Bounce-back at British Championships 2017 for Tweedvale Pipe Band.

Tweedvale Pipe Band travelled to Paisley on Saturday 21 May to take part in the British Pipe Band Championships at St James’ Playing Fields, the first major championship of the RSPBA season and the second time the event had been held at this wide open venue. The event enjoyed relatively good weather, certainly earlier in the day when the lower grade bands including Tweedvale played – though a more pressing distraction for some bands was the sound of aircraft taking off from Glasgow Airport, which was separated from the contest venue by the width of the M8 motorway. The band was drawn to play 5th out of 19 bands, with 17 of the entered bands playing. Playing their March, Strathspey and Reel set of “P/M Donald McLean’s Farewell to Oban”, “Men of Argyll”, “Molly Connell”, “The Keel Row”, “Lexy McAskill” and “Flora, Mrs Macleod of MacLeod”. Tweedvale put in a much much improved performance from the previous week’s effort at Dunbar, with the general consensus of band opinion afterwards was that the performance was pretty solid with good sound and tempo, and few errors.

When the results were announced Tweedvale found that it had been placed 11th overall. The piping judges gave the band placings of 13th and 12th whilst the drumming judge placed the band 5th and the ensemble judge 7th. The Grade 4A contest was won by the Denny and Dunipace Gleneagles. Band thanks are offered to BARC Coach Hire for supplying the coach that took the band through to Paisley.

Reflecting on the Paisley result Pipe Major Bruce Gillie, in charge of Tweedvale Pipe Band said, “I’m quite pleased with the band’s performance today. The sound was solid and the playing was generally much much better than last week at Dunbar. We’ll just have to continue practising hard and concentrating on doing the basics well at every contest, and the results will improve. I’d like to offer my thanks to BARC Coach Hire for the coach. I’d also like to encourage the band members not to take encouragement from the British result.”

Tweedvale Pipe Band’s season continues this Saturday 27 May when the band will be found heading to West Lothian to take part in the pipe band contest at the West Lothian Highland Games in Meadow Park, Bathgate. The Bathgate contest will see the band performing  once with its MSR set of “P/M Donald McLean’s Farewell to Oban”, “Men of Argyll”, “Molly Connell”, “The Keel Row”, “Lexy McAskill” and “Captain Lachlan McPhail of Tiree” in the Grade 4A MSR contest. A slightly later departure time of 08.00am will see the band through to West Lothian in good time to take the field 1st out of 4 bands in the Grade 4 MSR contest commencing at 11.50am.

Details of the Day

Contest venue – St James’ Playing Fields, Paisley

Tunes played:

Grade 4 MSR – P/M Donald McLean’s Farewell to Oban, Men of Argyll, Molly Connell, The Keel Row, Lexy McAskill and Captain Lachlan McPhail of Tiree.

Number of Pipers – 9.

Number of Side Drummers – 3.

Number of Bass Drummers – 1.

Number of Tenor Drummers – 3.

The full results of the British Championships Grade 4A MSR contest can be found here.