl in the kilt is not as novel as the guys in the kilt.

Another great thing about this year was the reputation we've established. Last year we played along with the bagpipe bit in AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top". At a couple of spots one of our bandmates even climbed up on the bar and led us through it. This year our reputation preceded us, and at several of our stops people came up requesting our AC/DC rendition.

I'm also happy to report that for the first St. Patrick's Day ever, I didn't have to put corks in any of my drones. In previous years my strength and lips have just given out and corking up one or all of my drones makes it easier to play.

One tragedy of the night was one set of bagpipes that sustained some pretty serious damage, two large cracks in the bass drone to be exact. We're not quite sure where it happened, at one of our stops a drunk guy fell into some bagpipes that we thought were safely stowed with another band's instrument. And at another place some of us had stuck our bagpipes down behind some folded tables. Presumably at one of these places his bagpipes were injured. It happened towards the end of the night and they've already been sent off for repairs. We'll see what the bill is. And now our Pipe Major has decreed that we are, absolutely and under no circumstances allowed to set our bagpipes down anywhere when we're out doing gigs. It was a rude awakening but a good lesson for all of us. I am careful with my bagpipes but I do set them down and generally think of them as being pretty indestructible. Has anyone out there really damaged their bagpipes before??

Well, blogging about St. Patrick's Day hasn't really helped with the blues, but it has been fun reliving it here in blogland.

Pipe on!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!

Well, Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!! Remember, everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day so put on your green and join the party!!

I plan on celebrating the same way I have the past 2 years, by taking the day off of work and taking part in my band's St. Patrick's Day pub crawl. We have 9 gigs set up all around town from 3pm-10pm. We play for 15-20 minutes at each place, partake in some refreshment and than hop on our bus and off we go to our next gig. Even though St. Patrick's Day is on a week night I still expect every place to be pretty near to packed, especially as the night goes on.

I have to admit that I've been in a bit of a bagpiping slump lately, not practicing as much as I should, but there's nothing like the glory a piper enjoys on St. Patrick's Day to motivate a Piping Girl!

To find out what's going on in your area, this St. Patrick's Day site is still the best one out there I think.

I'm not going to repeat what I blogged about last year on St. Patrick's Day. So if you want to watch New York City's 2007 Parade in 3 minutes, traditional songs, see how to make some good St. Patties Day eats, or learn about the Hot Springs, Arkansas World's Shortest St. Patrick's Day Parade (John Ratzenberger is the Grand Marshal this year!), be sure to check out my post from last year on my St. Patrick's Day preparations.

I've also got some good videos on my St. Patrick's Day post from last year, green Polar Bears, a good Guinness commercial, everything you need to get you in the mood for the big day.

I've got a few new St. Patrick's Day goodies for you to enjoy today...

First, in honor of our newly elected President Barack Obama, the Corrigan Brothers have written his brilliant tune called "There's Noone as Irish as Barack Obama" . Even if your political affiliations go elsewhere, the video is still entertaining.

St. Patrick's Day is featured a fair amount in television shows and movies so next up I have a segment from the movie "The Fugitive" for you to enjoy:


And here's a random Leprechaun sequence from an episode of "The Simpsons":

I know, I am easily entertained.

Finally, I found this amusing segment from Conan O'Brien featuring China Town on St.Patrick's Day



And the best for last, some Fox News affiliate hands the microphone off to some random drunk guy in Denver, who surprisingly pulls off a decent newscast:



Well, whatever you do, enjoy the day, I know I will!

Pipe on!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!!!!

I'm off to my pub crawl today, but what kind of a Piping Girl would I be if I didn't post on the technical date of St. Patrick's Day. I know a lot of you might have celebrated this past Saturday but for me, St. Patrick's Day is today.

Just a couple of quick reminders, if you didn't make it to a parade on Saturday, chances are pretty good that you can still find one today. And don't forget that the New York City St. Patrick's Day parade is streaming their parade live at 11am Eastern Standard time of course

You can also check out Dublin's St. Patrick's Day webcam or check out a bunch of other webcams of Dublin.

