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St. Patrick’s Day is a busy one for those who play Irish music on bagpipes. In Rochester, the Caledonian Pipe Band put in a full day making the rounds from bar to bar around the area in southeast Minnesota, playing their pipes. 

This year, they're stopping at 11 bars and restaurants, warming up at the pub Whistle's Binkie on the Lake in the morning before boarding a bus that takes them from stop to stop.

“I think officially, we've been doing the [bar] crawl for like 20 years. But in the last 15 it’s really grown, and in the last 5 or 10, it’s become kind of a monster that has a life of its own,” said Mike Watson, the Pipe Major of the band. “We get so many requests that we can only handle so much.”

Watson has been playing the bagpipes for 25 years, and he’s in charge of picking much of the music the band of 15 pipers and six drummers performs.

“We vary it a little bit according to those bars, the atmosphere in the bars, as some are a little quieter than others,” Watson told MPR News. “The real rowdy ones, we'll do AC/DC, ‘A Long Way to the Top.’ The quieter ones, we tend to stay away from that, but we still have some fun tunes for them.”

AC/DC, of course, is Australian, not Irish. Watson says on St. Patrick's Day, the rules about what is Irish and what’s not get a little flexible.

“So, yes, these are the Scottish Highland pipes, but we share back and forth, and the Irish Pleiades [pipes] as well,” said Watson. “And Ireland has this great St. Paddy’s day celebration, and the Scots don't have that, so we get a chance to play. We're all Irish today right?”

The Rochester Caledonian Pipe Band's pub crawl

Ewan Ferguson is from Scotland, and he's been a member of the Caledonian Pipe Band band since 2002. To him, the St. Patrick's day bar crawl is the band's Superbowl.

“Yeah, I think it lasts a little longer than the Super Bowl,” said Ferguson. “You know, we're doing 11 venues and by the end of the day, it's a little bit weary. We get a little tired. But the crowd kind of pumps us up.”

For the patrons packing these bars on St. Patrick’s Day, there's no question of their feelings about the pipers.

“I love them. I love them,” said one woman watching the pipers at the first stop of the bar crawl. “I'm hoping that more of the younger generation gets into this because we need that to keep this going.”

The Rochester Caledonian Pipe Band continued on their 11 stop journey all day Tuesday, ending at Whistle Binkies South at 8:15 p.m.

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David Schaper

For decades, the group has been making a pilgrimage from pub to pub in Rochester on March 17, playing music for patrons as they enjoy a few beers. 

St. Patrick's Day is the Superbowl for Rochester's Caledonian Pipe Band

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