I am writing this on the balcony of Jimmy and Joyce McIntosh’s lovely home in Anderson, South Carolina. I’m here for the local Greenville Games which begin on Saturday and end on Sunday with the professional piping and a workshop in the Crowne Plaza Hotel. The journey from Scotland via Newark is about 20 hours door to door depending on lay over time in NJ. The temperature here is 84…
New video posted today of Donald McBride, Kansas and Donegal, but formerly Patna (South Ayrshire), Prestonpans and Glasgow. Donald plays some ceol beag and then the piobaireachd The Sound of the Waves Against the Castle of Duntroon. Appropriately he is playing the tune on the foreshore north of Boston (the tide is audible in the background) during a quiet evening at the New England piping camp in 2013. It was a balmy…
All eyes tomorrow on the British Pipe Band Championships. If you are not already on Twitter then you may like to sign up and receive the RSPBA’s feed @RSPBAHQ. That way you will get the results as they are announced by Chief Executive Ian Embelton on the park. Failing that check out the RSPBA’s Results summaries from 6.30pm onwards. I will be reporting from the competition in these pages from…
Two days before the first pipe band championship of 2016 at Paisley, one of the world’s top bands, Boghall & Bathgate Caledonia, have announced a new sponsorship deal. Car firm Peoples Ford will sponsor the band for at least one year with an option for a further term. The sponsorship, announced by Peoples chairman Brian Gilda, continues a link with the band stretching back more than 30 years when it performed…
Following on from yesterday’s story on the new P/M RG Hardie Memorial Trophy, we have uncovered the above picture from the PP archives. It is of the Massed Bands at Pitlochry Highland Games and must be from the late 1960s. In those days bands formed up in two files, a Pipe Major leading one and a Pipe Sergeant the other. P/M Hardie is far left. To his right in the…
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