Ronnie Wathen

Uilleann Pipes
1

There is a picture of Ronnie Wathen’s grave in the latest edition of An Píobaire.

I have heard and read a few snippets of information about the man; he was a poet, a mountaineer, and a piper.
I also read he had some foot pump bellows of his own strange design.

I googled his name and came up with a few links:

A poem about Geoff Woof on Patrick D’arcy’s page,
http://www.uilleannobsession.com/extras_stuff.html

A picture from NPU’s site,

From what I have heard, he seemed to have the kind of presence that affected everyone he met.

I see Peter Laban crossed his path a few times over the years. Does anyone have any info about man himself, his pipes, or his playing?

Mukade

2

I just came across the poem by John Gibbens written about Mr. Wathen.

Pipes

He sets up pipes
and elbow, knee,
stiff fingerpads
begin to play,

to work the air
and forge it, twist
with quick digits
and precise wrist

the air from it,
which jigs and reels
like a spun top
that speeding stills.

Energetic
and introvert,
inattention
and noise can hurt

man and music,
but no tittle
nor jot can harm
nor belittle.

Nursed in corners,
this old rigour,
born of bog and
rock, is bigger

than outlouding
now, finally.
As, shinily-
packed, the present

thing is dull at
core, this scintillates.
Time and stout
wet its gullet.

The well-read chant
of a Saxon
who learned the tune
stones stood up to,

psalms and laments
of megalith-
builders’ descent,
grasped the myth

that on ice-cliff
and rock-face, roped
to a v/diff
he groped and craned

to confront, some
mountain/goddess
compounded of
peace and wildness,

remote ridge
and close cranny,
of freedom and
severity.

John Gibbens, from Collected Poems

3

I knew Ronnie. He was one these larger than life characters and I needed some time to appreciate him. I first met him in 1981 or 82 when I was practising my pipes in my B&B room during the Willie Clancy week. The door opened, a man sat down on the bed and said ‘Hi. I am Ronnie. Ican hear you’re going to be good.’

Geoff had made Ronnie’s B pipes and Ronnie was playing them a lot that year. He played at the piping recital and after Breandan Breathnach had introduced him he read his poem about Geoff. Then he went ‘and now I’ll play a slow air by Mikis Theodorakis’.
He could be irritating but I grew quite fond of him, a complex man.


Edit:

This is Ronnie outside Geoff sometimes joked hemade the pipes to match the ego, big lumps of ivory modelled on Dan Dowd’s set, myth has it three kilo of sterling silver went into it but it was actually less than that. the double bass reg went missing in the confusion that came with the braintumour. Ken McLeod has the set now.







This was one of these nights, it took very long for it to end. Geoff and myself were playing in C in the Central Hotel as we did during the 80s. A lot of people passed through that night, Fionn Mac Giolla Chuda took charge of Geoff’s harrington for a while, Johannes Schieffner roared along for a bit. In the one photograph Ronnie is conducting Tom Clarke (and myself in the tigger t-shirt) in an attempt to keep the rhythms on the same track (in vain), Rolf Knusel thought it was funny and Packie Manus Byrne had his own thoughts there. In the other shot Geoff is playing while Ronnie shelters Maura Reck (Tommy’s daughter) and Geoff from imaginary rain.

4

Ronnie was amazing in that he could turn up anywhere. I ran into him in Ireland, London, and here in Chicago. He was visiting a friend in Wisconsin back in 1980 and, when he rang me up, I was able to include him in a concert in Chicago raising money for 15 Henrietta St.

He climbed Mt Ararat in search of Noah’s Ark. The hardest part was getting permission from three governments to climb it!

5

Thanks for the information.

I knew you would have a photo or two, Peter. :wink:

One more question. Was he English? Irish? Mongolian?

Mukade

6

He was very English. A man of independent means, left free to roam :wink:

I knew you would have a photo or two, Peter.

Robert van Dyke took the colour ones

7

In 1983,Ronnie Wathen sent me a letter, with a “Promo” cassette tape with his piping/ spoken poetry, which he would recite over the sound of the drones (with the chanter switch engaged), similar to a Brahman intoning the Vedas over a Tambura. I don’t know where that tape has gone, at the moment, I’ll have to search the archives. At some point later, we had a phone conversation as well. He had got my address from Alan Ginsberg, and was interested in coming to San Francisco, California, where he had visited once before, in the 1950s (North Beach Beatnik era, where he met the other “Allen” Ginsburg the modern poet). I remember that he asked for my “secret gig list”, so he could fund the visit. I replied that, “It’s no secret, I don’t have any gigs at the moment”! So, I’m sorry to say, he never made it out to the West Coast. Mike Gravina(Piper and Pipe maker) who was working at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator) in Palo Alto, had told me how Ronnie and he had been with Sir Edmund Hillary’s expedition to climb a mountain in Peru, in 1959. Then they had then met up at a pipng event in Britain, years later, and saw each other’s pipes and said simultaneously: "Not you too?'!
I had heard of Ronnie myself, at Dan Dowd’s home (Feb.1973). Dan talked about how Ronnie saw an illustration of an Uilleann Pipe somewhere, and had made up a contraption that used plastic bags,metal plumbing pipes, a plastic detergent bottle for a main stock,and bits of string, etc., in order to play a sort of “Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg” set of his own devising, as real sets of Irish pipes were pure “Unobtainium” at that time. Dan said he was impressed with Wathen’s determination, fortitude, inventiveness, and so on. He also said that some poet in Mallorca,“a gentleman that admired his (Ronnie’s) ways” (Robert Graves?), had set up Ronnie with a home there, and a stipend of some sort, so Ronnie’s postings to “An Piobaire” (NPU newsletter) included the Ronnie Wathen, Mallorca, sign off. Some years later, Ronnie had purchased an Alan Ginsberg set, and even arranged a meeting between the two Alans: The poet Allen Ginsberg and Alan Ginsberg the pipemaker. For further stories about that meeting, somebody should contact Alan, and get the inside story…Poets let your verses resound, and drone, drone, on!
Sean Folsom

