Wetootwaag's Bagpipe and History Podcast

You can now buy physical copies of my albums using this Kunaki link:
https://kunaki.com/msales.asp?PublisherId=166528&pp=1

Throughout 2022 I found some delightful music that was unfamiliar to me from several eighteenth and nineteenth century sources. This album consists of sets made up of some of my favorite tunes and songs that I played for Season 6 of Wetootwaag's Bagpipe and History Podcast. www.wetootwaag.com

This album also reflects my growing love of my Jon Swayne Border pipes in G. In preparation for this album I got a Richard Patkós C uilleann chanter for the sake of recording duets. While the G Border pipes and drones are the most common tone on Rowly Powly, there are three tracks of solo Highland piping, three tracks of solo uilleann piping, three tracks featuring whistles as well as two songs and one lone, but glorious William Dixon tune (Black and the Grey) on my Jon Swayne Lowland Chanter in A.

Be sure to see the Liner Notes PDF and Tune book PDF for more information on these tunes.

Liner Notes

Tune Book

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Bannocks of Barley Meal is my “Best of Season Five” Album. This time around, I took many of my favorite tunes from the various historic sources that I played throughout 2021 on Wetootwaag’s Bagpipe and History Podcast and turned them into sets. Nearly all of these are new recordings rather than selections from the podcast.
I put out an album in December (Pay The Pipemaker) which focused heavily on music from the Scottish Borders, which means this album has more Irish influence than Oyster Wives Rant or Pay the Pipemaker. The largest contributor of melodies is Walker Jackson, the eighteenth century gentleman Irish piper. In all, I have seven tunes on this album attributed to him, including five out of his own 1774 collection of tunes. There is a good number of Fitzmaurice, John Murphy and O’Farrell settings as well; these were all Irish pipers publishing and performing in Scotland and England in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
Liner Notes

Tune Book

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Pay The Pipemaker
In December of 2021 I released my second album Pay the Pipemaker: I was fortunate enough to be loaned a set of Border Pipes made by Nate Banton for much of 2021. About a month after having them I realized I was going to be hard pressed to live without a set of my own. Many of my favorite "Border" pipers play more in the English tradition, with chanters in G rather than the A chanter I was used to playing with Banton's Border pipes. I decided to release this album to help offset the cost of a second chanter on a set of Border pipes from Jon Swayne, with an additional "Lowland" chanter in A so I can still play with myself on Uilleann pipes and whistles easily, while also staying open to future potential collaborations with Hurdy Gurdy's and more continental music. This album is much more polished and intentionaly than Oyster Wives Rant. There are a couple tracks lifted straight from the podcast, but mostly these are sets constructed for the album. This album is far more Boders focused than my work generally is and even includes a Border Ballad sung by myself, "The Liddel Bower." Over the course of 2021 I have been working on pinching up to high B and High C on Highland Bagpipes, you can hear this demonstrated on Tracks 3, 13 and 19.
You can purchase the album yourself digitally here: (CDs coming soon)
https://jeremykingsbury.bandcamp.com/album/pay-the-pipemaker
Too see notes to my archival sources for all of these tunes (when available) look at the linear notes:
www.tinyurl.com/paythepipemaker

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Oyster Wives Rant: A Year of Historic Tunes by Jeremy Kingsbury

In February of 2021 I released 37 of my favorite tunes from Season 4 of the podcast as my first album, Oyster Wives Rant: A Year of Historic Tunes. All of the tunes were recorded in my home office on a quite delapodated Zoom H2 recorder, except for the final track, Improvisation at St. Clement's Church on the Isle of Lewis, which I recorded on my phone while visiting Scotland in 2019, and Cary Baxter's Three Waves, which was recorded on my zoom h2, but in a concert hall which lends some nice acoustics to the track. This was my first album, and the emphasis was on putting my favorite tunes in one place, for my ease in remembering them, but also to give fans of the Podcast a place to support the show. These tracks were mostly if not entirely lifted from the podcast recordings with little or no effort to re record tunes into sets. Sales from the album would have easily covered expences for hosting the podcast if it didn't turn around and inspire me to drop a couple thousand dollars on new books, chanters, bellows and instruments...but that's not really anyone's fault but my own!

https://jeremykingsbury.bandcamp.com/album/oyster-wives-rant-a-year-of-historic-tunes

This is the text from the Oyster Wives Rant booklet:

In 2020 I committed to play a tune a day in order to get more session tunes under my belt. When sessions quit happening those daily tunes began reflecting my love of eighteenth and nineteenth century tunes, and I wound up relaunching Wetootwaag's Bagpipe and History Podcast. This album includes many of my favorites for the 2020 season of the podcast and my year of playing tunes. These are the recordings I used for the podcast, therefore they are mostly single tunes played from the music rather than sets of tunes, and a couple suffer from rare clipping or peaking. Those caveats aside, there is some incredible music I was able to find by digging through old sources. For the last several episodes I used James Aird’s setting for Oyster Wives’ Rant (Track 1) as my introduction theme song for the Podcast, and therefore it is the title to the album. Music and research was a blessed distraction. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy it! Many episodes feature multiple settings of the different tunes that are selected here as well. You can find links to the episodes in the linear notes/book which you can view as a PDF Here:
www.tinyurl.com/oysterwivesrant