Home Page Sound Bites Appearances

The best place to contact Baglady is here: http://www.myspace.com/piobmhorbaglady Fernetta Lerwick 8419 Westwood Rd. Brooklyn Park, MN 55444 (763) 566-7019         See my mnartist.org site http://www.mnartists.org/Fernetta_Lerwick How did my odyssey into Bagpipes and the traditional music of Ireland and Scotland begin? Mine is a tale of economics and availability. Music being a family tradition, I grew up around a lot of it. My father was in a pipe band. I was one of those urchins playing on the playground while the band practiced in the park. Got the rhythms and sounds into my ear. With the passing of my mother and my father’s acquisition of a new wife came a piano into the house, because it was proper, and a loss of the pipe band because it was not. Being the sixth of twelve in a ‘blended’ family, when it came time for me to get the piano lessons, all of the others, except my older half-brother, had been total failures on the musical front and the payments on the new house were too much so I had to be happy with borrowing my step cousin’s clarinet and taking school band. I didn’t find that satisfying and my cousin decided he wanted his clarinet back. So, dropped out of band in Junior High and got into choir and theater. I picked up a guitar at the neighbor’s yard sale for $10.00 and started accompanying myself on some folk songs. Doing the Joan Baez and Cat Stevens thing. One of my first was a Gordan Lightfoot ditty. In college I would do a bit at wrap parties for shows and tours and stuff. Then I pick up a Jethro Tull platter form the library, put it on the old turn table, and said to myself, “Hey, this is very familiar.” At about this same time I started reading Nordic Sagas and Celtic historical fiction. Picked up a bit of the culture and history. And I met my future husband who was a piper and started making out to the likes of Bothy Band and Planxty, a very interesting way to internalize the rhythms. I started hanging out with his band and reacquainting myself with childhood friends because he was in the band my father had started in. The circle closes. I start chanter lessons and we marry very quickly. And very quickly start a family. 20 years of child rearing and singing bawdy Irish songs in the kitchen and suddenly my youngest is entering kindergarten and I am at a crossroads. What to do with the rest of my life? Economics and availability again. My husband and some of my children are in a pipe band, and the lessons are free, why not. Surprising myself as much as everyone else, I got along pretty quickly, auditioning into a band in under a year, winning first place in grade 5 in under 3 years and placing in grade 4 in 5 years, and a hands down first in grade 4 in 2004. In about 1999 my husband and I decided to check out the session scene here in Minnesota. We were surprised so find it very active, creatively satisfying, and totally free. Economics and availability. I am now totally immersed and obsessed and having the time of my life. Graphic Sets Published by Freelance copyright © Howard Oliver 1999 All rights reserved. Web Design by Ceilidh Lerwick copyright ©2005