Jori Chisholm Bagpipes and the Art of Incremental Improvement. A Conversation About the Pipes and More.

Professional bagpipe player Jori Chisholm joins us for this episode. Jori has won the United States Gold Metal award 4 times.

From 11-Year-Old Bagpiper to World Stage

Jori shares how he got his start on the bagpipes at age 11, patiently working his way from a practice chanter to the full Highland bagpipe. He gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the discipline, stamina, and physical challenges that come with learning the pipes (did you know it can take up to a year on a practice chanter before touching the big pipes?!).

The Power of Daily Habits (Even 5 Minutes Counts!)

One of the episode’s most inspiring takeaways: Jori’s experiment with daily, low-pressure lessons for his young son. Instead of striving for marathon practice sessions, they focus on just 5-10 minutes every single day, leading to amazing incremental improvements. Jori explains how this new approach takes the pressure off, helps prevent bad habits, and keeps learning fun — a lesson musicians, parents, and anyone with a big goal will appreciate.

Teaching the World — From Seattle to Scotland (and Online!)

After years of teaching lessons in person, Jori became a true trailblazer, launching the world’s first online bagpipe lessons back in 2003. With students around the globe, an ever-growing online teaching platform, and a popular membership program, Jori is bringing piping into the digital age. (Fun fact: his Skype bagpipe lessons made the front page of The New York Times!)

Folklife, The Moore, and Playing with Bob Weir

Jori’s favorite place to play in Washington? The Northwest Folklife Festival at Seattle Center is at the top of his list — but he’s also played Benaroya Hall and even rocked the stage at The Moore Theatre with Bob Weir of Grateful Dead fame!

Wondering about the technical side of bagpiping—how competitions work, why a humidifier in your reed case matters, or just how you amplify bagpipes at a venue like The Gorge? Jori covers all that and more (plus, you’ll discover there are Swedish and Bulgarian bagpipes too!).

Jori Chisholm Bagpipes Episode Transcript

Jori Chisholm [00:00:00]:

Shown to me in maybe the one of the clearest examples that I can remember is the power of incremental progress.

Scott Cowan [00:00:26]:

Welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. Here’s your host, Scott Cowan. So I am here today with Jori Chisholm. Jori, I’m gonna say, first off, thanks for making this happen. And, at the time of recording, we’re both kind of we talked before I hit record that it’s gonna be a little warm where we are. So, I appreciate you. I’m you know, I appreciate you sitting in a hot room talking to me. But I would like to know the first question I have for you is and we’re gonna go through a lot of things.

Scott Cowan [00:00:54]:

But the first question I have for you is how long when you started playing the bagpipes at what age 11. Right? Yeah. How I say this somewhat tongue in cheek, but how long did it take before you could play it where other people would stay in the room with you? Because I’ve heard people say you know, I’ve heard people play the pipes, and I was like, oh my gosh. So how long did it take you to get a degree of competency? Not to where you’re at now, obviously, but just, you know, competent as a child, as a kid.

Jori Chisholm [00:01:25]:

Well, it’s a good it’s a that’s a good question. Funny question. But it is true that, I think there are some other musical instruments where you can make a beautiful sound, earlier in your, sort of in your learning progression. So I started when I was in I was 11. And the way you start learning the bagpipes typically is you start with an instrument called a practice chanter. And a practice chanter, it kinda looks like a recorder. It doesn’t have a a whistle. It has actually has a little reed in there, but it kinda looks like a recorder type thing.

Jori Chisholm [00:02:01]:

And most pipers, they start out on that, and you learn the fingering. You learn a couple tunes. If you’re new to music, you learn about music theory and rhythm and how to tap your foot and that sort of thing. And most pipers stay on the chanter for six months to a year, maybe longer before you get onto the big pipes. So that was my you know, that was you know, I just follow that sort of that typical plan and took lessons for about a year on the chanter and then got the pipes. And, you know, that’s a bit of a, you know, it’s a bit of a learning process with learning how to blow the thing and keep a steady pressure, and there’s also, like, a physical sort of stamina component to it. As there is with a lot of instruments, you’re developing specific muscles and you’re building strength and stamina. With the piping, it’s the embouchure trying to, you know, build build the lip strength and then the arm strength and then the breath.

Jori Chisholm [00:02:55]:

I was fortunate that I my parents were very supportive, you know, and I always felt like they loved to hear me play. And, you know, I feel the same way with my kids. I have a couple of young kids, and when they’re taking their music lessons and they’re practicing, I just think it’s an amazing sound even when maybe just somebody else, it’s not what they would wanna hear. But to hear your own kid, you know, practicing and playing and enjoying it and getting better, that’s they know better sound.

Scott Cowan [00:03:23]:

Right. The the progress is awesome. So your kids, what are they what instruments are they learning?

Jori Chisholm [00:03:28]:

So, while I’m teaching, my older son, we’re doing bagpipe lessons.

Scott Cowan [00:03:33]:

Okay.

Jori Chisholm [00:03:33]:

And, they’ve both taken some online mandolin lessons and love that. I just thought the mandolin is such a cool instrument, But particularly, I thought for little little kids, they’re six and nine, that would be something more sort of sized, better than, like, a guitar or something. So they really love that and singing along with their mandolin playing. With my older son, Colin, who’s nine now, we’ve been doing something really interesting. And, for me, as someone who’s been teaching bagpipes for decades, a really interesting different approach, which is we’re doing a lesson every day. And, he got inspired. I’ve been doing some exercising, and I’ve been doing some other things that I’ve been keeping track of my progress on a little chart. And he said, well, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we do a a bagpipe lesson every day for a hundred days? And that was completely his idea, and we’ve we’ve eclipsed a hundred days.

Jori Chisholm [00:04:26]:

But it’s been really fascinating and interesting for me as someone who’s taught for a long, long time, but the typical music lesson sort of plan is you have a lesson once a week with your teacher or maybe once every two weeks or maybe twice a week if you’re really, really into it. So to do this thing that we’re doing together, which is a short lesson every day, it’s really interesting just to see how he learns. And I’m I’m getting some really interesting insights that I’m thinking about and, you know, trying to make sense of how I can implement those with my other students.

Scott Cowan [00:05:03]:

Interesting because my my son played, bassoon and not by choice. And

Jori Chisholm [00:05:13]:

So how does that work? How how do you how do you get an instrument not by choice? They assign it to you in school? Or

Scott Cowan [00:05:19]:

In this case, his mother selected it for him.

Jori Chisholm [00:05:23]:

Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:05:24]:

And when he came to live with me, when he turned 13, part of the agreement was that I would continue to have him take bassoon lessons.

Jori Chisholm [00:05:36]:

Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [00:05:36]:

So it was a negotiation. So, anyway, he took bassoon lessons, and he was just never into it.

Jori Chisholm [00:05:42]:

Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [00:05:44]:

But you could hear when he when he would practice I mean, that was the other thing. He wasn’t practicing consistently. But when when you when you when he practiced and he put his mind to it, you could you I could hear progress. With your son and daily, are you able to I I mean, you’re you’re an expert, so you probably are able to discern things. But that’s interesting that, you know, with daily lessons, I wonder, do you is it easier or harder to see if there’s progress?

Jori Chisholm [00:06:12]:

Well, I can definitely see progress and, you know, maybe on a day to day basis, it’s not, you know, maybe it’s not something huge on a day to day basis. But what it has really, shown to me, and maybe the one of the clearest examples that I can remember, is the power of incremental progress. You know? And we all know that there’s this idea you practice and you keep at it, and you might not see the daily results, but over time, you will see it. But we’re really noticing it here. And what’s different about what we’re doing is that it really takes a lot of the pressure off when you’re, doing something every day like this. It’s a bit of a departure from the normal sort of approach that I have always embraced and I’ve always talked to my students, which is you gotta sit down, you gotta pay attention, you gotta be really focused, you know, the whole ten thousand hours thing and quality deliberate practice and all this stuff and don’t practice mistakes. So it’s a little bit of a departure from that where, in this case, there’s no pressure. In any one session, there’s no pressure because we just do it every day.

Jori Chisholm [00:07:23]:

So it’s not like, okay. I I this is my practice now or this is my lesson. It has to be good. I need to because I think what what I’ve what I’m sort of figuring out through this experience is that that amount of pressure, that can be kind of exhausting and also can lead to some bad habits in the player. So a real common roadblock that pipers I think all musicians or maybe even athletes too that we face is sort of poor technique or bad form, and a lot of it’s caused by tension. You just tighten up when you’re trying to do something that’s challenging or you’re you’re just sort of a little bit overwhelmed by the complexity of what you’re doing. You just you tighten up, and then your your your form gets bad. And then that ends up being, if that becomes a habit, that becomes sort of a roadblock you have to get over.

Jori Chisholm [00:08:12]:

So, really, what we’re doing here with our daily lessons is it’s like the the number one goal is, you know, have fun, learn something, and do no harm. And what I mean by that is I’m just trying to be really careful that, you know, he avoids some of these pitfalls that we get into, these bad habits. And you can’t avoid them all, but, you know, try to learn a little something, have some fun, and make sure that we don’t get into any bad habits along the way. So it’s been working.

