March brings its own kind of madness for members of the Wichita Caledonia Pipes and Drums group. That’s when the drone of their bagpipes and cadence of their drums are in high demand because of St. Patrick’s Day.
This month, the band will play about a dozen public and private gigs on Saturday, March 14, and Tuesday, March 17, starting with the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Delano. Another longstanding gig is the Blarney Breakfast, an annual fundraiser for the nonprofit Rainbows United at Old Chicago East. In between, they’ll play gigs at watering holes such as the Artichoke and Whiskey Dicks.
Jeff Fetter is one of the founding members of the group and serves as its president. An engineering specialist with Bombardier, he helped start the group in 2006, not long after he started learning to play the bagpipe. Another band member, Kevin Burrow, started playing the bagpipes 30 years ago.
Both studied under Jim Lindsay. Now 100 and living in Newton, the Scottish-born Linsday, who fought in World War II as a member of a British Army Highland Division, is sort of the godfather of bagpipe players in Kansas. He has also taught pipers in a band based in Topeka.
“I thank God I met him,” said Burrow.
One of Burrow’s friends had heard Lindsay play the bagpipes at a funeral and asked Lindsay if he offered lessons. The friend asked Burrow to join him for the lesson.
“Some of us went up there (to Newton) recently, and he worked us pretty hard on the practice chanter,” said Burrow, who, like a number of other Wichita Caledonian band members, once played for the now-defunct Midian Shriners bagpipes and drums band. The chanter is the melodic pipe with fingerholes that is played by the piper.
It’s not unusual for members to find their way to the band because of hearing bagpipes or drums played at a Scottish festival or event.
Ruth Webb was intrigued by the bagpipes she heard in a long-running festival in Tulsa, where she lives. She now makes the trip from Tulsa every other week for the Thursday night rehearsals in St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in east Wichita, fittingly located on a street called Killarney.
One of the younger members of the group, drummer Jordan Adams, said her mom “was adamant” about exposing her family to their Scottish heritage. When her husband was stationed at McConnell Air Force Base, Adams found out about the local band and joined it in 2017. While Adams has always liked the sound of bagpipes, she plays the drums since she has past percussion experience.
“We have several young people in the pipeline,” Burrow said of younger musicians like Adams, but more are welcome. An hour before the band rehearsal, members of the band are available to provide lessons to budding bagpipers and drummers.
“It’s so cool to look back and say we’ve been doing this for 20 years,” said Rob Farmer, who has been the group’s longtime drum section leader, known in band parlance as the battery sergeant.
He ticked off a few of the band’s accomplishments during that time: It was one of the first to perform at the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C.; it has recorded a CD; and it has been participating in Veterans Day parades in Ponca City, Oklahoma, for nearly all that time.
“And the kilt is very cool,” Farmer said.
Band members wear authentic wool kilts in the red, white and blue colors of the American National tartan made by Houston Kiltmakers in Paisley, Scotland. Other parts of their outfits include ghillie brogues, which are the traditional lace-up shoes, kilt hose (or socks), a sporran, which is the small bag worn in the center of the kilt, and a Glengarry woolen cap.
