Na Píobairí Uilleann

Chairman, NPU

An Píobaire

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Harvesting Californian Cane - Ted Anderson IN 1977 I CAME TO CALIFORNIA from Idaho to learn to make uilleann pipe reeds. I had met Sean Folsom earlier in the year. Except for Patrick Sky, Sean was about the only reed maker for these pipes in the US at the time. Tim Britton and David Quinn were just getting going and Bill Ochs was making some reeds in New York. Patrick Hennelly, pipe-maker in Chicago was no longer making reeds, but he said Kevin Henry was making some. Tom Busby in New York occasionally made reeds. He liked 1-1/8 inch diameter tubes. In Ireland there were more reed makers, most notably Paddy Keenan, Finbar Fury, Matt Kiernan, Seamus MacMathuna, who drew an anchor on his reed blades, and Dan O’Dowd. Maurice Kennedy was just stopping production at the time and Alan Ginsberg of London was making pipes and reeds. There were a few others as well, many unknown to me by name but I saw their work in chanters just brought back from Ireland. One piper had a chanter with an elder reed in it. Sean would get chanters sent to him for reeding from all over the US and Canada. Often the chanters would sit around for weeks until Sean got the time or the mood to sit up into the wee hours of the morning making reeds, fueled by endless tea and biscuits as well as occasional candy bars and Cokes. I began gathering together or making the tools needed for the job. Someone gave me some copies of older reed making tips which were published in mimeographs by NPU early on. They included Tom Busby’s notes on Michael Carney’s reed making, “The Ulster Solution” by O’Mealy and a couple of others. They were of some help. Pat Sky’s The Insane Art of Making Reeds was a little booklet which was later reproduced in Pat’s tutor. Sean had a copy of it. I was fortunate to be able to get tips from Paddy O’Neil, Dan Sullivan and Leo Purcell, all older pipers in California. Although he didn’t make reeds, Thomas Standeven was a wealth of information, having garnered information from a number of older pipers. Sean was gathering wild cane from a farm that raised turkeys near Manteca, California. Sean had already gotten a batch of cane from Medir in Spain. The Spanish cane was too hard for making uilleann pipe reeds, so Sean put it away for use in wet-blown reeds for some of the bagpipe collection he was just beginning to put together. The California cane was far better for uilleann pipes, as it was much softer than the Spanish or the French bassoon cane that I had gotten. Sean introduced me to Dan Sullivan who was living in Sonoma. Dan made reeds with only a pocket knife for a tool. His reeds looked crude but played beautifully. He had a stack of letters from Leo Rowsome in which Leo would ask for more cane. Dan had lots of cane stuck up in the rafters and all over his garage. He would only send Leo about a shoe box full of tubes at a time. He said Leo would not have written to him as often if he sent a larger supply. Dan had collected most of the old uilleann pipes in the Bay area and had been doling them out to pipers who were taking up the instrument. Dan harvested cane along Sonoma Creek. Very soon, Project Arundo began destroying all the cane along Sonoma creek, as it is considered an invasive species. It was all gone in a matter of months. Project Arundo was formed to combat cane where ever it grows in California. Sean and I went to the turkey farm to harvest more cane. The farmer had sold most of the cane to a movie

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2014-02-14T00:00:00

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