Scott Cowan [00:08:47]:

I’m amazed that a nine year old has the discipline even with dad encouraging to do something for a hundred days plus straight. That’s that’s I I don’t care. You could play video games with him for a hundred days straight, and he’d take a day off somewhere in there. I mean, it’s that’s an amazing feat right there. How long are the lessons, though? Each each day, how long

Jori Chisholm [00:09:11]:

Five to ten minutes. Sometimes we get onto a sometimes we get onto a rool, and we’re just really having fun, and we’ll maybe go fifteen, twenty minutes. But it’s that idea of yeah. It’s just a little bit. And That’s cool. What you notice you know, I have taught young people before and even adults, you know, that there’s a limit. You know? There’s a limit to what you can take in. And even if you have the attention span for it at a certain point, it’s just you’re just not getting that much out of it.

Jori Chisholm [00:09:41]:

There’s only so much you can sort of digest. So in a normal lesson, it was a half an hour, an hour lesson. You know, in a normal lesson scenario, there’s a certain amount of transitional time that sort of, hi. How you doing? What’s going on? And sort of orienting ourselves into what are we gonna talk about? What do you be you know, that sort of stuff. But with what we’re doing every day, it’s just, alright. Just just hit it. Hit the ground running. Let’s do this.

Jori Chisholm [00:10:05]:

And sometimes I’ll I will guide the lesson and say, okay. Is this what we’re gonna do today? And some days, I’ll just give him the option and say, well, what do you wanna do? What’s what do you wanna work on? And sometimes he wants to play something we’ve done before, or sometimes he’s really hungry to, you know, say, dad, show me something new.

Scott Cowan [00:10:20]:

So does does he how regularly does he practice?

Jori Chisholm [00:10:23]:

He doesn’t practice at all.

Scott Cowan [00:10:24]:

So it’s just the it’s just the five to twenty minutes at tops daily?

Jori Chisholm [00:10:29]:

That’s it. And I would say if if someone was practicing on their own, that would be great. If you got twenty minutes a day, seven days a week, that’s good. I mean, I think the way that our brains learn, you’re better off having shorter sessions every day rather than, oh, I’m too busy. I’ll do it tomorrow, and then a few days go by. And then you’re like, well, I got time on Sunday, and I’m gonna block it out. It’s like, that’s not how your brain works. You know? We’re like, you you need to sort of be snacking along the way and not just fasting and then, you know, like a A feast.

Jori Chisholm [00:11:02]:

Right. Like some sort of, predatory snake, you know, eating once a month thing. Like, our brains don’t process information that way. So

Scott Cowan [00:11:11]:

That’s that’s very cool. So at eleven, you started. And then, through high school and all that, you were playing. And then you you ended up at UPS. Yeah. And for those those of you that think I’m talking about the brown trucks, I mean, University of Puget Sound. Yeah. What what why did you select University of Puget Sound?

Jori Chisholm [00:11:32]:

Yeah. So I was looking around different schools, and, you know, I was looking at schools back east and some schools down in California and, toured up at Puget Sound, loved the campus. At that point, I was really certain what I was gonna do with my life, which was, I was gonna go to medical school. That was my plan. When I was a teenager, I was very driven. I was very academically driven, and they had a great health sciences advising program. So for young premed types like myself, UPS was the place to go. In fact, out in my in my freshman dormitory, I had three roommates, and we were all pre med students.

Jori Chisholm [00:12:08]:

And, none of us actually ended up going to medical school. But I think that’s part of the, you know, that’s part of the learning process. So I have a real I can understand when I meet a young person who’s totally driven and totally certain on their life’s path, and I also, you know, can understand how the things can change really quickly. You know, you go to college, you are exposed to some different things, you grow and develop, and I always, I always had a sense that bagpipes were gonna be a big part of my life. I didn’t have a sense of how that was gonna be. There really wasn’t anyone that I could look to to say, okay. This is what how you can make a living as a bagpiper. All the great pipers that I knew had day jobs.

Jori Chisholm [00:12:53]:

Right? It was sort of they were very, very intense on this hobby, basically. And sort of, like, semi professional in terms of their dedication, but not professional in terms of making any money to pay the bills. Right? So there were some pipers in Scotland who would teach in the public schools. There’s some of that going on. And then there were, of course, pipers in the Scottish army. So that’s one way you could go. But those were not options for me. So I didn’t have a a clear sense of, okay.

Jori Chisholm [00:13:22]:

Well, this is how you’re gonna commit your life to bagpipes and also have a job. So that was part of, what I had to figure out. And, you know, finished my premed stuff, and took the MCATs in college, although never never applied to medical school. I ended up getting a psychology degree, and that was the start of, you know, me finding that an academic discipline that really connected with what I was interested in. And I’m still very interested in many of those topics that I was first introduced to in the psych department. You know, how people learn, sensation and perception, stuff about how our brains interpret music and rhythmic sounds and pitch. I did my senior project on music perception. And, there’s a field called psychophysics where it’s sort of the interplay between stimuli in the physical world and and how we perceive it.

Jori Chisholm [00:14:23]:

So it’s sort of a sensation and perception thing. And it just absolutely sort of brought together some of my interest that I had, you know, sort of like biological, medical sort of stuff with the science and then with music. And in addition, you know, in my major, learned about you know, studied learning and behaviorism and motivation. One of my favorite courses was, a 400 level course that was sort of an introduction to some clinical psychology. And very much, I still think about that course in terms of, you know, we did a behavior change project. So, I mean, that’s a big part of learning an instrument is sort of like setting a goal and observing your behavior and figuring out your personal obstacles and your motivate things that motivate you. And, you know, the cell was very formative and, you know, I still think about that kind of stuff, and I still read a lot of books on that sort of personal development, motivation, learning, totally applicable, and I use that in my teaching and in my own playing.

Scott Cowan [00:15:24]:

I was just gonna say it’s it sounds like, you know, unintended consequences of you of your of your college led you right to to being an instructor. I’m looking here. So you were taking trips to the Coeur d’Alene Piping School, which I joke it’s in Idaho, so it’s dead to us, but it’s so close to the border that we’ll talk about it. But the question comes to mind is, I don’t think of cord I don’t think of bagpipes and Coeur d’Alene in the same breath. Now that’s because I’m not an aficionado, but tell us about this Coeur d’Alene Piping School and why you would go what was the draw?

Jori Chisholm [00:16:05]:

Yeah. So, you know, we gotta go back twenty, thirty years pre Internet. You know? So before YouTube, before email, you know, there were pipers around the world and, you know, really intensely, you know, into this hobby and this community. And here in the Northwest, there’s actually a very high standard of, pipe bands, piping and drumming. And I grew up in Portland, live now in in Washington state in Seattle. But all the way from Portland up to Vancouver, BC and sort of Spokane and into Coeur D’Alene is this really strong community, and we have all our Highland Games and our festivals.

Scott Cowan [00:16:50]:

Mhmm.

Jori Chisholm [00:16:50]:

So before we were doing stuff online, pipers would travel. We would travel. I would travel as a kid all over to Vancouver for these big competitions, and we would just go wherever we had to go to to, you know, hook up with our, you know, our fellow pipers. And I don’t know the exact history of it, but I think there were some, yeah, I’m sorry. I don’t know I don’t know the history of it, but the the place to go, there was this two week summer camp that was in Coeur D’Alene. They had it at North Idaho College. And k. They got pipers from Scotland.

Jori Chisholm [00:17:23]:

That’s where I met pipe major Evan McCray, Andrew Wright, these great pipers from Scotland, Pipers from all across Canada and the Northwest and even further would come for this two week thing. And it was just a dream for, you know, a young kid to be there and staying up late and sneaking out of the dorms and just piping morning till night and swimming in the lake. And it was just just an amazing experience. And I’m still friends with some of the pipers that we met as as kids at that camp.

Scott Cowan [00:17:52]:

Well, you mentioned Evan McRae and Andrew Wright. And, also, there’s so it’s I’m reading from Wikipedia, full disclosure, and I’m gonna stop because I’m gonna you’re gonna have to say a word for me. As well as making an annual trip to the Coeur d’Alene Piping School in Idaho, where he studied I can’t say it, but basically, it’s the please help me out. I mean, I’m making

Jori Chisholm [00:18:14]:

it less than that.

Scott Cowan [00:18:15]:

With p? Yes. The word that starts with p. Please

Jori Chisholm [00:18:17]:

help me. Yeah. Pee brah. You can do a little of a in there. Pee brah or Pee brah. Okay. And that’s a Gaelic Scottish Gaelic word. It means piping literally Mhmm.

Jori Chisholm [00:18:27]:

But it’s a specific form of bagpipe music. And unless you really have been into the piping community, you may have never heard this type of music. But a lot of pipers, they, you know, they love it. These these tunes are, really long. They’re quite complex. Okay. It can have sort of a mesmerizing effect. They start out quite slow, and then they sort of build in complexity.

