Pipeline

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #127 (December 2006/January 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Pipeline

The Two Magicians

by Steve Winick

About five years ago, Dermot Hyde and Tom Hake, the two musicians who make up Pipeline, had a decision to make. They had been playing music together casually for years, but they wanted to play more professionally. The received wisdom was, they should find two or three more people and form a band. The only problem was, they didn't want to. "There aren't many people playing just as a duo, anywhere," Hyde said. "But we found the idea of working as a duo suits us very well. We've got the same musical taste. There was no friction, really, and both of our ideas about how to present this music were very similar. It's exactly the kind of music we want to present. And it's economically much better for us as well. There's less problems financing two plane trips to wherever it is."

Working as a duo turned out to suit them for another reason: The two have a magical ability to give an audience the impression of a much larger band. "We don't actually need anybody else to play along with us," Hyde said. "That might sound arrogant, but it's not." Their U.S. agent, Robyn Boyd, agreed, recalling her first experience with the pair: "I was told by a friend, 'You gotta go see these guys. It's a two-piece band that sounds like a five-piece band.' Well, it did!" What makes this possible is the sheer number of instruments the two members can play. Although in their official biographies they list three instruments for Hake and five for Hyde, there are in fact more, so that in each concert you are likely to hear several kinds of bagpipes (including Hyde's uilleann pipes, for which the band is named), whistles, guitar, bouzouki, mandolin, harp, and other surprises. Moreover, they are masters at playing them in unusual combinations, and at switching among instruments at lightning speed, so that what was uilleann pipes and bouzouki can become whistle and harp in a flash.

[cover #127]