OK, so I’ve been thinking of cool tunes to add to my Drive-by piping repertoire. Seems like people always smile when you play a tune they don’t expect to hear on the pipes.

The Pirate of Sainte Mary’s is a piper who busks, and he plays a version of the Star Wars theme. Sounds like it’s a hit with his audience.

I’d like to work up some punk standards on the pipes.

My tiny list so far:

I Fought the Law - The Clash

Blitzkrieg Bop - The Ramones (honestly, with three notes you can probably make anything by The Ramones work on pipes)

It’s early days yet - any suggestions? I’ll update the list soon….

Adding to what I said earlier about my McCallums, I should tell you about the excellent service I received from the pipe maker.

I blow really wet - it’s kind of gross sometimes. Anyway, a few months back I noticed that the fake ivory end of my blowstick was loose where it screws onto the end of the blackwood. I checked closer and realized that the threaded blackwood area had cracked, from being wet and drying out so many times, I guess. I also had a loose ferrule on one of my drones after moving from New York to Utah, which I figured was also a drying-out issue due to humidity differences between the two places.

I called McCallum to ask their advice and Kenny McCallum (the owner and pipe maker) picked up. He was extremely friendly and helpful - turns out he used to live in California before moving to Scotland to start his business and he even played in Utah a few times. He even offered to replace my blowstick free of charge - despite the fact I didn’t buy the pipes directly from him and they were by then over two years old.

I ended up fixing the problems myself - hey, a real piper can do his own repairs, right? But this was just another reason to believe that this is a nice company to do business with.