Jori Chisholm [00:18:50]:

It’s a theme and variations. And these tunes might be a short one, might be seven minutes long. The longer ones go up to twenty twenty minutes or more. So it’s sort of a lot of pipers consider it the highest echelon of our repertoires as P. Brakh music. And, my first teacher, you know, got me into that, and then I was lucky to be able to study with Andrew Andrew Wright and many other great pipers over the years.

Scott Cowan [00:19:14]:

Wow. Okay. Side note, how does how does one manage to play a bagpipe for twenty minutes?

Jori Chisholm [00:19:24]:

Well, you just could be in shape, really. Yeah. So, you know, having your having your, pipe set up properly is a huge part of it. Right? So unlike a concert pianist that just shows up and the pianos the Steinway is just sitting there waiting for you, A bagpipe is a very personalized thing. You know, as as, you know, any instrument, you know, that a player has their own instrument. But in particular, the bagpipes, it’s you know, has to fit you physically, so getting it set up so that the right size and everything is is right for you. But there’s also there’s four reeds in there. You know, saxophone and a clarinet, oboe, they have one reed.

Jori Chisholm [00:19:59]:

Bagpipe has four because you have the three drones on your shoulder. You have a bass drone and two tenor drones. Each one of those drones has a reed inside it. And then the chanter, which is where the the you’re playing your fingers where the melody comes out, there’s a reed in there as well. So getting everything set up so that the instrument fits you, that it’s airtight, and, that your reeds are set up properly and efficient, that’s a huge part of being a piper. It’s, you know, you have to sort of be a bit of a mechanic in terms of getting your the whole machine really working well.

Scott Cowan [00:20:34]:

Alright. So these questions full total acknowledgment. I know what a bagpipe looks like, but I really I didn’t know there was reed, so there we go. I mean, I know nothing about this instrument. So I’m gonna try to relate it to another instrument that I know a little bit about, which that it’s the only way I can process at the moment. Do you do you play more than one bagpipe? I mean, do you have like, guitar players have you know, some of them have acoustic guitar, some of them have electric guitars, and then they have, you know, this and that. Is that is that similar in the bagpipe world? Do you have different

Jori Chisholm [00:21:07]:

I do. I have I have I have multiple sets of pipes. I’d I’d say a lot of pipers, they maybe have one set. I used to be like that for years. So I have my main instrument is, you know, what people think about the bagpipes is the guy in the kilt marching around with the drone sticking up. So that’s what we call the great highland bagpipe, and that is from, you know, originally sort of flourished in the Highlands Of Scotland. So that’s the Scottish pipes. There’s also something called the Scottish small pipes, and small pipes are much quieter.

Jori Chisholm [00:21:37]:

You might hear them in a folk band, like a Scottish folk band with guitar and fiddle, that sort of thing. Sort of like a a pub kind of little little folk band. In a way, it’s, has a similar tonality to the Irish pipes. So the Irish the the pipes. The Irish pipes, which you may have seen, they don’t blow into the bag. They have a bag like I do on the Scottish pipes, but instead of blowing, they have a bellows under the other arm. So they have both both arms going.

Scott Cowan [00:22:08]:

Okay.

Jori Chisholm [00:22:09]:

So there are other forms of pipes. And, you know, I I think Scotland is most famous for bagpipes, but also Ireland. There are pipes in Astoria and Galicia in Spain. There are pipes throughout much of Europe. There are Swedish bagpipes, Bulgarian bagpipes. So all throughout Europe at some point, there were I’ve seen a Estonian bagpipes, so different pipes. And and what they have in common is, you know, some sort of flute type thing, a flute, chanter type thing, which is like a flute with a reed in it, and then a bag. That’s what they all have in common, and then you have these additional drones that you can stick on it from zero drones up to, I think, four or five depending on the variety.

Jori Chisholm [00:22:57]:

So that’s what that’s, you know, broadly, that’s what a bagpipe is, is it’s a read instrument with this bag. And what the bag allows you to do is have continuous sound, and take a breath. So unlike a flute or a whistle or something where you’re blowing directly on the reed, those stop playing as soon as you stop blowing or they require circular breathing. With the bag, you’re maintaining the air pressure with your arm by pressing on the bag, and then you’re blowing. You’re just topping off the bag and just keeping it full.

Scott Cowan [00:23:30]:

Oh, okay.

Jori Chisholm [00:23:31]:

So that’s actually a big skill in being a piper is your we call it blowing steady. Although it’s not blowing, it’s a it’s a combination of blowing and squeezing with the arm, but your ability to to keep the pressure going for the length of your performance and, very importantly, to keep a really steady pressure. That’s just a big that’s one of the big skills of of being a piper. And to get a really great sound that’s in tune, that stays in tune, that’s you know, it’s all the all the parts are working together requires that you maintain that really steady foundation of, steady pressure in the bag. That’s a particular skill.

Scott Cowan [00:24:12]:

Oh, this is this is fascinating to me. So after UPS so I’m a little so what’s confusing to me is you graduated from UPS, but then you ended up doing the Simon Fraser University pipe band. So that’s up in Vancouver.

Jori Chisholm [00:24:27]:

Or Mhmm. Right?

Scott Cowan [00:24:28]:

I think it’s is it technically in Vancouver or is it in Richland? I can’t remember.

Jori Chisholm [00:24:32]:

It’s in Burnaby. Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:24:34]:

So I was wrong both times. Okay. Thanks. Why why did you go what why there? Is it what’s why was that part of the journey?

Jori Chisholm [00:24:46]:

Yeah. So the the Simon Fraser University pipe band is one of the all time great pipe bands in the world. Six time world champions. I played in the band for nineteen years, and in that time, we won the world three times. So this is a really very well known band and one of the most successful bands in history. And the way that the band works is that you don’t have to be a student of the of the band. The band is sponsored by the university and and affiliated with the university, and they opened it up, you know, right, you know, in the early early days because they wanted to have a world class caliber band. So Okay.

Jori Chisholm [00:25:31]:

Players from around the world come to play in the SFU pipe band, and I was one of those. And that was a big draw for me coming from Oregon. It’s like, well, what do I do with my life? Well, there’s this very strong pull north Right. To get up to Vancouver, which is sort of the the hub of piping and culture in this region. And one of the strongest piping bagpipe communities in the world outside of Scotland, you you absolutely have to say this region in this sort of Vancouver, BC, Lower Mainland, Seattle, Bellingham kind of region, a very strong you know, just some really good bands, and and I think SFU and the the guys who play me SFU band are a big part of that. And so it was a big attraction for me to come north and then to spend all those years commuting from here up to Vancouver. For nineteen years, I was driving up there for band practice. And we won the world, as I said, traveled the world.

Jori Chisholm [00:26:28]:

You know, we played at Lincoln Center. We did the Sydney Opera House.

Scott Cowan [00:26:33]:

Oh, wow.

Jori Chisholm [00:26:33]:

You know, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. So a very well known band and a huge, huge part of my life for, you know, a couple decades was playing in that band.

Scott Cowan [00:26:43]:

Wow. Okay. So I’m gonna ask you a question I I ask all musicians on this on my show. Two part question, and I think you might have some interesting answers. So as a bagpipe player, where is the is there a venue in Washington state, it’s gotta be Washington state venue, that you enjoy playing at a lot? Like, what’s your favorite place to play the pipes publicly? That’s question number one. Question number two is if you’re listening to music, where’s your favorite venue to see music performed at? It can be bag on that one, I’ll let you be bagpipe or anything you wanna listen to. But just yeah. Where where is a bagpipe player? Do you wanna play in Washington state?

Jori Chisholm [00:27:27]:

I I almost never miss folklife. I love folklife, the Northwest folklife, like, folk northwest folklife festival at Seattle Center. And I just I just love everything about it because it’s free. So I don’t get paid, but we don’t have to pay to go in. And every year, I, you know, send in my application, and most years, I get a chance to play there. And they give me a venue, and I get to go do a thirty minute show and just I love the sort of the, the casualness of it and sort of the random drop ins. You know, a lot of the sort of bagpipe specific things that I play, you know, sort of like a inside community kinda thing. And then and those are great.

Jori Chisholm [00:28:11]:

But I love playing at Folklife and just having the just the sort of the the community there. And it’s also a chance for my friends and, you know, folks I know around town to say, hey. Come see me at Folklife and come down and just, you know, lay your blanket down on the grass and grab a beer afterwards. And and, that’s become even more part of our family tradition now that we’ve got the kids. And we’ll go down there, I’ll do my show, and then we’ll hang around and wander around and see some of the amazing stuff that, you know, you never know what’s around every corner at Folklife. So, love playing there. In terms of I’ve also played at Benaroya Hall a couple times, and that is absolutely world class. I mean, I’ve done I’ve played solo a couple times on that stage in Benaroya Hall in the big theater, and it’s I mean, the the acoustics there, it’s a beautiful building.