Here's a video from last year's festivities in Dublin:


Here's another good video of a bagpipe band playing in a parade in Cork, Ireland 2007:


If you're after other St. Patrick's Day events like finding pubs that are celebrating or creating a tune list for your own party, don't forget to check out my St. Patrick's Day Preparations Post.

And if you're looking for some history on just what it is we are celebrating, check out my post from Saturday.

Here a couple of other amusing videos I found to get you in the mood for whatever it is that you do on this St. Patrick's Day. First, a video from the Oregon Zoo last year demonstrating that even Polar Bears celebrate St. Patrick's Day:



Finally, did you know that the beer company Guinness is lobbying to make St. Patrick's Day a federal holiday? They have an online petition and their grassroots effort has been titled Proposition 3-17. They have over 250,000 signatures so far.

I'm not a particular fan of this brew of beer, but I find the proposition interesting and this commercial amusing:

Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!!!!

Pipe on!!!!

Getting Ready for My St. Patrick's Day

So tomorrow is my band's big St. Patrick's Day pub crawl. There's also a deeper significance to tomorrow, it marks my one year anniversary of playing publicly with my band. I played the practice chanter for a year, than was a year on the pipes, and than made my debut with the band last year.

St. Patrick's Day is also important for my band, because, while we aren't a competitive band, we march in parades all summer long, and St. Patrick's Day is the unofficial start of our parade season too.

Last year St. Patrick's Day was on a Saturday, this year due to leap year, it's on a Monday. It will be very interesting to see what a St. Patrick's Day pub crawl is like on a weekday.

So what have I been doing to get ready for St. Patrick's Day?

1) Practicing

I got a bad cold last weekend and wasn't able to practice for several days, so I'm trying to get a bit of my playing stamina back. I also figured out that my bass drone reed was really loose, making it really tough to play too. Stuck into the bottom of each of the long stocks that stick out of the bagpipe bag is a drone reed. This fell out of my drone and into my bag. Well when I figured out how to get it out of my bag, it became loose again, this basically prevents an airtight seal from taking place and me feel like I was hyperventilating when I was trying to play my bagpipes.

Now that my drone reed issue is resolved and I'm feeling better, I've had some super good practice sessions over the last coupe of days so I feel a lot more confident about playing tomorrow.

Here are the sets that I've been focusing on, and that I'll be playing tomorrow:

"Scotland the Brave"-"Murdo's Wedding"-"Wings"
"The Green Hills of Tyrol"-"Balmoral"
"Bathgate Highland Gathering"-"Suo Guan"-"Tenny Penny Bit"-"Lady Carmichael"
"Argyll's Crossing the River Po"-"Battles O'er"
"Amazing Grace"
"Gardens of Skye"-"Leaving Liverpool"
"Cockney Jocks"-"Bonnie Lass O'Fyfe"

There's a quartet of pipers in my group that will be playing an Irish set that includes "Oh Danny Boy","Minstrel Boy" and "Wearing O' the Green".

2) Getting my uniform in order.

St. Patrick's Day last year was also the debut of all of my cool bagpipe uniform stuff. I have a white dress shirt, kilt, sporran (black purse like thing that hangs around my waste), belt, hose (socks), glengarry (hat), flashes (little bits of cloth that hang off the socks), kilt pin, hat pin and sgian dubh (little ceremonial dagger tucked in my sock).

Tomorrow I'll also be wearing my new ghillie brogues, these are special shoes my band decided would be part of our band uniform. I did wear them at our Burns Dinner back in January, but that was just for a few hours. So I'll be curious to see how they hold up to pretty much a whole day of wearing and moving about.

I'll also be wearing my brand new argyle jacket. This is something else my band decided to add to its uniform and at the Burns Dinner, I realized I was just about the only one not to have one yet. So I ordered it about a month ago, it was on back order, and it came in the mail on Friday! More importantly, it also fit. The weather tomorrow isn't supposed to be the greatest so I think it will definitely come in handy.

