Brian Boru Irish Pipe Band: Press/Articles

Video of Brian Boru Bagpiper Anthony Howe and the the Twin Cities Metro Pipe Band leading the 114th Transportation Company to the Roseville Armory.

New Kieran’s location christened with parade, pints  UPDATED March 16, 2010, 5:02pm

By Gregory J. Scott

A line of green-shirted wait staff and the scent of freshly dried plaster greeted the first guests at the new Kieran’s Irish Pub, which opened this afternoon in the old Bellanotte space in Block E.

Owner Kieran Folliard unlocked the door to his new pub around 4 p.m., welcoming a throng of several hundred revelers who had paraded over from the old location, at 4th Street and 2nd Avenue. The Brian Boru Pipe Band — with their traditional kilts, bagpipes and drums — escorted the crowd into the 10,000 square foot bar.

Today’s parade also commemorated the pub’s golden birthday — it opened 16 years ago on March 16.

Crowds began gathering at the old Kieran’s location around 2 p.m. With the registers shut down, bartenders poured free pints for a few hours, asking drinkers to leave a donation in a metal bucket. At 3 p.m., Adam Coolong from Celtic rock band The Wild Colonial Bohys led a live auction for the final pints ever to be served at the old location.

Single beers went for hundreds of dollars a piece, with the final pint of Guinness selling for $500. One woman paid $425 dollars for the final shot of Jameson.

All proceeds from the free pint donations and the auction went to Folliard’s commitment to send a 16-year-old Hopkins boy to this year’s World Cup in South Africa, as part of the Make-A-Wish program.

Marc and Kris, a couple from Bloomington, said that they had been coming to Kieran’s every weekend since the late '90s.

“This feels like a peoples’ pub,” said Kris. “It’s the most cozy out of all of [Folliard’s] bars. It’s not pretentious. And it’s not a contrived American version of an Irish pub.”

The Brian Boru bagpipers led the parade out onto 4th Street. Longtime bartender Alice McGrath, who has worked at Kieran’s since it opened in 1994, marched arm-in-arm with Tony Winick, who according to McGrath, “is one of the longest regulars Kieran’s has ever had” and “an honorary employee.”  

Winick was the man who won the final pint of Guinness. He carried his prized pint, not spilling a drop, all the way to Block E.  

McGrath also marched with a full glass of Guinness, keeping a perfect one-inch head at brim level.

Opening toasts at the new location were planned for 5 p.m. The Wild Colonial Bohys and the St. Dominic’s Trio were scheduled to perform live music, with Rince na Chroi performing traditional Irish dances.

 

 

 

 

Click here for article about Grandpa coming to get billboard

 Comment on this entry

  Click here to subscribe to this page

Charlie, "Stubby" & Rick Russell


"Passing on the pipes”

For 45 years, Brian Boru bagpipers have played - and taught - traditional Celtic tunes.

BY LAURA YUEN

Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 08/10/2007 12:03:25 AM CDT


Drive past the Menards and the Pineda Tacos and the Wal-Mart, and follow your ears. Right beside the Clean 'N' Press, a parking lot in West St. Paul is crying.

A circle of bagpipers floats the deedle-deedle-dum of Celtic melancholy every Tuesday evening. Just when the sun sets over the SuperTarget, they pipe songs about elusive maidens and dead heroes.

One of the men who founded the Brian Boru Irish Pipe Band in 1962 sits on a stoop of a nearby business and listens.

"It stirs you," said Chuck "Stubby" Russell, 79, tapping his heart.

The ragtag crew that Russell organized has endured for 45 years in the face of high turnover and warring factions. The Minneapolis man retired a couple of years ago because of Parkinson's disease and back problems.

Yet it's largely volunteers like Russell who have fueled the survival of Brian Boru and, with it, a piece of Irish tradition in Minnesota. He and other veteran members have taught dozens of students how to play the pipes for free.

"If you charge them, you'll drive them away," he said.

The band is a crowd favorite at the Irish Fair of Minnesota, which begins today on Harriet Island in St. Paul. Dozens of newcomers sign up for lessons after seeing the pipers perform at the festival.

Unlike Scottish pipe bands that sport tartans, the Brian Boru crew - named after the 11th century Irish king - proudly wears the black and saffron kilts of the Irish army.

At the bars on St. Patrick's Day, the musicians have been goosed by silver-haired ladies. They also have a ready supply of salty responses when asked, "What's under the skirt?"
But it's the annual August festival that marks the band's high recruiting season.

After a few lessons, though, most novice pipers quit.

"Maybe we get one out of 15 who stick with it and become a member of the band," said pipe major John McCormick, who lives on St. Paul's West Side. "It's a lot of work."

McCormick, who works as an insulator, started playing the pipes when he was 12. His father hooked him up with a friend in St. Paul's Irish-American community who knew how to play.

At the time, it was even less cool than today for boys to wear skirts.

"My parents were proud of me, and they would always tell people, 'My son plays the bagpipe,' " he said. "I would say, 'Don't bring that up! I want to make friends.' "

McCormick began seriously studying the pipes three years ago, when he had the maturity and motivation to keep at it.

The bagpipe is a bear of an instrument. For the first year or so, most students learn on a practice chanter - similar to a recorder - without picking up the real bagpipe. The rookie piper might be able to play just one tune. Some never play any.