Jori Chisholm [00:29:02]:

The acoustics are incredible. And, there’s a there’s a group based in Mount Vernon called the Celtic Arts Foundation, and they put on a fantastic piping well, they do stuff all year all year round. They put on the Skagit Valley Highland Games up in Mount Vernon, and then they put on this master’s concert that’s been at Benaroy Hall for many years, and I’ve played there a couple times. And they bring in the best of the best from Scotland and Ireland and Cape Breton and Canada, and and that is a I mean, that’s a that’s an absolute top of the list, you know, thrill for me to be on that stage because the the acoustics are just incredible. And for a solo piper, I mean, so much of it is the sound. You know? And a lot of times, we’re playing in venues where it just doesn’t doesn’t have the opportunity for the sound to expand and to sort of ring out like that.

Scott Cowan [00:29:57]:

K. How about when you when you go watch music, when you go see people perform, where’s the venue that you like to go to?

Jori Chisholm [00:30:04]:

Oh, gosh. Well, just recently, we’ve just discovered Jazz Alley, Demetrio’s Jazz Alley downtown and seen some really cool shows there. Again, like a you know, it’s sort of a it’s got dinner theater type venue. Right. Where else have we gone? Yeah. That’s what I can think of right now.

Scott Cowan [00:30:24]:

That’s okay. Yeah. So you you you you said folk life, so you kinda I’m gonna go go in a direction here. So and I told you when we talked on the phone. You know, I I can’t remember if how exactly I stumbled upon you, but I stumbled on your website, Bagpipe Lessons. And and I’m looking at it right now, and I’m looking at this picture, and I’m I’m if you would have saw my face, I was like, Just threw me. And so I reached out. I mean, the you know, I reached out because it’s like, how on earth? So never in my life would I have thought that the Grateful Dead and Bagpipes would be on the same stage.

Scott Cowan [00:31:09]:

And it really wasn’t because you were with Bob Weir and and Ratdog, but still. How on earth did that happen, and what was it like?

Jori Chisholm [00:31:23]:

Yeah. So I, a really good friend of mine who’s a musician, bagpiper plays a bunch of great plays a bunch of instruments and owns a fantastic studio up in Arlington in Ed Littlefield Junior. And Ed is well known on the folk music scene, and he’s involved in a lot of different non nonprofits around town. So I got to know Ed through piping. I’ve become great friends, and I’ve recorded up at his studio and, you know, our families are are really close. Ed’s an old friend of Bob Weir. So I met, Bob through Ed, and the what I didn’t know at the time was that Ed, who’s a piper, had played pipes at Bob’s wedding. So there’s, like, photographs.

Jori Chisholm [00:32:09]:

Bob Weir’s wedding, he is in a kilt. He’s in the traditional Scottish thing. Right? So he has this affinity for Scottish culture and bagpipes. And the first time I met Bob, he said that it had been a long time dream of his to do warf rat with the bagpipes. And I thought, okay. I don’t know wharf rat. I didn’t say that out loud, but I was not a dead I’m you know?

Scott Cowan [00:32:38]:

You’re you’re you’re in a deadhead.

Jori Chisholm [00:32:40]:

Yeah. I you know, of course, many friends who were, and I knew that this you know, they were a huge, humongous deal, But I, you know, I didn’t sell. I said, okay. Great. Warf rat. You know? Sort of like, give me a call. I’m your man. And, went home and, you know, did some YouTube research and tried to find all the recordings I could.

Jori Chisholm [00:32:58]:

And, I can’t remember how long it was after that, but I think within the year, he called me up. Phone rang, and he called me up and said, hey. We’re coming to town, and we’re doing the Moore Theatre, and let’s do that warf rat thing we talked about. So that was oh, man. When was that? 02/2007 or something. So that was a while now, and it was incredible. And in fact, Ed Littlefield, he sat in and and played some, I think he played some pedal steel on that as his main instrument. Oh, wow.

Jori Chisholm [00:33:26]:

Okay. Yeah. There’s some videos of it up on YouTube. Fantastic experience. Just amazing. Just what you would imagine a normal person, a normal non famous, non rock and roll person just getting brought into this, incredible venue.

Scott Cowan [00:33:45]:

Menagerie of me.

Jori Chisholm [00:33:46]:

So one so the way that it worked, to talk a little bit about the set, is he said that, well, you know, at this point in the show, they do they do a set called Stuff. And this was Bob leaves the stage, and they do kinda this big jam thing, and each guy in the band gets a chance to have a bit of a solo. So they had a saxophone player, bass player. And then Jay Lane, he said he’s the last guy who does his sort of his solo thing, and he does his big drum solo. And he said, when I do my drum solo, then I’m gonna call you out. And he called me out, and I go to the middle of the stage, and then I think I don’t know what people were thinking, but the crowd went pretty wild when I step out there. And then he said, you just play. Just go nuts.

Jori Chisholm [00:34:28]:

Just play something. And and, you know, I said, well, you know, do we should we talk about what we’re gonna do? He said, no. Just do whatever. Just do whatever, and we’ll join in. And that doesn’t always that doesn’t always necessarily go well, you know, when we say that That’d

Scott Cowan [00:34:44]:

be terrifying.

Jori Chisholm [00:34:45]:

I mean, I knew what I was gonna play, but I wanted it to be good. You know? I was just gonna do my thing. Said, you just do your thing, and we’ll just join in. And, it ended up being great. And, again, there’s some grainy YouTube videos because it just it wasn’t like the iPhone thing now that we have. And they just played along with me, and we did this I was playing this really fast up tempo things, and they’re all just jamming along with me, and it was amazing. So then that was Oh. Getting me on stage, big applause, Bob comes out, and then sort of the the the the crowd noise comes down, and then we went into war freat.

Jori Chisholm [00:35:18]:

So that was the first time and just, you know, again, just like a real magical, unbelievable moment. My my rock and roll moment there. And then, couple years ago now, to maybe gosh. I’m losing track of dates here, but maybe 02/2018 or something, I saw that Bob was coming back in town. And this time, it was with Wolf Bros. So it was just a trio. It was Bob and Don was and, Jay Lane again on drums. And, I think this time I just reached out to him and said, hey.

Jori Chisholm [00:35:54]:

I see you’re coming back in town. It’d be great to see you and, you know, hang out or whatever. You know? I was just thinking to come and, you know, just see him at the show and maybe try to get a backstage, you know, just to say hi. And he said, let’s do it again. We’ll do let’s do two this time. So we did war frat. And then at the sound check, just came down early for the sound check with my wife, Rachel, and we just kinda tried a couple things. And we ended up doing a, tune called lay my lily down, which is from his, solo album.

Jori Chisholm [00:36:25]:

And I hadn’t heard the song before, but we figured it out. And it went it it worked so naturally with the pipes. I thought it was a traditional Scottish song. It had this real Celtic thing, and it just really meshed well. And then I found out later it was an original that he’d written. So but Oh, wow. And it and it just worked out great. And for this show, it was much more recent, and, of course, Facebook and Instagram and social media is this huge, humongous presence now.

Jori Chisholm [00:36:57]:

And, yeah, my whole, like, social media and email and everything just, like, exploded the next day. And, it was cool. And, you know, Don Was wrote or he did a little interview right around that same time as that show, because this was just the start of their tour. And what he said in this interview, I absolutely had the same experience, although for me, it was just one night. And he said it was something like the most magical, amazing experience of his life was to play with Bob and to experience just to be in this this experience of, you know, his fans and the Grateful Dead sort of the love and just the the the warmth. And, I mean, I certainly felt that that night and, you know, have continued to to experience that. You know? And it’s just, yeah, just an amazing experience. And it is I’ve never seen anything like it, and it really highlights on a really serious magnitude level of what music means to people and, you know, and a reminder, to me as a musician of the power that you you have as a musician to give people an experience, a fun experience, a communal experience, maybe even a transcendent experience.

Jori Chisholm [00:38:30]:

So it’s a great reminder of the power of of music, and I don’t take it for granted. You know?

Scott Cowan [00:38:37]:

So maybe if they decide if dead, Dead and Company decide to come to Washington on they’re not booked for Washington and all this year that I saw, but maybe maybe you can go and play at the Gorge. But from a technical standpoint, question, if you’re playing at a venue like the Gorge, how how can the pipes be amplified? Because I’m not gonna if I’m you have you been to the Gorge Amphitheater?

Jori Chisholm [00:39:06]:

Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [00:39:06]:

Yeah. So if I’m sitting back up on the hill and you’re on that stage, I don’t know that I necessarily hear the pipes Yeah. You’d without amplification.

Jori Chisholm [00:39:14]:

You’d have to be amplified, so we’d have to be mic’d. And in fact, this last show at the Moore Theatre, we should have been mic’d. You know, Bob thought it was too loud. He didn’t wanna mic it, but listening to some of the videos that people took from way back, it needed to be mic’d. So that’s just something that we’ll have to figure out if I play with them again. It’s just to be real.

