Fairbanks, Alaska is home to the farthest north pipe band in the United States. The Red Hackle Pipe Band is celebrating 50 years as a band this year and amongst its members is a Scottish piper. Angus Smith grew up in Perthshire and played for the Black Watch, he also worked in the stunning Scottish Highlands before settling in wild Alaska and keeping his life of bagpipes alive in the arctic, as James Bartlett explains.
Unless there is anyone at a research station or on an expedition, it is quite possible that Angus Smith is the nearest Scottish bagpiper to the North Pole. Angus, 56, has lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, for close to 20 years, and this city of some 32,000 people is where he began what he jokingly calls his “North American Tour.” Born in the tiny village of Dale in Southern Pembrokeshire, Wales, where his father had taken a temporary job blasting oil silos, the new family returned to their native home of Crieff in Perthshire when Angus was just a few months old.
A lifelong love with the instrument
Angus seemed to be a particularly loud child, and laughs when he recalls: “It all started around the age of seven, when I was making too much noise in the house. Father took me by the ear to the backdoor, and said I could choose one of three possible words: fiddle, accordion or pipes. For me it was the latter.” This began a lifelong love with the instrument, and today, over half a decade later and following a long spell in the famous Black Watch of the Royal Highland Regiment, he continues to play regularly in his newfound home at the centre of the Alaskan Interior.
“I spent all my schooling at Morrisons Academy playing in their band and CCF, and at 16 I joined the Junior Army at IJLB (Infantry Junior Leaders Battalion) in Shorncliffe. It was lucky I could play really, as my report cards said things like “Angus – a nice wee chap, but alas will never set the Academic Heather alight!”
He took the colours of the Black Watch at Kirknewton in 1985, but after four years he was looking for a new challenge, and he became a “pony man” on an estate in the Southern Cairngorms. “The bothy I lived in was the highest inhabitable place in the UK, which, now I think of it, was good training for a future in Alaska!” He worked in deer management as a stalker at Glen Etive – a location known for its connection to Ian Fleming of James Bond fame – and then at the Tarbert Estate on the Isle of Jura, but then he ‘began looking for an escape’.
“There was a fantastic piper and drumming website, BobDunsire.com – that man should have been knighted for his services to piping – and it had a list of every band throughout the world, and in the world of deer stalking one would always hear great tales of Alaska, so I put my thoughts together.”
Red Hackle Pipe Band
Fairbanks was home to the Red Hackle Pipe Band, and, after taking some advice from Steve Small, another former Black Watch piper who was known for playing in the rain during the 1997 handover of Hong Kong and was then the Senior Instructor at Edinburgh Castle, Angus set out for the Far North, arriving in Fairbanks in 2004. Describing life in Alaska, a huge landmass that is often unfamiliar to many, Angus notes that as a deerstalker, his eye and mind were often consumed with the fine detail of the lay and fold of the land.
“In Alaska your mind is in overdrive, with a never-ending horizon. The solitude and scale of it is truly mighty. Oh, she can and will kill you in a heartbeat: there are raging rivers, predators, -40 degree cold and more, but you quietly are always prepared.”
Angus joined the American military – or what he calls “Uncle Sammy’s Infantry” – in 2009 and spent time in Afghanistan in 2012, then after leaving their service in 2013 he got his powerplant rating and qualified to work as a mechanic for Everts Air, a family-owned business in Fairbanks that flies DC-6 and C-46 and other aircraft, hauling fuel and cargo out to towns and villages in the remote bush.
“Our moto is ‘Legendary Aircraft Extraordinary Service’, which I’ve always thought should have included ‘and Characters!’ he laughs. He had landed safely and happily in his musical life too. “The Red Hackles were home from home to an ex-Black Watch piper like me,” he says, noting that they are currently celebrating their 50th anniversary. “We perform regularly, though there’s always more action in the summer,” he explains.
Foster Scots culture
From mid-May until mid-July, Fairbanks sees 24 hours of “midnight sun” every day, and barely any darkness until the end of August. “We gather most weeks upon an evening, and we might be one of the few bands left, certainly in America, that field dancers in band uniform. We also encourage and foster Scots culture, and educate the younger generation in the form of piping, drumming and dancing.”
Angus feels he has been especially lucky with his band, as many can be “a battlefield of egos,” and he notes that their ‘next door neighbour’ band in Anchorage (Anchorage being some 350 miles from Fairbanks, and ten times the population) are “Always bickering. Hell, if they all came together, they would field a Grade 1 band!”
Around Fairbanks, Angus is known by his unique personalized number plate 1BW (for Black Watch), and he met his wife Kimberly, who hails from Long Island, New York, and now works in behavioural health, when he was stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Angus however has not come across many other Scottish people in Alaska, and says that he tries to return to Scotland every year to see his mother, who suffers from dementia. “I think I miss the characters that abounded in the Highlands: stalkers, shepherds, crofters and islanders – they’re a colourful bunch – but I love it here, and the band has given much nurturing care and attention to ‘Project Angus’, I can tell you!”
Red Hackle Pipe Band photos courtesy of Bleep Media Productions.