I worked nineteen years in a steel mill in the Monongahela Valley, and in 1984 they laid off my whole department and the mill never called us back. I went back to school at 37, learned heating and air conditioning, and I have been fixing furnaces ever since. The next year my father died. At his graveside a piper from this band played, by himself, up on the hill, and when he finished and walked away still playing I stood there and could not move. I had never paid any attention to bagpipes in my life. The next Tuesday I walked into band practice and asked how you start. I was 38. I'm 52 now.

I'm Paul Brazeal, secretary of the Steel Valley Pipes & Drums and a second-row piper, which means I'm good enough to be in the band and smart enough to know I'm not front row. If you want to know about the band, hire us, or learn to play, you're in the right place.

The Band

We were started in 1977 by four men from the mills and a Presbyterian minister who'd learned to play in the Army. Today we're fourteen pipers, a drum corps of four side drummers, three tenor drummers and one bass drummer, and a drum major. We have steelworkers' sons and daughters, two schoolteachers, a dentist, a mail carrier, a retired fireman, a seventeen-year-old tenor drummer who is going to be better than all of us, and me. We wear the Black Watch tartan, the dark green and navy you see behind this page.

Eddie Holtzclaw has been pipe major since 1988 and he is the reason we sound like a band and not a traffic jam. Sam Perri is the only Italian lead drummer in western Pennsylvania, to our knowledge, and he will fight you about it. John Mundy is 71 and has carried the mace in front of this band since 1979, in a feather bonnet, in July, without complaint.

Practice

Every Tuesday night, 7:30 to 9:30, in the social hall of a Presbyterian church in Homestead, down the hill from where the big mill used to be. Beginners' chanter and drum lessons start at 6:45. The door is on the side by the parking lot, and you'll hear us before you find it. Visitors are welcome. Bring earplugs if you've got sensitive ears. We don't.

The 1999 Season

We compete in Grade 4, which is where most bands start and where a lot of good bands stay. This summer we played at seven Highland games in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, in two events: the medley, which is a set of tunes of different kinds the band picks itself, and the march, strathspey and reel, the old test of a band. We started the season sixth out of eight in May with our drones wandering all over the place, and by August we won the MSR at the Cheat River games, our first first place in eleven years. I won't tell you what Eddie said to us afterward but I will tell you he didn't say it to us before. Every placing is on the results page.

Parades

• St. Patrick's Day, downtown Pittsburgh, every March, with every pipe band in three counties
• The Fourth of July, in the Mon Valley, which is the hottest day of the year to wear wool
• Veterans Day, Thursday, November 11. We'll play at the borough memorial in the park at 11:00 in the morning, then march to the cemetery. Several of us served. All of us show up.

Burns Supper: January 25, 2000

Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759, and Scots all over the world have a supper in his honor on or near that date. This year it falls on a Tuesday, our practice night, so we're skipping practice and eating instead. The haggis will be piped in, somebody will recite Burns's poem to it (in full, with the knife), there'll be the toasts to the lassies and the reply from the lassies, and then dinner. Haggis for those who want it, roast beef for those who don't. Tickets $25, at a banquet hall in West Mifflin. E-mail me for tickets.

Hire the Band

Give us as much notice as you can, especially for May through September. For a funeral, e-mail or leave word with any of us and we'll do our best on short notice. We've never missed one yet.