Cheers Everyone,
Travis kindly sent me an email and mentioned there was some confusion about my pipes, and suggested I visit your forum. Good to see some friends here. Thanks for the kind comments about my CD.
Well, as is often the case in second and third-hand information from years back things have become quite confused and taken out of context, mixed with conjecture.
Andreas and I go way back. I’ve known him from meetings in his shop in Germany and in France at regional Irish music gatherings back when he was experimenting with his very first set of uilleann pipes, before he was selling them, some 18 years ago or so. We’ve been friends the whole time and are still on good terms. Some may recall that I was first championing Andreas’ pipes in the US many years ago, before he was known Stateside. Several people ordered sets from Andreas through my recommendations, like Conall O’Raghallaigh (whose set still sounds rich and amazing), and others.
I was also close friends with Andreas’ assistant, Tom Aebi, whom I knew in Switzerland before he ever took up Irish music and pipes. Tom and I had a good dialog about pipe design in the early years while he was working with Andreas, while I was still based in Europe. Andreas allowed Tom to design a chanter early on. (After playing that chanter in Germany, this was my recommendation to Conall, and what Conall got with his set – Tom’s chanter design, still one of the best in my opinion.) Andreas and I had some good design discussions as well, and it was an inevitable outgrowth of these and his early foray into flat sets which led to the events which became the colorful story of my B set.
Yes, the story of my set is unique, and there were several unexpected twists in the road. I first commissioned the set from Andreas in discussions shortly after he made his first C set, which had impressed me. We had the usual discussions about the type of timber and metal and number of keys, all the normal things. (Some pipemakers use different timbers and styles and give you a choice. This was particularly the case with Andreas who was just beginning to make flat sets.) Our discussions centered around a specific set to make. About a year later, when Andreas brought the finished set to the Seattle tionol I was surprised to see that none of what we discussed was there – for some reason, perhaps a misunderstanding, it was another set. Instead of ebony, it was snakewood. It wasn’t at all the set we discussed or ordered. I did agree that it was a fine set and it played fine and the snakewood looked good. I had tonal and other reasons for placing my original order, and naturally that was my preference. During the weekend Andreas sold the set to Bill H. (who later sold it to Kevin Carr). (This became the gossip of the weekend, apparently.) But we talked and we agreed he would make my set as originally planned. We took notes again of the planned set and within 18 months Andreas had made the ebony B set which I currently have and which is a fabulous sounding set of pipes.
Yet there were still a few twists ahead. There was a problem with the chanter which we couldn’t fix. We tried to compensate with reeds, Andreas was sure the chanter was fine. It persisted and I couldn’t really play the set. Four years later Andreas looked at the chanter during a San Francisco tionol and agreed there was something wrong. He took it back to Germany for some reaming and adjusting. A year later I inquired about the chanter and Andreas said he had shipped it to me six months earlier! Well, it never arrived. Sorting this out and then finding time for Andreas to make a replacement chanter, this took over another year. In the end I’d had the set for 6 or 7 years before I was able to play them much. And two years prior to that was the original order… t’was a long, twisty road. But worth it.
The replacement chanter has two keys by mistake instead of three like the original. Andreas would have put on the third key but there is no mount. For those who are interested, the set is ebony with sterling silver and bone. It is also the first removable bass reg that Andreas made, my request, which afterwards became his standard on other flat sets. It’s also his very first set made with a hollow stock, also from my original order. There are other old style features which are not seen on modern pipes. We’ve had a couple sessions together at tionols since, at least one with Jimmy O’Brien-Moran, myself and Andreas all in B, all of us in tune. Everything is good.
Over the years people have come up and asked me about this story and the infamous snakewood original set. The interest in both sets is understandable. Snakewood was a total novelty at the time. No one in the piping community had ever seen it or heard of it before. The snakewood set was quite flamboyant in appearance and attracted attention. I believe it was the first one ever made. (There were a lot of firsts with my set. First hollow stock, first removable bass reg, first chanter lost in the mail…) It seems the set made a big splash everywhere and naturally people were curious and wanted to know where it came from. The rumors about a riff with Andreas apparently continued when the set arrived at Milltown that summer. Bill H. was naturally proud of his new snakewood set and apparently not shy in explaining how he happened to acquire it. It apparently was a hot subject. I heard regular stories at the time like, "Robbie Hannan was playing the snakewood set at Milltown and said it was brilliant, and Bill is telling everyone how you didn’t take the set and everyone thinks you’re an eejit… " Well, OK. Who was I to spoil the amusemunt?
Unfortunately, that was only half the story. I’m sure it put me in an odd light. At that point it didn’t help much for me to explain it either. When people asked me, and I explained what happened it probably sounded like a rebuttal to whatever exaggerated version they had already been hearing. It doesn’t serve any purpose to debate these things and I’m usually quite oblivious to gossip. I was just a guy waiting for his originally ordered set of pipes. I wasn’t aware that I was being lured into responding to expectations or previous, unkind comments and assumptions. Apparently no one knew that Andreas and I had sorted out the situation during the same tionol weekend, and he was already at work making the originally planned set of ebony pipes. In fact, I should also mention that my order was originally for nickel silver. And during that tionol weekend Andreas suggested real silver would be better. I was surprised, and agreed. So that detail was changed, and is how he made it. All the ferrules and tubing are hand rolled.
There were also questions about my D set.
Nope, I’ve never had any Kevin Thompson.
The body is an original mahogony stock from McCarthy, my very first set (half-set) and all that remains. The bass drone is Johnny Burke, who was an old friend. The middle drone is John Pedersen. The tenor drone is half McCarthy, half John Pedersen. The regs are by Robbie Hughes, with whom I stayed in 1982 while he made them. I currently play a Kohler-Quinn chanter, but also have an old Rowsome which is what’s on all my own concert pitch recordings thus far, as they were all recorded before I got the Kohler-Quinn. (Recent guest recordings and gigs are with the K-Q.) I’ve been using reeds I made from recycled heads that Paddy Keenan has given me in the Rowsome. In the K-Q I’m happy to say I’m still using Benedict’s original reed. The bellows is Geoff Wooff and the bag is a custom bag I had made from L&M in Canada. (They have my template on file, and others have found it handy to order this design. ) Previously I had a vinyl bag for years which I made, but it was getting so many leaks and patches and I was doing some high profile, large theatre performances and it was too unnerving with the potential leaks… I could see myself bursting the bag on stage. So I switched to leather, though I still prefer vinyl. My B set has a vinyl bag.
For the record, I also have a B-flat set, which is a Robbie Hughes blonde body (psuedo-boxwood) with Geoff Wooff ebony regs and blackwood chanter in nickel silver which I installed myself. It’s very unusual to see Wooff pipes combined like this with others. My story was always that I could never afford to buy a whole set of pipes at once, and had to put them together over the years bit by bit. This is the flat set on many of my recordings, as they predate the working B set. Mick O’Brien played them a few years ago and couldn’t put them down.
About recordings, yes I do have some “pure drop” trad recordings in the works, and a sequel to “Reeds and Rosin” with Dale Russ and Gerry O’Beirne. It has some beautiful unknown tunes that Dale unearthed that fit the pipes wonderfully. My bi-coastal, nomadic lifestyle and family and touring duties have slowed the recordings, but they are coming. I recently turned down a very lucrative contract with Cirque Du Soleil, to instead slow down and get back to recording and a steady life. I’ll be playing pipes under the San Francisco Symphony this fall and winter.
Hope to see many of you at the San Francisco Tionol in February 2005.
cheers all,
todd
And I still have recordings (and pictures) of you guys piping at the old school in Ballard–with Brooks, students, and all.