8

I always liked the bit in his poem “The Regulators” where he described them (the regulators) as

…the bridge
between monotone modal
and romantic sludge

9

So that must be Ronnie pictured with the group of pipers at the 1974 tionol in Termonfeckin, he has the blowtorch bottle and yard of tubing wrapped around his neck, smoking a pipe. This picture is in the Master’s Touch Ennis pipes tutor. The dorky kid with the coke bottle glasses is none other than Mick O’Briain!
Is that 1974? Going by memory here. I’ve a warbly tape of Seamus’s concert that year - GREAT music.
My flat set is so heavy I pulled the muscles in my shoulder, after the tionol in Feb. I spent a whole day trying to find a way to redistribute the weight of the set (which is heavy even without the two extra regulators - extra tubes and mounting plates in the mainstock, plus it’s in Bb - long pipes Angus pipes in the usual configuration are light as a feather as these things go, by the way.). I even tried hanging the pipes from ceiling lamp fixtures! Or music stands, backs of chairs. Eventually I made a plug for the mainstock and cup for the stock out of telescoping acrylic tube that I’d bought for sanding cylinders - I lay the pipes flat in my lap, the bass bar is under my left arm, and a very long rubber tube connects the plug in the mainstock cup to the plastic cup on the back of the mainstock. Pretty crude but I can play the set again. I tie leather cord to the mainstock and my left leg, and shift my leg around to get to the various banks of keys.
Not as weird as Ronnie’s setup but then again aren’t these pipes a bit of a geegaw even in their “normal” configuration? I’m about to make real cups out of wood with metal fittings, I’ll put some pictures on here at some point.
I wonder if this was the reasoning behind the Taylor’s “wrap-around” bass regulator, too, avoiding crimping in the left arm. Some of their customers had the straight bar made anyway, they were used to it I suppose. The shoulder strap is never to be seen in old photos so my predicament wasn’t an issue.

10

Is that the one from Termonfeckin that starts with Green Gates/Woman of the House, that also has Queen of the Fairies? Ronnie actually recorded that, it has a great buzz like he put the mic on a fridge or something. You can hear Ronnie asking for the name of QotF, Paddy Moloney is in there too, throwing in the odd comment.

11

Back sometime in 1985 I had just recieved my first set of drones, moving up to a half set. I then made the 120 mile journey to the London Pipers Club only to find that, that nights activities had been cancelled. Doh!! Enthusiasm had outstripped intelligence at that moment.

I phoned Billy Browne who’s class I should have been in, he said phone this number and ask for Ronnie, if he’s there he will probably look after you for the evening.

The phonecall was made and Ronnie invited me round to his house.

I was then given a wonderful Icelandic meal with his family. Ronnie got my drone going nicely, played me his amazing set of Woof pipes, explained to me what a tight triplet was, showed me his reed making workshop with 40-50 chanter reeds lined up, he then started snapping heads off reeds as he said he had identified why some of his reeds did not work and had to start again as the heads were glued on…

I was awestruck.

Later on he drove me to the coach station for my journey home.

It was one of those times that I will always remember and be thankful for.

David

12

That’s '71. Tom Wilsbach taped him in '74, you can see Tom in the audience photo that’s online somewhere. '74 has some very interesting tunes from Seamus, Star of Munster, Rakish Paddy, Trim the Velvet, Kitty Come Down to Limerick, that I’ve never heard him play elsewhere and they suit his style nicely too.

Wonderful story about Ronnie, David! What goes into an Icelandic meal?

13

It would help the story greatly to say it involved salt cod with whale blubber but the meal was very generously taylored to my no meat diet.

I recall vegetables with nuts and a very spicy sauce.

Iceland is one of those place I must get to sometime.

David

14

Iceland’s cool. My daughter has spent some time there. The great musician Björk is one of my favourite singers.

15

[Thread revival. - Mod]

A bit late on this because I was googling Ronnie for a book I’m writing and got to this lovely place. I was at University with Ronnie and glad and proud to be counted as a friend. I acted and wrote at Trinity and we met through the literary magazine Icarus for which we both wrote poetry and prose. He was older than I and much more mature ~ and adventurous. He had a very fast motorbike on which I once rode pillion from Dublin to the Wexford Opera Festival where I was acting and to which Ronnie gave me the fastest lift of my life. He climbed every mountain possible and even they say or he said he climbed the Campanile in Trinity’s Front Square. He was irascible, powerful, brilliant and always a firm friend and tho he is now sadly gone (I never knew that) it is wonderful to see him again alive on the net with his beloved pipes ~ and friends.
God Rest you, Ronnie ~ you are always remembered.
Terence

16

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/534/npuah0784.jpg/

17

Ronnie Wathen - Google Images Search

Huge version here: Allen, Smyth, Fitzgerald, Coxhill, Wathen, Shepheard, Lady June & Friends - An Odd Acts Event

18

I haven’t been around here much recently.
I thought I there must have been an error in the site database when I saw this thread I started back in 2005.

It is nice to hear some more information about Ronnie.

19

Can somebody explain what kind of contraption Ronnie has going here?
2 hoses connected to the chanter top with one of them wrapped around his neck?

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

20

Isn’t it just two longer than normal hoses, just so his pal can hold the rest of his set of pipes? One of them comes from the bellows, and one from the chanter. Apart from being longer than normal, the rest is as usual, isn’t it?