A 'pipes dream' at the White Hart

OK, so we still don’t have a St. Patrick’s Day parade. On Tuesday night, Lynchburg will have Paddy Keenan, and that’s a running start toward Celtic credibility.

Keenan, who will be appearing at the White Hart on lower Main Street, is, by all accounts, one of the best uilleann pipe players in the world. It’s a little like bringing in Eric Clapton to do a local gig, although one of Keenan’s former Bothy Band mates once compared Paddy to another famous guitarist.

“He’s the Jimi Hendrix of the pipes,” Doral Lunny said.

Which doesn’t mean that Keenan smashes his instrument or sets it on fire, as Hendrix was famous for doing, just that he plays it with a lot of passion and imagination.

Uilleann pipes are the Irish version of bagpipes, and they require four arms to play them. The fact that human musicians have to manage with just two is one of the wonders of nature.

The bag isn’t inflated by blowing into it, but by using a bellows strapped to one arm just above the elbow. Notes are played on a “chanter,” chords with the other hand. “Uillean” is the Gaelic word for “elbow.”

“It’s amazing to watch,” said Sid Hagan, a local musician and world music fan, “and the sound it makes is really strange.”

“Scottish bagpipes can only play one octave,” said the Rev. Tim Patterson, the Lynchburg minister (Grace Assembly) who was instrumental in arranging Keenan’s appearance, “but the uilleann pipes have a lot more range.”

Their sound has also been described as “sweeter.”

Also a virtuoso on the tin whistle, Paddy Keenan has been wailing away on the Irish pipes since he was 10 and a member of a family of “Travelers” in his native Ireland.

“Travelers,” explained Hagan, “is another name over there for gypsies.”

And, like all musicians, Keenan is still a gypsy.

“He played at the (now defunct) Prism up in Charlottesville a few times,” said Patterson, “and had talked with him some. Fred Boyce, who ran the Prism, knew Paddy fairly well, and I asked if he thought he would ever play in Lynchburg.”

By way of response, Boyce brought his banjo and guitar down to the White Hart and played the venue himself, pronouncing it satisfactory. It didn’t hurt that White Hart owners Ed and Debbie Hopkins are also Celtic music fans.

“The way it turned out, Paddy is coming back north from a gig down in Raleigh,” Patterson said, “and he agreed to play en route.”

The following night, Keenan is booked into an Irish pub in Philadelphia.

One review of the Meath, Ireland, native’s work calls the Bothy Band “one of the most influential bands of the 1970s.

“The Bothy Band forever changed the face of Irish traditional music, merging a driving rhythm section with traditional Irish tunes in ways that had never been heard before. Those fortunate enough to have seen the band have never forgotten the impression they made — one reviewer likened the experience to ‘being in a jet when it suddenly whips into full throttle along the runway.’

“Paddy was one of the band’s founding members, and his virtuosity on the pipes, combined with the ferocity of his playing, made him … its driving force.”

Fred Boyce will accompany Keenan on Tuesday night.