3) Making Sure My Bagpipes Are Ready

I already talked about my bass drone reed, but there are a few other maintenance type things I've been doing like taping up my mouth piece, my chanter, and my drones. Over time they can get loose, so I use tape (hemp can also be used), to make sure they're all set. One time at a practice last summer a piper in my band had their chanter literally fall out of their bag when we were marching, it was too loose! And it scared me, because chanters can pretty easily crack and break. I also bought a new cord for my bagpipes, this is the bit that holds the drones all together, I haven't replaced this yet, but I still might do it yet tonight...we'll see.

And that's about it. My band is meeting at 2pm tomorrow to tune and than we'll hit our first bar at 3pm. We'll make 9 stops total (although some of those are repeat stops at the same bar), and our last scheduled stop is at 9:30pm.

We're all going to ride around on a bus together for part of the pub crawl too. We were able to have the bus the whole day last year, but we won't be catching it until 5pm tomorrow. The bus totally made the experience perfect last year, we didn't have to worry about getting quickly to the next bar, finding a parking place, and waiting for everyone to trickle in. With the bus, we could all be together and than make our grand entrance.

I probably won't post on the pub crawl until later on in the week, I suspect it will take me a few days to recover!

Pipe on!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! (If You're Celebrating Today)

Well Happy St. Patrick's Day! If you're celebrating today that is. Many pubs are celebrating all weekend long and into Monday, and there were plenty of parades today as well.

If you're looking for information on the history of St. Patrick's Day, you can't go wrong with The History Channel's website. We all know that St. Patrick's Day celebrates the life of St. Patrick, actually, it really celebrates his death, which was supposedly on March 17, 460 A.D. For an entertaining version of what we do know about St. Patrick's life, check out this Veggie Tales version of events:



I'm not really celebrating today...I know, I'm such a die hard purist! Monday from about 2pm-9:30pm I'll take part in my bagpipe band's annual pub crawl. And I'm sure we won't be the only one's celebrating St. Patrick's Day on the 17th.


Pipe on!

St. Patrick's Day Preparations

St. Patrick's Day is Monday, March 17, but due to conflicts with Holy Week, many of you might be attending St. Patrick's Day festivities on Saturday, March 15. That's the day that the Catholic Church designated as St. Patrick's Day this year.

From the advertisements I've heard on the radio in my own town, it sounds like local businesses are taking advantage of the confusion and celebrating St. Patrick's Day Saturday through Monday. I might take in some of the events on Saturday, but for me at least, the big show is Monday.

But for those of you that will do most of your celebrating on Saturday, I thought a St.Patrick's Day preparation post was in order.

Blogging is a very good way to work off my own nervous energy for my band's pub crawl on Monday, so expect the posts to come with a fury this weekend. And really, a true celebration of the day can't be done in just one post.

So, what to do? Where to go? Go and take part in the festivities at your local pub, many are offering live music and free stuff! But you need to find a St. Patrick's Day celebrating pub first. I was easily able to find information in my own local and regional newspapers. Many places are celebrating all weekend, but it also seems like many are reserving special features like serving a special Irish menu, for Monday. There's probably a pub with an Irish connection in your community, after all, everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day!

If it's a parade you're after, there are plenty of those as well. In fact, if you're in Hot Springs, Arkansas you can attend the "First Ever Fifth Annual World's Shortest St. Patrick's Day Parade" which is some kind of strange oxymoron, but it really is the shortest parade. Apparently in the 1940's Ripley's Believe it or Not named Hot Springs' Bridge Street the shortest street in the world. And apparently the largest parade is held in New York City. NYC's parade is Monday and it's going to be streamed live, so even if you can't attend a parade you can watch the biggest!

Here's an amusing video of last year's NYC parade, done in a record 3 minutes, you have to see it to believe it!

