2007 Best of Luck Jeremy
I was thrilled when the Rogues were restored to Scarborough Faire this year after a year’s absence. We had a stage that kept us from projecting our bagpipe-ly goodness into the other parts of the Faire but it was kind of good to not be in anyone’s way. We got to share the stage with the Star Dancers and so complete our celebration of Traditional Scottish Heritage with three very important expressions of celtic culture: kilts, bagpipes, and belly-dancing. I got to indulge my penchant for marching by joining the 1 o clock parade and going through the faire in advance of Queen Margaret. I’ve loved parades ever since doing them with Randy, Lars, and JW back in 1991 when we were called Clandestine. It’s a wonderful feeling to march playing the bagpipes with a couple of good percussionists. The only way to make it better in my mind is to add a few bombards. Talk about a scary sound that.
We lost Jeremy towards the end of Scarborough. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen before to people and it very nearly happened to me in 1998 on Clandestine’s first long tour. A combination of home-sickness and feelings of panic and a sense of losing your way in life add up without you knowing it and pretty soon you’re totally burned out and allergic to working out of town. Wanting to pay the bills and knowing you couldn’t afford to fly home even once probably doesn’t help. I didn’t know it was going to happen or I would have done some things differently. I feel like Jeremy and I had a good partnership in the Rogues and I’m going to miss being on stage with him regularly. I’m sure we’ll all do something later in the year in Texas since he and our new piper Richard and I are all friends but I don’t see much playing on the road with Jeremy this year.
I met Richard almost ten years ago and we’ve never actually “been” in a band together although he’s been one of my best friends for years and we’ve done a ton of jamming starting at the Brewery Tap, Café Aviño, and with each others’ bands. In a really amazing bit of timing Richard happened to be between projects when Jeremy left and we’ve got him in the Rogues full time now. He’s had summer course of Rogues music and he ended up learning “Holy Moly” faster than I ever did. We’ve been here in Washington doing three weekends at the Washington Renaissance Fantasy Faire in Gig Harbor WA and I think by the end of the first weekend we had the sound we needed. The audience and the management of WRFF have been lovely and there’s a great little pub at the faire at which Richard and I were politely asked to be quiet. He was playing the binou coz and I was playing bombard. You’ll see. “Say can’t you guys go back to the nice mellow highland bagpipes?” they seemed to be asking. We were off the clock at the time and were relaxing after our job of playing really loud bagpipes by having a few tunes on even louder bagpipes. We’ve been having great luck playing at some excellent Faires this year. Scarborough, Washington, and Maryland. I can’t wait for Maryland. One more weekend of the idyllic WRFF where the dance space is full at every show and then off to MDRF. There’s more to post about WRFF though before the last weekend begins.