Scott Cowan [00:39:35]:

So how do you how do you mic bagpipes?

Jori Chisholm [00:39:38]:

Yeah. So you could just have a mic on a stand in front. And, like, when I’m in the recording studio, you have a mic in front on a stand for the chanter and then another mic in the back. But Oh. What but, you know, if this came up again and I was gonna do some sort of rock show where we wanted amplification, I would probably get, like, a, like, a wireless pack and have a couple of clip on mics. So I’ve played a few times with, there’s a piper from Galicia in Spain named Carlos Nunez, and Carlos is a great friend and just a absolute virtuosic. I mean, he’s a he’s a true sort of superstar in Spain. He really plays bagpipes and recorder, which are not what you would think of rock and roll superstar instruments.

Jori Chisholm [00:40:22]:

But Carlos is a fantastic musician, and he tours around the world, and he’s had huge record contracts. And he has a that’s what he has. He has, like, a wireless belt pack with his clip on mics on his instrument so he can dance around stage and run around, and they get it it’s it’s close mic.

Scott Cowan [00:40:38]:

Right. Don’t think of rock and roll with a bagpipe, like, running around.

Jori Chisholm [00:40:40]:

I mean, he’s not like a rock and roll guy, but, I mean, he out I’m kidding, but that’s cool. Rocks and and,

Scott Cowan [00:40:46]:

That’s cool.

Jori Chisholm [00:40:47]:

So that’s, I think, what I would need to do. And I’ve played around with some some setups here at home, and I think that’s the way to go is to close mic it. K.

Scott Cowan [00:40:59]:

I mean, we could go so many different directions on from here, but why did you start competing? I mean, you you’ve done a lot of it looks like you’ve done a lot of competitions.

Jori Chisholm [00:41:13]:

Yep. Why? Like, what’s the deal like, what’s the thing with competition in bagpipes? Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:41:20]:

What’s the, yeah, what’s the thing with competition bagpipes?

Jori Chisholm [00:41:22]:

So that is a big part of that’s a big part of the lot of pipers of our life. So you we have these Highland Games that you may be familiar with, these Scottish festivals.

Scott Cowan [00:41:34]:

Right.

Jori Chisholm [00:41:34]:

You go to the Highland Games, and there’s bagpipes and drumming and pipe bands and the Scottish Highland dancing and the heavy events with the big guys throwing logs and stuff. And it’s all competition based. So it’s just that’s the primary, performance venue for, a lot of bagpipers. And so I started out as a kid in Oregon, going down to this thing that we call the Piper’s Club. It’s the Oregon Piper Society, and they would have these monthly get togethers where they’d have a little competition and a a featured player, and you come down and listen to the featured player. And I went through that for years growing up in high school and competing. And, you know, like, they have competitions in other musical forms. They have classical music competitions and Sure.

Jori Chisholm [00:42:21]:

You know, high school bands have these sort of competitions and stuff. So it’s just a a thing and got really into it and was doing well locally and going to the Highland Games then going up to, Vancouver and competing up there. And there’s this the way that the system is set up is you have a graded you have these sort of graded categories starting out at grade five, five, four, three, two, one. And when you win enough competitions in your grade, you get upgraded the following year, and you work your way up. And then after grade one, the highest level is the what they call it, open or the professional category. So Okay. You know, I spent most of my life, you know, and that was until quite recently, that was the number one thing in my life was preparing to compete in these competitions and trying to win these competitions. I’ve traveled to Scotland.

Jori Chisholm [00:43:13]:

I’ve competed over there at the world sort of top level competitions. There’s a one of the top competitions in Scotland is called the gold medal, and the gold medal is held twice every year. And it’s been going on for over two hundred years, a great history. And I’ve played there, and I’ve been had many placings in the gold medal in Scotland, and my highest placing was third. So Mhmm. You know? And won lots of other trophies all over Scotland. So that was, like, a a huge thing for me. And, I’ve take I’ve been to Scotland Thirty One times, so that tells you I’ve logged some miles.

Jori Chisholm [00:43:48]:

And that’s

Scott Cowan [00:43:48]:

You’ve got you Yeah.

Jori Chisholm [00:43:50]:

You know, I’d say that’s on the high end, but, you know, for sort of top level pipers from around the world, you gotta go to Scotland. That’s the thing. You know? If you’re gonna if you’re, like, an elite tennis player, you gotta go to Wimbledon in the open. Like, you this is what you gotta do. There’s the Tour de France. It’s like, pick your thing. That’s what you gotta do is you gotta go to Scotland and and play against the best.

Scott Cowan [00:44:12]:

Wow. So are you when you’re competing, are you playing are you all playing the same music, or is it how are you what are the criteria for judging?

Jori Chisholm [00:44:23]:

Right. So there would be different event categories. So there would be the category that we talked about, these very long intricate, pieces. There is also a set of three tunes, a march, stress, bay, and reel, MSR. So Piper’s will compete in their MSR. And then there there might be some other ones like a hornpipe and jig. So those would typically be the three categories. And for some of these events, you it’s your own choice, so you just submit the tunes that you wanna play.

Jori Chisholm [00:44:56]:

For some some of these events, you need to submit tunes. You you need to give the judges options. You’ll say these are my four tunes, and they’ll say, oh, let’s have this one. They just pick it. So you need to be prepared with a much larger repertoire than you will actually be playing on that given day. For some of the these gold medal type events, they will actually have what they call a set list. And every year, they’ll say, these are the 12 for this year, and then each player will you’ll select your four or six from their list of 12, and you’ll submit those to the judges, and they’ll pick one. So from a from 12 down to six or four down to one.

Jori Chisholm [00:45:38]:

And they will pick the tune that you’re gonna play. When the player before you begins, the stewards will come and they’ll tell you your tune. And that’s an intense moment. You can imagine. You’ve traveled halfway across the world. You’ve spent an entire year practicing and really refining this this repertoire to have these tunes, these four or these six tunes to be absolutely as perfect as they can be, and you have fifteen or twenty minutes notice where they go they hand you a little card or a little piece of paper with your tune on it, and then it’s your your world is now focused into that one tune, and then you gotta scramble and get your tuning ready, and and then you go out on stage. So it’s an intense moment, and it’s sort of, you know, fairly can be fairly adrenaline fueled at that point. So it’s it’s yeah.

Jori Chisholm [00:46:34]:

Go ahead.

Scott Cowan [00:46:34]:

You you you mentioned three types of categories.

Jori Chisholm [00:46:38]:

Mhmm.

Scott Cowan [00:46:38]:

What do you like to compete in? What’s your

Jori Chisholm [00:46:41]:

Well You

Scott Cowan [00:46:42]:

know, if you were a gymnast, are you you know, you you you’re gonna you know? So what’s your

Jori Chisholm [00:46:45]:

Right. You have your different thing. Right? So I’ve done well in all the different categories over the years, but I think I’m probably similar. I would I would say the is Okay. Is and I think it’s for a lot of pipers sort of of who compete at my level, it’s the most challenging. It’s and it’s somehow it’s it’s, yeah, it’s the most challenging and it’s the most sort of interesting and the most fulfilling. A lot some of these tunes are hundreds of years old, and the way that they’ve been taught is they’ve been handed down through the generations through this sort of, like, oral tradition of learning it from your teacher. And, of course, these days, we have recordings and YouTube and CDs and everything.

Jori Chisholm [00:47:32]:

But before that, you would learn this tune from your teacher, and he learned it from his teacher. And it it went back through the generations. You can actually trace your lineage all the way back six hundred years from how you got this tune. Now, of course, they’re they’re it’s less like that now because you have influences from many people because of everything being online and also people travel. It’s not that you lived in your one village and learned from this one person.

Scott Cowan [00:47:58]:

Right.

Jori Chisholm [00:47:58]:

But it’s, yeah, I don’t I I don’t know what the I don’t know what other sort of musical form that I could, connect it to, but it can be quite personal how you express these tunes. And it’s also a little bit of a it’s sort of a challenge to figure these tunes out because these well, some of these tunes that come from these old manuscripts that are a couple hundred years old, and you’re trying to figure out how this tune should be expressed properly. And you have some amount of personal expression that you can put into it, but, also, there’s a historical tradition here. Right? So I mean, you could look at a great well known classical piece like a Mozart or something, and you would go, well, you know, if you’re a great performer and a world class famous performer, you get to do it your way, but you also wanna be true to the piece because it is a well known piece that has sort of a tradition behind it. So you wanna sort of fulfill people’s expectations, but also put your own little bit of a twist on it. So

Scott Cowan [00:49:10]:

So you you mentioned teaching and, you know, through the years being the lessons being handed down teacher to the student. And you you run you run a very modern sounding bagpipelessons.com. What was what inspired you to start teaching bagpipes? And did you start out in in person, or did you did you start on this online school? Was that the way you got started?

