You decide:
The manager of the Lowe’s Motor Speedway and all around NASCAR good ol’ boy Humpy Wheeler is retiring (I learned all this yesterday), and, as part of the ceremony to honor him, they wanted someone to play everybody’s favorite tune (you guessed it) Danny Boy. Now, despite the fact that I grew up in North Carolina, I really don’t know anything about stock car racing, but apparently this guy is the granddaddy of NASCAR, so they’re expecting something like 200,000 people to show up at the race/ceremony this Sunday.
So, basically, tomorrow I am going to be playing Danny Boy, on the uilleann pipes, in front of 200,000 NASCAR fans.
I gotta go learn Danny Boy now…
Edited to say: I just found out this whole thing is going to be carried live on Fox news. Cultural experience, no?
Man, thats scary. Our band has played some really strange gigs. We played a a graduation party with a total of seven people watching. One of them was an old lady who was asleep right in front. We also played at a high school for toubled inner city teens. That was actually pretty fun.
So, the most important thing while you’re playing is not to think about the 200,000 pairs of eyes watching you or the countless millions of NASCAR fans watching on TV . Also, if you make a mistake, just stop and explain to everyone that your chanter reed is acting up today …
You will be seen for exactly 5 frames, and your pipes will be heard for about 8 1/2 seconds.
Then some network sprayhead will chunter on (on top of your fine piping) about heritage, tradition, what a historic moment, yadayadayada, etc, & cut to commercial.
If you dont want to pay Fox $120 for a DVD copy of the segment, set your timer accordingly
Make sure to copyright your arrangement with ASCAP so you can claim residuals from every airing… or change a note and claim it to be a new tune… MORE MOOLA! YAY!
Sounds like a fun gig though. Probably not as weird as the naked piper performance that happened last year… who ended up doing that again?
Pat.
PS - I hope you wore the traditional costume and hung skulls from a hair rope around your waiste and painted yourself blue?
I was at McSorley’s in NYC a few years back with Cillian Vallely - someone asked if “you could play Danny Boy on those things” - if I remember right the answer was… um… lemme think… “no.”
Thats a great gig. I have met Humpy several times in my working capacity covering sports and media companies. He is a fine southern gentleman and a long time NASCAR godfather together with his boss Brutin Smith and the France Family who own International Speedway and NASCAR itself. That is probably the biggest gig that you could hope for in the south, but it is a shame that his favorite tune wasn’t the Bucks of Oranmore.
By gum, ya did it; the UTube link has a bit! Congratulations, sounded grand even in spite of Humpy’s early entrance. And I hope the pay was indeed good … 'cos that does have to be up there in the Weird Gigs category.
We played a pastoral counselors’ conference where a lady fell out of her chair in what turned out to be a seizure. The part that made it weird and sort of awful was we thought she was a charismatic in rapture because it seemed like she was grooving along to the music – and it was an ecumenical conference, after all.
<straight to h-e-doublehockeysticks for that one!>
So, it basically involved sitting in an air conditioned 0% humidity RV for four hours in the middle of a giant race track, being bombarded by loud noise and obnoxiously overt patriotic hurah (not that I’m un-patriotic, this just seemed a bit over the top), and then playing for MAYBE three minutes. It was fun in a very weird sort of way…
or the countless millions of NASCAR fans watching on TV 
. Also, if you make a mistake, just stop and explain to everyone that your chanter reed is acting up today … 