But maybe you want to stay at home and host your own St. Patrick's Day Party. Not a bad idea after all; the police typically step up enforcement around St. Patrick's Day so celebrating in your own home is not a bad idea. Here are some good recipe ideas:

But really, you can probably make about anything, throw in some green dye, and you're good to go! In terms of setting up the tunes, there are a lot of great classical tunes including:
"Wearing of the Green"


"Minstrel Boy"
"Irish Washerwoman"
"Danny Boy" aka. "Londonderry Air"
"When Irish Eyes are Smiling"


Some good groups that you might check out are: The Chieftans, The Dubliners, The Clancy Brothers, and Gaelic Storm are all good ones. The Irish Rovers are also a good group, they sing a great song called The Unicorn Song:


I personally LOVE The Proclaimers and even though they're Scottish you can't go wrong with Irish Girls are Pretty, 500 Miles and Sunshine on Leith. I also recently found out that John Mayer sings a song called St. Patrick's Day:


I'm sure I'm leaving out plenty of good groups and tunes here, any other recommendations?

What are people out there doing for St. Patrick's Day??

Pipe on!!

Oh Danny Boy also known as Londonderry Air

One of the most associated songs with St. Patrick's Day is Danny Boy.

Many people love this song, but to some people this song is depressing and overdone. In fact, there's a pub in New York City that is holding a pre-St. Patrick's Day karaoke night, and the bartender is paying its patrons in Guinness NOT to sing Danny Boy.

Danny Boy is also known by another title, Londonderry Air. The fact that it's known by 2 different names speaks to the interesting history of this tune. Its history is also very complicated. If you are intensely interested in learning more about the history of the tune than Michael Robinson's Danny By-the Mystery Solved! looks to be a good site, as does Jim Hunter's The Origin of Danny Boy.

Based on what I read on Michael Robinson's site, Danny Boy refers to the lyrics. The lyrics were written by an English lawyer named Frederic Edward Weatherly in 1910. He wrote the lyrics that we know today, but they were set to a different melody. He called it Danny Boy, but the lyrics weren't successful with this melody. He never set foot in Ireland, nor did he probably have any interest in Irish tunes. So it took a letter from America to give him a melody for his lyrics.

In 1912 his sister-in-law sent him a melody called Londonderry Air. His lyrics matched with this new song, and, voila, Danny Boy was born.

Jim Hunter spends more time on his site talking about where the tune itself came from. According to his site, the melody shows up in 1851 when Jane Ross bought it from a blind fiddler named Jimmy McCurry who was playing at the docks of in the County of Londonderry, Ireland.

According to Wikipedia, the song was first recorded in 1913 by Ernestine Schumann-Heink, a German opera singer. But it seems that we can thank English opera singer Elsie Griffin for making it so popular. Weatherly gave it to her sometime after 1913 and she went onto perform for the troops in France during World War I. Although I didn't read this anywhere, I think it's safe to assume that in the midst of World War I, soldiers far from home, would take to such a moving tune:

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow

Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

Some sites claim Danny Boy is thought of as an anthem for Ireland, that it was supposed to be a song that brought everyone together during a very tumultuous time in Ireland's history. But than other site's say the song is rarely played in Ireland, and that they aren't as obsessed with the tune as Americans seem to be. Anyone out there care to comment on that??

Wikipedia has a very comprehensive listing of all the people who have recorded it, as well as its use in movies and television. Like I said initially, a lot of people love this song, including me, so there are tons of recordings of it on youtube. I tried to pick out what I thought were the best ones:

We'll start with something light, the Muppet version:


Next is Michael Eskin playing it on the Uilleann Pipes, the toughest small pipes to learn I've heard:



Here's a beautiful duet by Cliff Richard and Helmut Lotti. Richard is an English musician and Lotti hails from Belgium.


Country Western singer Ray Price sings it here:


The punk rock group Darkbuster puts their unique spin on it here:


Finally, a young British singing sensation by the name of Declan Galbraith gives a beautiful rendition:


I know there are lots and lots of other singers who have covered this song, Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby to name a few. I don't really have a favorite version, but please leave a comment if you do.

As for myself, I have run through this tune a few times on my practice chanter but I've never taken the time to memorize and learn it on my pipes. This is probably due to the fact that my band is a primarily Scottish based, and once a year, in the weeks leading up to St. Patrick's Day a few of the pipers who know this tune start practicing it. I will probably learn it sometime as I'm sure it's one of the requested tunes that pipers get. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy getting a breather and listening to it on St. Patrick's Day.