Jori Chisholm [00:49:38]:

Yeah. Well, to go back to our we’re talking about earlier, you know, so I went to college, and I had to figure out what I was gonna do with my life. So graduated from college, had a job for a year, a real job, and I knew that was gonna be a temporary thing. And then that that second year after I was out of college, I started to try to figure out what was what was gonna work. And this was in the late nineties, and the Internet was just starting to be there’s we’re starting to get an inkling of what it might be and registered my website, bagpipelessons.com. And at that point, websites were pretty basic. It was a photo and, you you know, email me here, little bit of just like a bio. Right? Right.

Jori Chisholm [00:50:25]:

And at that point, I was teaching. I was teaching in person lessons. They like, they people have done for forever. Drive to your teacher’s house, sit down for an hour, have a lesson sort of thing. And moved up to Seattle. My wife, we weren’t married at the time, but we were together and we moved up here, and we’re actually still in the same neighborhood up here in North Seattle. Started my teaching business, and that was a way that you could make a living as a musician. And it’s it works for a lot of people.

Jori Chisholm [00:50:58]:

You know? Guitar lessons, piano lessons, bagpipe lessons. And what’s good about Seattle is it’s a big enough city that, you know, you wouldn’t be able to be a full time bagpipe teacher in a in a smaller place.

Scott Cowan [00:51:13]:

Wenatchee would not be a great place to have a bagpipes. Yeah.

Jori Chisholm [00:51:16]:

Well, you could do it now because so that transitions into what I’m so in 02/2003, Apple released their webcam called the iSight webcam. And I’ve always been a big Mac guy, and when that came out, I said, I gotta get one of those because they released it with this program called iChat AV, and it was video chat. It was, like, before Skype, before Zoom. This was the thing. And at this point, I had been studying with Michael Cusack, and Mike is the the most, winningest piper that The United States has we’ve ever had. Mike won both gold medals in Scotland and all the top prizes back in the eighties and into the nineties, and he’s retired from competing now. But Mike is a fantastic player and one of my mentors and an incredible teacher. So I was studying with Mike, and I was flying to Houston to take lessons with him a couple times a year.

Jori Chisholm [00:52:18]:

And then we would meet up. He would come to you know, he’d come up here to teach a workshop or I’d we’d meet up somewhere where we would be both teaching at a workshop in Kentucky or wherever. So I was studying with Mike in person as much as I could, but I was also flying down there at great expense. So when this EyeSight camera came out, I bought two of them, and I sent one to Mike. And I said, we gotta try this thing, and we did. And I have I actually have a screen capture of I did a screen capture of the very first online bagpipe lesson in history, I think, because I can’t verify that nobody else did it. But I’m sir but I’m pretty sure that that was the very first one, and I thought, son of a gun. This thing really works because you have the immediacy of the conversation, you know, the immediate feedback.

Jori Chisholm [00:53:09]:

It’s not like I made a recording and emailed it to him, and then he wrote me back. It was like, stop. Do that again. And the face to face contact, so it’s better than phone because you can see and you have a you can, you know, read emotions better and you can see stuff. So that was it. Pretty quickly after that, I put it up on my website that I was now the first person in the world to be offering, I think I called them interactive multimedia lessons or something like that. And then I called them interactive webcam lessons. And then and then and then I tried there were a few other programs that allowed you to do, cross platform video chat, and, eventually, Skype came out, and then it was Skype.

Jori Chisholm [00:53:51]:

It was Skype lessons for, you know, more than a decade there. So What let

Scott Cowan [00:53:58]:

me interrupt you. What are you using now? What platform do

Jori Chisholm [00:54:00]:

you use

Scott Cowan [00:54:01]:

now for us?

Jori Chisholm [00:54:01]:

Using Zoom. I still have a couple of students who wanna do FaceTime or Skype, but mostly Zoom. Okay. Yeah. And I know there’s some other options out there, but it’s just finding something that, you know, has the audio and the video and good enough quality. And Mhmm. That’s the main thing. So I’ve been doing that.

Jori Chisholm [00:54:19]:

So I was the first person to be teaching Bagpipe lessons online going back to 02/2003.

Scott Cowan [00:54:25]:

So you’ve been doing this almost twenty years online?

Jori Chisholm [00:54:28]:

Yeah. Eighteen years now. And, you know, it started out mostly in person and a few online, and it’s grown. The online side side of it has grown because it’s you know, the whole world is the market now. So I have students in Australia, Scotland, Europe, Alaska, Hawaii, all across The US, Canada. I’ve had students in all kinds of places. You know? I had a student who lived way, way, way out in rural South Africa, and we’re doing backpack lessons. You know? The Internet connection to Hawaii from Seattle is incredibly fast.

Jori Chisholm [00:55:05]:

Sometimes the connection to Hawaii will be better than it is to other parts of, you know, the Mainland. It’s just it’s, you know, the fiber optic cable or whatever. So the barriers are, you know, they’re

Scott Cowan [00:55:19]:

Being torn down.

Jori Chisholm [00:55:21]:

They’re dissolving, which is just a fantastic thing for, you know, for everybody. But I’ve noticed it in what I do because bagpipers are spread out, and it’s not as easy to find a bagpipe teacher the way it might be to find a piano teacher or a guitar teacher or, you know, something like that. So it’s been really, really the Internet has been wonderful for for all these niche type communities, finding people, finding content, connecting online. You know, we’re in the midst of this technological revolution that’s just, you know, it’s just amazing. Right? So I got a I got a email in 2012 or end of twenty eleven from a reporter at The New York Times, and she said that she was looking into the growth of Skype music lessons. And would I could I talk to her? So, of course, I mailed her back because that was sounded like a good opportunity to talk to somebody. And we emailed, and then we talked on the phone. And, you know, she was working on this story.

Jori Chisholm [00:56:30]:

And then she wanted to schedule a photo shoot, so she they actually sent a photographer to my student’s house, not to me, to my student’s house, and it was one of my students, John McClure, who’s a pathologist in the Twin Cities. So I’m doing a Skype lesson with him, and then there’s this guy with this camera sort of in the background, you know, taking pictures of him. And then I can’t remember, like, the next week or something she said that she emailed me and said, unless there’s a major international incident, the story is gonna be on a one. And I wrote back and said, that sounds good. What’s a one? She said, that’s the front page. So thank goodness there wasn’t anything that horrific that happened in the world for me, but there was my picture and this article on the front page of the New York Times in twenty early twenty twelve. And it’s John playing the pipes with his music stand in his little practice room. And there’s his laptop, and there’s my face on the laptop.

Jori Chisholm [00:57:35]:

So that was pretty cool. And then, you know, my Google Analytics, like, it spiked, like, 30 x of normal because kabloom. You know? But that was very cool.

Scott Cowan [00:57:45]:

I’m surprised the the the hosting platform, your server the server that you were using didn’t, you know, stumble on that. Yeah. Wow. That’s so you were on the front page of the New York Times. Yeah. I Not just the New York Times. You were the the front page

Jori Chisholm [00:57:58]:

of the I know. My my my brother, he had worked at a university doing their website previously, and he said the president of the university wanted to get their university name on the front page of the New York Times. That was his goal, and it never happened, but I got it. So but what I didn’t know was that it was a bigger thing. You know, I was just sorta hunkered down doing my thing, teaching online, trying to push ahead and Right. Make use of these technologies that were becoming available. And what I’d actually didn’t know until I read the article that I was in was that this was a broader thing that was happening. Students love it because they can find a teacher that they connect with, not just one that happens to be local.

Jori Chisholm [00:58:40]:

Parents love it because they don’t have to drive. They don’t have to worry about this other stuff. So there’s so many advantages to it. And, you know, there are some certainly some advantages to being in person. But Mhmm. For a lot of people, it’s just in many situations, it’s absolutely the best way to go is through this online lesson thing. So it’s a it’s a thing. It’s a really big thing.

Scott Cowan [00:59:06]:

Besides teaching, though, you created some bagpipe products.

Jori Chisholm [00:59:11]:

Yeah. So I’ve got a

Scott Cowan [00:59:12]:

And I’m Yeah.

Jori Chisholm [00:59:13]:

I can think about that.

Scott Cowan [00:59:14]:

So I’m I’m looking at your the ultimate bundle. So it’s called the tone protector ultimate bundle. It’s got a a chancher cap, a reed case, bagpipe gauge, reed poker, and a phone mount. Yeah. So I’m really scratching my head on what these caps do.

Jori Chisholm [00:59:35]:

Right.

Scott Cowan [00:59:36]:

Because it looks like it has, like, a a humidifier.

Jori Chisholm [00:59:39]:

Exactly. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:59:41]:

Oh, okay.

