Bagpiper & Pipe Band Hats

Pipers are the most self-mocking tribe in music, and the jokes write themselves. Why do bagpipers walk when they play? To get away from the sound. Piper John Haack, writing about the job in St. Louis Magazine, compares the pipes to patting your head, rubbing your tummy and knitting a sweater at the same time, and says there is no way to stop the sound once it starts exiting the bag. A quality set costs over $1,000 and carries three reeds. Asked what is under the kilt, he says one good response is shoes and socks. The piper's life has its own comedy of banishment. A piper in Fergus, Ontario drew four police visits and a bylaw visit over noise complaints, was told he had broken no rules, and drew 36 requests for lawn signs reading "piping isn't a crime." The work is real too: police and fire pipe bands play funerals, a custom that took hold in the 1800s and 1900s, and the Aiken Sheriff's Pipes and Drums formed in 2006 because nobody could be found to pipe at a sergeant's funeral. The designs cover the badges (BAGPIPER, PIPE BAND, PIPE MAJOR), the three notes that clear a room, the drummer who keeps the pipers in line, and DON'T RUN WITH BAGPIPES, a line already sold on TeePublic hats that earns a second colorway here. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. For the piper, the drummer, or whoever lives next door.