Oct 6th, 2008 Realizing that this page has been abandoned in favor of our MySpace Blog I'll try my best to "un-abandon" it, re-discover it and keep those loyal to our page (and haters of MySpace) up to date when our calendar just doesn't offer enough information. Our season has ended successfully with the Celtic Classic in Bethlehem, PA. Other than the fact that our last show was rained out we had a lot of fun, met up with old friends and acquainted ourselves with new ones. The New Hampshire Highland games was the most fun we've had in a three day stretch in years! The weather was great, the setting was pristine and the folks always friendly. As Caleb says, "we brought the goods... and we delivered them" ;--) So now the weather turns cold and in regular Prydein fashion we crawl into our holes, go about day jobs and patiently await the next season. That's not to say we have NO gigs in winter. We are shaking off the chills and the snow to play the Burlington First Night Celebration here in Burlington, Vt. It's our first time and we're pretty excited! We've also decided to actually put our winter to good use and come up with a 3rd album! Well, we don't actually need to "come up with" one, we've already got the material, we're just going into the studio to flesh it out. We love going into the studio, it's great working with Joe and Rob at Egan Media Productions and we really just can't wait! We don't yet know what we'll call the album but we're taking suggestions. I'm sure the answer will present itself part way through the process. I'll keep you updated on what the progress is. Cheers for now! June 28th, 2008 Driving back from the Western Massachusetts Highland Games and man, what a ride! We've hit an amazing amount of rain on I-91 in Vermont, it's hard to believe that the clouds can hold that much water. We've slowed to a crawl on the interstate and most folks have their 4-way flashers on. I'm just glad to know that it's now 6:30 and Rathkeltair's final set has been finished for a while; luckily they avoided the rain. So this was a big deal for us as it was 10 years ago on this day that Whisky Before Breakfast played its first Scottish festival ever and it was 10 years ago on this day that we first met up with 7 Nations which, in itself, isn't such a big deal but 10 years ago on this day the piper for 7 Nations was Neil Anderson who we met for the first time. And now, 10 years later at the Western Massachusetts Highland Games the offshoot of Whisky Before Breakfast (us) and the offshoot of 7 Nations (Rathkeltair) came together. Now I can't really say that the bands came together as most of Rathkeltair didn't arrive until after our last set was finished but Neil sat in with us for a good portion of our last set and Iain even made an appearance with Rathkeltair during their first set. That's TRUE folk music! It was the most fun I've had watching someone else perform in a long, long time. Sadly, it's the only time this year that our two bands will be in the same place at once. We had an amazing time today and met a lot of new people who now have our CD (which means they now control the volume at which they listen to us ;--). If any folks reading this happened to get photos or video, please share it with us! We tried to get our own but the lovely ladies at the CD table weren't able to get a break as we thought they might. Overall it was a GREAT way to start our year and a great way to celebrate this one-of-many anniversaries. You'll hear more from us now that the season is in full swing, hope to see you all on the road! Cheers! May 20th, 2008 Hey folks, hope everyone has been well, the members of Prydein have all made it out of the winter alive and have very much been enjoying an early spring here in the North. We played the Vermont Maple Festival in St. Albans, Vt on the 26th of April (we like to be close to home during the school year) for a great crowd and beautiful weather. It was a gig, however, that made us reconsider purchasing our own sound system (or at least our own monitors!). There's a big benefit to having our own stuff. We are sad to announce that the June 7th Southern New Hampshire games have been cancelled and so our plans for playing there have been dashed like a dingy on the Cliffs of Dover. It's really too bad, we had a blast playing there last year and were really looking forward to it again. Let's hope for the games to start up again in 2009, let's show our support! We had so much fun creating and recording our last album that there's talk already of us doing it again this coming winter, that's a much faster turn around than the 7 years it took us to make our second! Loud Pipes (save lives) has been getting some great reviews, check out our reviews at ShiteNonions.com and at CelticMp3s.com Jan 24th, 2008 What? It's not Christmas anymore? Okay, time to dust off after vacation and start getting the ball rolling again. I know that we've said that we don't usually play out in winter and that we usually save our touring for the summer months when we are all off from school but this year seems to have been a little different, we find ourselves getting pulled into gigs during months when most people are at home sitting by the fire gaining a few pounds. I won't say that hasn't happened to us, Christmas was really good to all of us (except Caleb who will probably never be much more than 150 lbs ;--) New Years saw the last time that Hazen will be playing with Prydein, at least for some time. He has elected to stay in Scotland through the school year and the summer exploring music with some new friends who he has met while studying abroad. While we'll miss him and his playing, we won't miss the fact that he insists on taking off his Teva's in the van on long car trips. On a positive note, we welcome to the band Willa Davie who many of you have seen playing with the band already as she covered for Iain at the Western Mass Games as well as our gig on Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire. The girl is 17 and already she's one of the hottest players in New England. She's the Pipe Major for the Grade 4 Catamount Pipe Band and is hot on Iain's heels as the fastest fingers in the East! She'll bring a new dynamic to the band and we're really looking forward to it. At the same time... guys, don't get any ideas. Iain and I are planning on using our