Jori Chisholm [00:59:42]:

So the thing about reeds, and you talk to any woodwind player, is that that reed is the key to if you’re gonna have a good sound and a happy life or not. Because everything about the sound of your instrument, how it sounds, how it feels, if it stays in tune, It’s all about the reed, and particularly a huge factor is the the moisture content in the reed. So that these cane you know, cane is like a natural material. It’s like a bamboo kind of material. And pipers spend typically just huge amounts of worry and stress and time fooling around with their reeds. You know? And bagpipes get a bad reputation because, you know, people talk about what an out of tune bag pipe sounds like. And there’s a certain amount of truth to that because the pipes are loud, it’s continuous, and if it’s out of tune, it’s just it’s not a good sound. Nobody’s having a good time at that point.

Jori Chisholm [01:00:43]:

So having a great sound is important, and having pipes that sound great and feel great is largely determined by that read and the moisture content in the read. So k. That was the challenge. And what I came up with was this cap that goes over your reeds. When you’re done playing your pipes, you pull a chanter out of the bag. You put a little cap over it that screws on. It doesn’t touch the reed. It just it’s a little dome that goes over the reed.

Jori Chisholm [01:01:12]:

Now they’ve had these chanter caps for years, and they’re made out of wood or plastic. And they protect the reed from physical damage, but they do nothing for the environment that the reed sits in. And that was this innovation was this chanter cap that has a digital readout on the tops that will tell you the humidity that’s in the cap. And it has these moisture control packets that will deliver the optimal level of moist of humidity to that reed by controlling the humidity in the air inside that cap. So that’s called the tone protector, and you can think about it as a digital humidor for your reed that attaches over the reed. And it uses the same kind of technology that someone might use in their humidor to store their high end cigars, these little moisture control packets, and then you got the little readout that tells you that it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. So I worked on this and was, you know, three d printed some prototypes and trying to figure out the physical form factor and was using it. And it was remarkable, the the impact that it made instantly.

Jori Chisholm [01:02:28]:

And what I hadn’t realized until I had this product working in the prototype phase was that so much of the hassle and the uncertainty and unpredictability that we pipers face with our instrument like, some days you play it and it’s like, oh, it sounds good. Other days you put your pipes together and it’s like, it’s all squirrely and and crazy and weird. But so much of that is caused by a fluctuating moisture content in the reed. And you don’t even realize it because we we don’t feel it. Like, if it’s really humid or really dry, you feel it, but you won’t be, like, in a even in a given day, it might fluctuate 50% relative humidity. You don’t know it. But that’s happening to your reed. It’s constantly sort of soaking up moisture and drying out, and that’s what contributes to that, unpredictability and a hassle factor with these reeds.

Jori Chisholm [01:03:22]:

Having the tone protector eliminates almost all of that. So

Scott Cowan [01:03:26]:

Oh, wow.

Jori Chisholm [01:03:28]:

So it’s been a very interesting process that was it’s been my most successful product, but working with patent lawyers, working with manufacturing, working with sort of supply chain type thing. But it’s been really, really cool. It’s been used by it’s being used by many of the top bands in the world. Some of the absolute like, the very best pipers in the world are using it as part of their Oh. You know, as part of their toolkit to help them. So it’s been very cool. There’s a, there’s a website called Pipes Drums, which is sort of, like, the main sort of online magazine for pipers, and, I won some awards there, product of the year, very kind of stuff. So that’s been really cool for me as a as an additional part of, you know, what I’m doing in terms of trying to make an impact.

Jori Chisholm [01:04:17]:

Right? So I started out with performing and teaching and then teaching online and then developing online content, and now I’ve gotten into this product business, which has been really it’s been really I have to say it’s been really rewarding to hear from players when they tell me how much it helps and how much it’s helped them enjoy their playing or spend less time tuning. And I really do mean that. The first year I went to Scotland after the tone projector had been out for a year, it was really cool to have these players of all levels coming up and saying, oh, man. This is the best. Thank you.

Scott Cowan [01:04:51]:

Oh, that’s

Jori Chisholm [01:04:52]:

And, yeah. So I’m I’m just I’m I’m always kind of thinking that way in terms of, well, if this is a problem for me or if this is a problem for my students, like, what can we do? Is there is there sometimes it’s more sort of, like, a learning technique or a practice technique or an exercise, or sometimes it’s a way to a a process that you can do with your equipment or a different way to set up things, or sometimes it’s a it’s a it’s a new piece of equipment that needs to be, you know, invented. So I’ve always kind of thought of things as, okay. Well, this is a problem. This is something that’s annoying, or this is something that is a difficulty. Well, instead of just struggling with it and accepting that is what the way it always has to be, maybe there’s something we can do about it. And, again, it’s not always a gadget. Sometimes it’s an approach or it’s a way of thinking about it or it’s a technique, but sometimes it it actually is a a product.

Jori Chisholm [01:05:50]:

I remember reading about Eddie Van Halen’s patents years ago. Oh, yeah. And Yeah. And first, I thought, that’s kind of that’s kind of unexpected. And then you can actually look at the patents, and he has patents for, you know, a peghead on a guitar or he had a patent for the little he could flip up the little little table so he could sort of tap on his guitar. He’s got patents for amps and stuff. Well, after thinking about it for, like, a minute, you think, well, of course, he has a patent. Who else would know about the limitations of guitar equipment, or who else would know better about what needs to be out there than Eddie Van Halen? And that was part of this little seed of, like, Well, if I’m teaching all these people and I’m playing and I’m trying to be the best I can be and I’m trying to help others achieve greater enjoyment or consistency or elevate their skill, and if I see that something is a problem and and if I have an idea that could be a solution to that problem, well, then I should be the guy who comes up with it.

Jori Chisholm [01:06:54]:

You know? So because it’s a little bit of imposter syndrome where you’re thinking like, I’m not the I mean, I’m not an inventor. I mean, patents, those are for other people. But then you kinda go, well, no. Maybe I am the guy. Maybe I’m the guy who can come up with it. So it’s been a it’s been a fun process of, how do you get a patent? Well, I don’t know. Well, we just you know? You know, I had one of my students, and, you know, one of the absolute joys of doing what I do and teaching people over the years is you meet some very interesting people, and a lot of them are quite accomplished in their own, you know, careers. So one of my students is lawyer, and he said, you know what? Why don’t we I’d love to help you, you know, with this patent situation.

Jori Chisholm [01:07:35]:

So he set up a call with one of his colleagues, and we had a three way little Skype call. And that guy’s my patent lawyer now. And it’s like, okay. I have a patent lawyer. Alright. Here we go. You know? Oh my god. So it’s just kinda one of these things of, having an idea and just sort of trying to pursue it a little bit and just kinda pull on that string and see what’s at the end of it.

Jori Chisholm [01:08:02]:

And I have lots more ideas and, you know, can’t can’t do them all at the same time, but trying to, you know, trying to

Scott Cowan [01:08:09]:

Well, so let me ask this question. And, you know, you just have a lot more ideas. What do you think’s next for you? What’s so now that we’re kinda come out of the pandemic and we can leave the cave again and go outside and do things, Musically for you, I mean, we’ve glossed over a lot of things. You’ve recorded, you’re a composer, all of these things we’ve just completely glossed over in this episode, and we’ll point links to where people can find out more about you when we’re done with all this. But what do you think’s next? What’s on the horizon for you? What’s what’s next?

Jori Chisholm [01:08:44]:

Yeah. Great. So, unfortunately, most of the in person festivals and the Highland Games are not yet happening this year even though things are opening up, which is absolutely you know, we’re also happy about that. It’s just too much of a planning, timeline. But I’m looking forward to, you know, going out and seeing live music. I’m looking forward to doing more performances when these things come up. Another thing, I think, sort of a mindset shift for me over this pandemic, you know, I know we all had similar experiences but different experiences. But for me, there was so much uncertainty last spring in terms of what what, you know, what’s gonna happen.

Jori Chisholm [01:09:24]:

It was quite frightening and all that uncertainty. And for me, much of 2020 was kind of in a holding pattern. I’m teaching online. I’m like, we’re just trying to see what’s happening. And I think at the beginning of 2021, I just personally, I had this sort of feeling of, well, whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen sort of like sort of an acknowledgment of, like, this is out of my control. But I had this thought of when this thing is over, I wanna be able to look back and say, you know, I I didn’t squander the the whatever time I had. Right? So just trying to make the most of it. And I know that that’s you know, I’m not I’m not saying that’s for everybody, but I was sort of my thing was like, alright.

Jori Chisholm [01:10:12]:

I have this online based business. I have this opportunity. I have a loyal, dedicated student base. Well, let’s see what we can do. Let’s be creative. And, you know, one of the things that I did was I’ve been growing my online as a membership now. I’ve had it for years, but I’ve really expanded it over the last year. It’s called the inner circle membership.

Jori Chisholm [01:10:33]:

Mhmm. And people get access to this huge website of lessons that you can just watch, videos, tunes, sheet music. Just watch anytime you want. It’s called the studio. Wow. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of lessons here. And I also do weekly live, Zoom classes, these live sessions.

Scott Cowan [01:10:51]:

Okay.

