Halifax pipers join McCartney on stage
A not-so-relaxed gig for Joel Plaskett
Got a pipe and drum band? You just might get to play with Paul McCartney.
When members of the 78th Highlanders pipe band heard the rock legend was coming to Halifax, they contacted his representatives and offered to play Mull of Kintyre, should it be on the setlist.
The song, a 1977 hit by McCartney's band Wings, is a tribute to the Kintyre peninsula in Scotland.
For Plaskett, an 'epic' gig
For Joel Plaskett, it was a gig he describes as "epic." As opening act for McCartney, the Halifax-based singer-songwriter and his band Emergency should have been on a high.
A supporter in Quebec had given McCartney's management camp Plaskett's album, and McCartney liked what he heard.
"I like to think he listened to the whole thing and said 'not bad,'" Plaskett said Monday in an interview with CBC's Q cultural affairs show.
An email came inviting the band, which is nominated for this year's Polaris Prize for Three, to open for McCartney. Plaskett said he was relaxed as the big day approached.
"It's a hometown gig. We had a certain confidence because we play here a lot," he said. "But the day didn't go down as I thought."
The night before, he began to get a cold and there was a fight outside his Dartmouth home that kept him up until 5.30 a.m.
The band didn't get a sound check and as the time arrived for them to step onto the stage, the generator broke down.
So Plaskett himself was pretty wound up by the time they began to play.
But Halifax fans didn't seem to notice, cheering the band as hometown favourites.
"We fly into it and away we go. The show was really great and fun," Plaskett said.
He didn't get to meet McCartney, but heard that he watched from the wings as the band played. And McCartney's set was an experience, he added.
"It was inspiring for me to see someone who is 67 and he doesn't tire at all."
McCartney duly invited the bagpipers and drummers on stage for his Nova Scotia show — giving a rare live performance of the song at his only appearance in Canada this year.
For the Halifax band, it meant taking part in rehearsals with the former Beatle.
Pipe Sgt. Bruce Gandy said during one rehearsal, he had to work up some courage to point out a small error in the handwritten musical score the band was working from, which had been given to them by the Peel police.
"We were looking at it saying 'I don't know, it's a C major, C sharp and we should be in D really. Is it the right note?'" Gandy said.
"It was one of those things. Do we look like fools asking the obvious question or do we do the right thing and ask the obvious question so we don't look like fools [on stage]?"
One wrong note
Gandy and McCartney looked over the music together and agreed that one note was wrong. It was an opportunity for Gandy to ask for an autograph.
"It was just a really sleazy way to try to scoop an autograph from him but he said, 'No, absolutely.' So he wrote Paul McCartney and then he wrote, 'Get it right' as a joke."
After their performance Saturday night, Gandy and the other pipers watched the rest of the show near the front of the stage.
Gandy said they got loud cheers from a group of American visitors who follow McCartney on tour.
"They said, 'You guys have made this night for me,'" Gandy said. "And I thought, well thank goodness we really made the thing work well and didn't look like some cheesy Scottish gimmick."
Gandy hopes that his experience onstage with McCartney inspires young pipers. If you practise hard, he said, you never know what rewards are in store.