"It's an instrument you've got to beat into submission," Russell said with a laugh.

Players must juggle complex fingering, steady blowing and the squeezing of the bag, making for an exhausting upper-body workout. A beginning student can sound dreadful - and there's no way to hide it, given the blaring drone the pipes produce.

The idea for Minnesota's longest-surviving Irish bagpipe band started in a bar. Russell, then a social worker, was knocking back a few with his buddies, and someone got the idea of forming the group.

"One guy says, 'Yeah, but how we gonna learn?' " Russell recalled.

They found a teacher in John Ford, then a Macalester College teacher and director of its pipe band. Under Ford's instruction, the fledgling posse hammered out horrendous notes.

But they persevered, mostly because of the fellowship. Parents have brought their children, including Russell's son, Charlie. The group is made up mostly of men, ranging from teens to retirees.

"We just added a guy here, a guy there, and it's been 45 years," Russell said.

The band plays in the West St. Paul parking lot, where one member owns a business that makes Irish-themed merchandise.

Like any fraternity, though, the band has experienced some drama and even threats of extinction. Some pipers have splintered from the group as they sought a more competitive playing level.

McCormick, 43, became pipe major at 17 after one infamous split. The band grew large again, and then there was another split.

Today, about 20 pipers and drummers make up the crew, with an additional 10 or so students being groomed to join.

"All we expect is that people work hard," McCormick said. "It's important to me to pass it on, in the same way it was passed on to me."


Comment on this entry

The highlight of the day, though, had to be Ol’ Yeller’s finale right before BTS came on. Rich Mattson and Co. brought out the Brian Boru Pipe Band, who were marching through the crowd between bands (in honor of Finnegan’s Irish roots, as if the potato beer wasn’t Irish enough). What song could a quartet of garage-rockers perform with a quartet of bagpipers? AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll),” of course, the one where Bon Scott showed off his Scotsman pipe-blowing talent. OY guitarist Andy Schultz, it turns out, can sing a great Bon. Not only was it a high point of the ShamRock, Romantica bassist Tony Zaccardi — watching from the crowd, mouth-agape like I was — went so far to call it “the highlight of the summer.”

The phrase "local band" is almost a synonym for short-lived. Bands these days seem to be composed of a sparingly talented group of youngsters who met in metal shop or rehab and are known as "The Screaming Death Tobaggans" for a few fleeting weekends, their gig dates buried deep in a couple of City Pages club ads. They break up, regroup, splinter, and usually fade into ordinary life- decades from now their kids may never have known their mommy or daddy was a musician.

But there's another kind of local band. The members are either seasoned professionals or learning students, the performance attire requires shoes and brass polish, and there's been no monkeying around with the name for thirty-eight years. Which, when you think about it, is really a drop in the bucket when you realize they play instruments that have been around for upwards of three thousand years.

This is the culture of the bagpiper, and the Brian Boru Irish Pipe Band is the upper midwest's most senior ambassador to this unique world of sacred music and just -as-sacred traditions. Established in 1961 by accomplished pipers, it continues week by week and year by year with some of those original members, many newer members and even the children of original members. The uniform is the same- a saffron kilt (tartan is for the Scots) and black wool short jacket. Some of the pipers sport original buttons from the Irish troops who participated in the Easter Uprising of Dublin in 1916. The music is largely the same- lively jigs, triumphant marches, familiar airs and wrenching ballads, but each generation has added both newer and less well-known historic pipe tunes to keep everyone on their toes. Some of the pipes themselves are old and ornate, some are new and shiny, but all play the same nine notes held aloft by the wail of the three drones. The combination of these twelve elements can create, in the right hands and lips, the fearsome shriek of the war pipes or the keening moan of a love lost.

Training those hands and lips to create such magic is another story, however. These days it falls to Pipe Major John McCormick to mold the next generation of brave but few bagpipers. The Brian Boru Irish Pipe Band offers free lessons to entice men and women to take on the not-inconsiderable challenge of learning the bagpipes. Many have attended classes over the years and have stayed, bearing the complaints of loved ones and neighbors (amplifiers, hah!), and eventually overcoming the frustration involved in learning the temperamental and high-maintenance instrument. The reward, after all, is not just beautiful music, but an immeasurable connection to one's Irish roots. If you remember something when you're downtown next Wednesday, remember this: the pipers were there even before good Saint Patrick was.

So, in its quiet way (well, maybe quiet is the wrong word), the Brian Boru Irish Pipe Band continues on its historic path. You'll see them heavily this month in Saint Paul, Minneapolis and greater Minnesota, but also throughout the performance season at various games, fairs, parades and festivals. Don't miss them, but if you do, I'm pretty sure they'll be doing it again next year.


Comment on this entry

From the Emmetsburg Reporter/Democrat:

The highlight of the celebration for many, however, was the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The much-anticipated event was sponsored by the St. Pat’s Association and organized by Dave VanOosbree, parade chairman. VanOosbree returns to his duties of parade chairman after serving in that capacity from 1989 to 1993. “Of course, the Brian Boru bagpipers are my favorite,” VanOosbree noted.

March 15, 2008

Comment on this entry

Click here for the article about the mysterious disappearance of Tarbox's uniform

Comment on this entry
Click here to subscribe to this page