Jori Chisholm [01:10:51]:

So these have been very popular, and they’ve been really, really fun for me to be able to engage live. And that was something that came out of the pandemic was, what can I do now that we’re I’ve been teaching online one on one, but what like, to do some of this, like, exciting interactive live group classes? So I’m I’m gonna continue to be expanding that because the people who are on my inner circle, they just they seem to really love it. I get a lot out of it. The the the interactive element is great. I am working on a book, a tune book. So what pipers do is they will they will publish a book of tunes. Many famous pipers through the years have have published their books, and I’ve written tunes. And I’ve won, composing competitions, but I haven’t published my own book.

Jori Chisholm [01:11:37]:

So I’m working on that this year. I’ve also I’m producing a series of recordings of great pipers. So we actually recorded the first piper back just before the pandemic, and we’re gonna be looking at getting that out, by the end of the year. So we’re recording it up at Sage Arts, which is up in Arlington. That’s Ed Littlefield Studio where I’ve recorded, and that’s one of these absolutely world class studios. Bagpipes sound incredible in there. So we wanna get this CD out, but the plan is to release one or two per year and to capture some of the great pipers who are, you know, friends of mine and to get them into this world class studio and to really capture these great pipers. So that’s another thing, you know, sort of doing a bit of a kind of whatever you wanna call it, record producer type thing.

Jori Chisholm [01:12:31]:

Right. Another thing that I’ll I’ll mention that I started, or that has come back during the pandemic big time has been this online competition. So we talked about how big competition is for Pipers. It was really hard when this pandemic hit and everything was canceled because that’s how Pipers perform. That’s how we get motivated to practice. That’s how we come together as a community. In 2011, I started the world’s first online bagpipe competition. And instead of performing live in front of a judge at a Highland Games, you would record your video and then submit it to the judge, and the judge would watch the video and watch all the videos and award the placings, so just like in a in person competition.

Jori Chisholm [01:13:20]:

And then every player gets a a critique sheet of comments from the judges. And that’s a really big part of why Pipers like to compete. Well, you know, if you can win, but not everybody can win, but everybody can get feedback from a a judge. So I started that back in 2011, did a few of those. They were really successful. We had hundreds and hundreds of entries, and then got busy with kids and tone protectors. And, you know, my my my life got busy in other ways, but I always had this thought that I wanted to bring back the online competition. Well, March 2020 happens.

Jori Chisholm [01:13:54]:

Everything’s getting canceled. I thought this is the moment now where this is again, to just go back to that time, it was really frightening, and it was very it’s it was almost disorienting. Like, what, like, what’s happening here? And, well, what do you mean my kids can’t go to school? And what do you mean we’re not having the Highland Games? So I I thought this is the perfect time, for me to be able to give back to the community, my piping and drumming community, because I had this online experience, and I had already set up this model. I basically invented this this model for this online piping competition. So we brought it back last spring. I think we got 1,600 entries from pipers and drummers around the world, 84 different events. I think I had 45 judges, great world champion players from Ireland and Scotland and New Zealand and and all over. And it was a really a wonderful thing.

Jori Chisholm [01:14:51]:

We made a really big donation to a COVID related, charity as part of that. So the online competition was at, like, this really cool thing. We did two of them last year. We did another one this spring. We we’re just launching another one this summer. So I think it’s proven that it’s a rewarding thing for our competitors. You know, we hear from these players who are very thankful to be able to do something that’s global and community and gives feedback and an opportunity to serve some motivation. So even when the pandemic’s over, you know, I look forward to seeing everybody at the Highland Games and in person, but I think these online competitions are gonna continue just because they’re just one more way that people can, you know, feel engaged with something that they love to do.

Scott Cowan [01:15:41]:

So my takeaway from all of this is you don’t do much. You sit around the house, and you, you know, watch reruns of some TV show.

Jori Chisholm [01:15:50]:

Totally.

Scott Cowan [01:15:52]:

Yeah. But when you’re not immersed in the world of of piping, what do you guys like to do? What’s fun for you around home? What where do you guys go? What’s the family like to do? What’s out what do you guys where do you explore? Let’s ask that.

Jori Chisholm [01:16:07]:

So I love traveling. We’ve been doing a lot of traveling in the Northwest over the last year since we’re not flying anywhere. But, you know, I have two young kids, and we just love doing active stuff going in. You know, if if you have to say what’s your favorite thing to do in the world, I’d say shared experiences with my with my family. I mean, just sometimes it’s music, sometimes it’s going out to eat, sometimes it’s going for a bike ride. We did about 300 miles of bike riding in our neighborhood last spring. Like, we were we were just like, okay. Let’s get on the bikes every day.

Jori Chisholm [01:16:39]:

Get out there. One of our favorite spots is getting up to the San Juans, going up to Lopez Island and just enjoying the Lopez. Love Lopez. Getting out there and yeah. So that that’s, you know, the, going up to, you know, going up and swimming in the river up in, you know, swimming on the Stillaguamish River. Just getting getting outside, biking, hiking, swimming in the river, jumping in the salt water. That’s, I think, our our favorite thing to do. And then That’s fantastic.

Jori Chisholm [01:17:11]:

And really go and loving to go out too. You know, we just my kids are always saying, can we go out? Like, I mean, to go out to dinner or go out to get get a beer? We have a local microbrew place that has root beer on tap, and the kids just wanna go there and just be out, be social.

Scott Cowan [01:17:26]:

Okay. So where do the kids wanna go for dinner? If the kids are coming in, dad, we wanna go to dinner tonight. And you, you know, you look at your wife and she’s like, okay. You know, where do they wanna go? What’s what are the kids into?

Jori Chisholm [01:17:38]:

Like like specific places or the types of places? Yeah. Well, you know, so we have great little places around here. Like I said, our local watering hole is called Broadview Tap House, and we’ll go there. And it’s very kid friendly, bunch of beer, food trucks, root beer, lemonade, and just kind of a community hangout. Lots of families, lots of kids. Yeah. But, you know, our kids are adventurous. We, you know, we we partake in all the, you know, various different types of food that you can get in Seattle from Thai food and sushi and Chinese food and pizza.

Scott Cowan [01:18:13]:

So your kids will will your kids eat sushi? Yeah. See, so many kids. I mean, what do they want? Chicken nuggets and and, you know, fries. Yeah. I mean, that’s it. That’s they’ll be adventuresome and and maybe have pizza. I’m kinda kidding. But the fact your kids will eat sushi, that’s awesome.

Scott Cowan [01:18:30]:

Yeah.

Jori Chisholm [01:18:30]:

It’s I mean, it’s very cool. It’s, even the sushi chefs at the sushi counter will look down and be surprised at my five year old that just pounding rock salmon. You know? So we try to you know, I think some of that is just temperamentally based on just sort of how you are, but we try to we also try to encourage it, you know, as much as we can because Great. Oftentimes, you know, you try something and you’re like, Son of a gun. I really like that. Alright. I had

Scott Cowan [01:18:59]:

Not what I thought.

Jori Chisholm [01:18:59]:

I had some grilled salad last night, and I thought, okay. Grilled salad, whatever my wife ordered. And it’s like, that’s actually really good. Some romaine with a sort of a charred thing on it. So just an example of, you know, trying to keep an trying to keep an open mind.

Scott Cowan [01:19:14]:

Yeah. There you go. So let’s wrap this up. And why don’t you tell people where they can find out more about all those bagpipe related things that you do.

Jori Chisholm [01:19:24]:

Great. So my website is bagpipelessons.com, and you can find me there, and you can click on the, you know, learn page if you’re interested in, learning the pipes or, you know, wanna get in touch with me about, arranging a performance. I still do some I still do gigs from time to time. Or,

Scott Cowan [01:19:43]:

Did you hear that, Bob? Bob Weir? He still does gigs times to time.

Jori Chisholm [01:19:47]:

Yeah. So check out my website. Sign up for my mailing list. If you’re you can check out I have a shop there. You can look at some of my products. Also on, you know, Facebook, you can find bagpipelessons.com on Facebook, also on Instagram, and trying to, you know, trying to stay active on those sites now. I have a small team that works for me now, and that’s been that’s really, really helped with, you know, helping make a bigger impact. So I have a an assistant now who’s, sort of my director of marketing and outreach, and that’s been really, really good.

Jori Chisholm [01:20:20]:

So I can focus on some of the more, you know, creating new content, but also on some of the the bigger bigger picture things, developing new products and stuff. And she does a great job with, you know, making sure that the right images and that the spelling’s right when things go up on Instagram. So that’s been fantastic, and I feel, you know, just really lucky that I have a great assistant and that I’m able to do that. So

Scott Cowan [01:20:44]:

Alright. Well, thank you so much for this. This was awesome. It’s it’s fascinating to me, and I I learned a lot, which is, for me, the reason I do these things is I get to have conversations and learn. And I just appreciate you taking the time and sharing your passion with us.

Jori Chisholm [01:21:01]:

Absolutely. I love the conversation, and thanks for having me. Alright.

Scott Cowan [01:21:13]:

Join us next time for another episode of the Exploring Washington State podcast.