On a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, Jack Devereux was in the garage behind his family’s Asheville home, building bagpipes. With the help of a lathe, Devereux was trimming a block of an exotic hardwood called cocobolo down from an inch-thick dimension to a spindle the size of an index finger. He’d been at it for hours.
“I guess I’m just a little bit obsessive-compulsive,” he said.
At 17 years old, Devereux may be the world’s youngest builder of the Irish Union or uilleann bagpipes. And while he hasn’t built a full set yet, it’s just a matter of time before he does. So far he has made three chanters, the precision-turned cylinders a piper plays the melody on; a set of drones; two sets of bellows; and piles of reeds, the thin shims of cane that vibrate inside the pipes to produce sound.
The uilleann pipes (uilleann is Irish Gaelic for “elbow”—the bellows is located under the crook of the player’s right arm) is a comically involved instrument. Each set is a collection of upwards of 100 ferrules, bands, bushings, splines, reeds, wires, threads, tubes and rods.
A suede wind bag, fed by the bellows, fits under the piper’s other arm and provides a steady stream of air. Three “drones” lie across the lap, each tuned to the same pitch, an octave apart. They produce the potent, endless bleat that accompanies the melody played upon the chanter. Additionally, three “regulators,” similar to the drones but with brass keys along their length, allow a piper, using forearm pressure, to pepper a jig, reel or hornpipe with calliope-like harmonies.
Devereux’s passion for Irish music began seven years ago, when he was on a family vacation to his dad’s ancestral homeland of County Wexford, Ireland. At a pub, between sets of “an awful” country/western band, an old man took the stage and knocked out jigs and reels on an accordion. Devereux was mesmerized.
Since then, with the periodic help of teachers from the Swannanoa Gathering and the year-round guidance of the local Irish-music scene, he’s learned to play the fiddle, the tin whistle and the flute. Three years ago, Devereux got started on the bagpipes. Last summer his musical prowess carried him to County Donegal, Ireland, to compete in the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil (festival of music) on the pipes. His skill on the instrument might grow from a genetic predisposition: One of his father’s Irish cousins was a celebrated piper. Music runs strong in the family this side of the Atlantic, too; his mother’s father is an old-time guitarist.
The pipes are a cranky instrument, hard to keep in tune, and given to flatulent wonks and skreets. Years of practice are required to coax anything resembling music from them. Still, the uilleann pipes are far more polite, even within their strident high register, than cousins like the Irish war pipes, the Scottish Great Highland pipes, the Northumbrian smallpipes, and the Breton bombarde, a mouth-blown instrument whose tone sounds less like music than an air raid.
Aside from the difficulty of learning the instrument, the pipes’ chief downside is their cost. A full set from a reputable builder may fetch nearly $10,000. After some searching a few years ago (word travels fast in the bagpipe community), Devereux got what he calls an “incredible deal” on a set of pipes from Washington State maker Brad Angus.
They cost $6,000. (He’s still paying his parents back.)
His mentor in the art of pipe building is Pat Sky, a Chapel Hill-based builder who learned to play from the late County Dublin piper Seamus Ennis, one of the handful of acknowledged masters of the instrument.
Devereux hopes one day to be a full-time pipe builder, with a sideline in wooden flutes. “There’s more of a demand for flutes,” he admitted. Either way, it’s not a get-rich-quick proposition—an experienced craftsman can make at best three or four sets a year, each requiring 600 or more hours of work. There are perhaps 50 pipe builders worldwide.
The uilleann pipes may have their origins on the Emerald Isle, but the materials list Devereux relies on is global: blackwood from Africa; tagua nut—an ivory substitute—from Brazil; beeswax from the Western United States; and less noble lubricants such as lard—a sealant for the wind bag—from dear old North Carolina. Recently he acquired a 300-year-old piece of French boxwood, fine-grained and as heavy for its size as asphalt. It’s a score, but he’s not sure, yet, what he’ll make with it.
Devereux started the lathe whirring again and slipped his safety glasses on. Later, he said, he might head over to the weekly Celtic jam at Jack of the Wood. “I don’t know, though,” he added after a moment’s thought. “I’ve got a bunch of homework to do.”
Jack Devereux will play his bagpipes this Saturday, March 17, at Jack of the Woods on Patton Avenue in Asheville. Call 252-5445 for more information.
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