time with Willa to practice how we might handle young men who come around our daughters when they become teenagers (which really shouldn't be a problem since our daughters aren't allowed to date until they're 20). We've added a couple of venues to the 2008 calendar with about 4 more gigs pending. One that I thought I should mention is the Vermont Maple Festival on April 26th in my new home town of St. Albans, Vermont (it'll be nice not to have to drive hours and hours to get to this gig... it's just down the road from me!). It's nice to play some home-town gigs, especially for a band who is usually out of state. I started Maple Sugaring last spring and folks, it's a LOT of work and this festival is the perfect thing to finish off the Sugaring season with. We've also got Quechee back on the calendar, this is probably our 11th or 12th year playing there, I can't remember. We're hoping for a cooler weekend, 100 degrees is "no fit for man or beast" and the tornado that followed later that evening was even less hospitable. We may think twice before camping again! Quechee is our favorite venue of the year I think, the best little Scottish fest there ever was (okay, we're slanted... again it's home turf) and each year it gets bigger and bigger. We're extremely psyched to announce that Prydein will be at this years' Celtic Classic in Bethlehem, PA! The last time we were there was with Whisky Before Breakfast in 1998, our last gig together as Whisky. Boy, a lot has changed since then. Almost everyone who was a part of WBB has gone off and had at least one child, we even heard that Ellery Klein has taken time off from playing with Gaelic Storm to have a child of her own. How we've all grown since college. And through all this change, it's nice to see some things still stay the same. Iain is still trying to get me to say dirty words in French, McDonald's is still the unofficial sponsor of Prydein's tours (again, except for Caleb who lives on twigs and berries) and we still have a blast everywhere we play. Yup, it all comes back to the Classic... here's hoping 2008 is a little less of a roller coaster ride than 1998 was. Well that's all I've got for now, here's to a new year and a happy 2008! Nov 11, 2007 Okay, I'm up so late it's actually the next day! Anyway, just to also let you know that I just added a Downloads page where you can download and listen to 4 live tracks recorded at the Maine Highland Games this past August. These clips are a lot of fun and capture the energy of the live shows much more than a studio recording can. And yes, Stairway to Scotland is there! Good night! Nov 10, 2007 I'm just writing in to say that we've added a new date to next summer's calendar. We're very excited to be going back to the Southern New Hampshire Highland Games in June, we had a blast last year and we're looking forward to more of the same for 2008! Oct 30, 2007 It's almost Halloween now and I'm writing to let you know that Loud Pipes (save lives) is now available for download through DigStation.com. It's amazing how many people would prefer to download their albums these days rather than wait for the United States Postal Service to deliver them! Anyway, happy downloading. I'll let y'all know when it's available through iTunes as well. Oct 11, 2007 Well, it's been a long time coming but I've just updated the website with some new pics, some new content and a facelift for the main page. We've added a Bio for those of you with a morbid curiosity pertaining to the band's origins! Sep 12, 2007 The CDs are here! The CDs have landed! We've already packaged up 110 of them to ship out. If you are one of the many who pre-ordered a CD, you should be getting it any day now, the wait is over! Let us know what you think. Aug 23, 2007 We have a release date for the new album, Loud Pipes (save lives)! The project completion date is set at September 7th so all of you who pre-ordered your discs, you should be seeing something in your mailbox the week of the 10th - 15th! We're pretty psyched, it's been a long time coming. Also a long time coming are bigger T-Shirts, we finally have XL and XXL although you'll notice that the color and design are different. Black shirts are awesome and my personal favorite but they're pretty hot in the summer time so we went with a design to reflect the new CD and we put that onto a white shirt. All of this is available in the Store area (including the new CD where you can pre-order it) or just catch us at a show some time, there's no shipping and it's always way more fun to talk to y'all in person! Aug 5, 2007 We've realized that we don't update this page nearly enough as it's so much easier just to put stuff on our blog at MySpace. In order to stay up to date, view our Blog. Be careful, you may learn something you'd rather not know! If you're not a "friend" over there, take a minute and click "add as friend", we like you guys much more than we like other bands ;--) Mar 3, 2007 What a busy, busy, busy couple of weeks it's been! We spent most of February break (for those of you still in school) at Egan Media Productions recording our newest album (title to be released soon). This has been our 7th time working with Joe Egan and by far the best product! The world of bagpipes is a strange one though. For most of the recording Iain's pipes were playing at A=446, usually they play at A=449. This is the frequency at which the note "A" vibrates. For reference, concert pitch is A=440. Well, it appears that we worked Iain too hard the first couple of days and he blew out a reed! Now, the rule in my classroom is that all my students have to have at least 4 good working reeds in their cases at all times... Iain had one, uno, 1. And this was recording week! Well, at least we don't have to work with a Soprano. Jan 12th, 2007 Happy New Year everyone! With a new year comes a new summer and Prydein is starting to book it. So far you can expect to see us at the Western Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire, Maine and Detroit Highland Games as well as the Quechee Scottish Festival, one of our favorites. Others are being added so stay tuned. For a complete updated schedule, you'd think to check here but on the contrary, you can go to our MySpace Page as the person in charge of that is not as big a procrastinator of the person in charge of this!

Return to Prydein