The Barbershop Pipers

Every month a small collective of New Brunsiwck-based bagpipers meet in a barbershop, reviving a lost form of traditional music.

Colton Patterson, director of the New Brunswick Piobaireachd Club, performs his piece at the monthly meeting. (Ian Curran)

In the small East Coast City of Fredericton, there is an unusual monthly meeting in a downtown barbershop. It’s an uncommon barbershop in the sense that it sells liquor, making it a prime destination for getting buzzed – in more ways than one.

The Roal Barber shop hosts a small collective of bagpipers who practice a lost form of century-old bagpipe music. It’s called piobaireachd, pronounced “peeb-rock,” and is considered the classical form of bagpipe music.

This “niche of a niche” strays away from the traditional march or jig rhythms, in fact, it has no rhythm. As club members Andy Rogers and Colton Patterson explain, it throws most traditional music theory out the window and that’s why they love it.