Editorial
Front Page - Friday, October 15, 2010
Spread the word: City of Chattanooga Pipe Band is must-hear sensation
Erica Tuggle
It’s a rare opportunity to see a pipe band live and in full uniform. Usually, you’d have to travel to Atlanta or Knoxville to see such a band, but now the secret is out. Chattanooga has its very own pipe band, and these guys are a talented and professional bunch.
The City of Chattanooga Pipe Band was actually formed in 1999 by Russ Spaulding, a retired school superintendent who began playing the bagpipes later in life, but fell in love with the instrument. He formed the group as the pipe major to keep the talented pipers in town playing with their own local band.
The band chose the Hamilton clan tartan colors for their kilt, for their tie with Hamilton County, and the band has been competing in earnest ever since. Spaulding’s stepson, Joe Simpson, took over as pipe major after Spaulding stepped down in 2008 to promote and continue writing his music books.
Simpson has been competing as a piper since he was 11 and now, as the pipe major for the group, is working to help them excel in competitions and raise funds so that the band can go to the North American Championships in Canada next year. This means this competition band and non-profit organization is interested in getting as many gigs as they can so that funding the trip will be easier.
It’s a mystery why this band remains a secret to many when they have been around for 11 years, played Riverbend eight of those years and play at the local Culture Fest celebration. The band is very interested in getting the word out that they exist and bringing in more pipers with experience, especially in the Dalton area, Simpson’s mother and tenor drummer, Deborah Spaulding, says.
She started with the band to partake in the family time it afforded her and only fell into tenor drumming because the band needed one at the time.
She says, “I have a shy side, but found that I absolutely loved it and still do. I really have a passion for it.”
It’s also a mystery how these pipers and drummers stay in sync with each other while playing these extremely difficult instruments. Joe Simpson says, at least the idea of playing a bagpipe is simple. Essentially, it is blowing through the pipe and squeezing the bag while still trying to keep the bag as full as possible, he says.
The band will have an opportunity to show off their skills this weekend at their competition in Stone Mountain, Ga. They also have games throughout the year in Charleston, S.C.; Gatlinburg, Tenn.; and Glasscow, Ky.
The bulk of the funds that the band receives is from the local jobs they do in town at weddings, parties and at churches to play during Scottish services called “kirking.”
David Cameron, the drum major for the band, says that although many people have seen the band at Riverbend and Culture Fest, they are unaware that the band is local and that they compete.
Simpson says, “For most of the jobs we are hired to do here in town, most folks think we are just guys with bags and pipes that get together to meet and have fun, but we really are a competition band.”
Cameron agrees. “Everyone takes it really serious. We don’t get paid anything. We like to go and compete and the band has actually done quite well. In 2005, we won the Eastern United States Championship for grade four.”
What is appealing about playing with the band is the skill it takes to make sure all the band is playing the same thing at the same time so that it sounds like only one bagpipe and one drum are playing, Cameron says.
“It is a very different style of drumming, very technical and difficult, and when you get a line of five guys doing it all together just right and just perfect, it’s great,” he says.
In competition, that’s what the other bands are trying to do as well, he says. The band lines up in a circle, the judges walk around with clipboards and make notes and then rip the player’s hearts out with the results.
What we like about the Chattanooga pipe band is the diversity of the group. Men and women in scrubs, business clothes or jeans who work by day as an electrician, a nuclear physicist, a Ph. D, a detective, a graduate student, or a principal for a local elementary school gather to practice every Thursday at the Northside Presbyterian Church. They combine talents to provide the sounds that make a completely new and fulfilling experience for their audience: one worthy of recognition.
For more information on the City of Chattanooga Pipe Band visit their Facebook page.
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