Pipe on!

My Pre-St. Patrick's Day Fix

St. Patrick's Day is less than a month off, I can't wait! This past weekend I got to go and get a bit of a pre-St.Patrick's Day fix in the form of an indoors weekend Scottish fair. There were lots of great vendors selling everything from swords to fine china. I picked up a nice Scotland themed t-shirt. There was Celtic music, Scottish country dancing, and Highland dancing. Various clans also had booths set up advertising their lineage.

There was also a good sampling of Scottish food including one of my favorites: meat pies. Oh my gosh, I am just in love with Scottish meat pies. When I lived in Scotland I would have one for lunch every single day and if they sold them here, I would continue having them for lunch. They aren't like an American pot pie, it's just really, really ground up beef wrapped in the tastiest pastry you've ever set your taste buds on. The only time I get to eat them now is at Scottish fairs like this.

The other thing I really look forward to getting at Scottish fairs is the Glasgow manufactured pop called Irn-Bru. Unfortunately, they ran out of Irn-Bru, I was so disappointed. But on a positive note, my Irn-Bru deprivation compelled me to buy two cases of it from a US based company. It's just like the Scottish stuff, minus the FDA banned carcinogenic colouring Ponceau 4R and Sunset Yellow FCF.

Towards the end of the day I got to sit in on an open rehearsal of a local competitive band. The day was topped off by a performance by this same band who had a particularly impressive drum corps.

St. Patrick's Day is in sight everyone!

Pipe on!

When is St. Patrick's Day 2008?

I know it might seem a little eary to start talking about St. Patrick's Day but we're really only just a little more than a month away from it. Because I'm a novice, non-competitive piper, to me at least, St. Patrick's Day is the premiere bagpiping day of the year. And I suppose the fact that St. Patrick's Day 2007 was the first time I played publicly with my band also cements the importance of the day in my mind.

My band is confirming their calendar for our annual St. Patrick's Day pub crawl and we found out that the actual date of St. Patrick's Day 2008 is a bit of a debatable issue.

It turns out that Monday, March 17, the day that is typically celebrated as St. Patrick's Day, falls on a day that is holy to the Catholic church. It's the week between Palm Sunday and Easter so it's also a week that is holy to all Christians. So the Irish Bishops wrote to the Vatican about the conflict and the Catholic church officially moved St. Patrick's Day to Saturday March 15.

Interestingly enough, this is the first time the day has been moved since 1940 and there won't be another conflict with the date until 2160.

So what does this actually mean?
It means that any religious services connected with honoring St. Patrick will be held on March 15.

But what does it mean for you and your St. Patrick's Day festivities and parade plans ?

Glancing over US parade dates, it looks like most US cities are using both the draw of the weekend, and the conflict with the Holy Week to hold their parades on the 15th as well. Atlanta, San Antonia and San Francisco for example, are all holding their parades on the 15th. Chicago is also holding their parade on the 15th, but information on their web site says that they always hold it on the Saturday before St. Patrick's Day. Washington D.C. and Boston are holding their parades on the 16th.

The only major US city that I could see that is holding their parade on March 17th is New York City.

Internationally, London and Sydney are holding their celebrations on the 16th.

But, let's look at the really big St. Patrick's Day show: Ireland. Belfast, Cork, and Dublin are all holding their parades on March 17th. According to statements made by Dublin organizers, the actual day and parade are such a huge tourist draw (they expect 600,000 people). They also wanted to just simply avoid confusion, so they kept it on the 17th.

So what did my band decide to do? Well, none of us are Catholics, so, with respect to all Catholics out there, orders from the Pope don't mean a lot to us. In case I haven't mentioned it before, most of the people in my band are of Scottish descent, so lots of Presbyterians. It really wasn't a debate at all, someone read about the change in dates and mentioned it to the band but we all wanted to keep to the traditional date of March the 17th, and that's what we're doing.

Pipe on!