How this world-class bagpipe maker came to set up shop in a highly unlikely spot
The bagpipe occupies the strangest rung on the musical ladder, shaped like an octopus in plaid pants, sounding to some like a goose with its foot caught in an escalator and played during history’s most lopsided battles — by the losing side.
Add to this the bagpipe’s cantankerous nature, fashioned from some of the world’s rarest wood, a combination of cracking pipes and leaking bags that strain all but the heartiest lungs.
So the pride is especially great in downtown Zebulon, where one of the world’s finest craftsmen has opened MacLellan Bagpipes — the only studio in North America that makes, sells and teaches the Scottish national instrument, operating out of what had been an empty storefront.
It’s a happy collision between musical artisan and rebounding Wake County town of 8,000, a delightfully who’d-have-thunk-it arrival that grants the Triangle’s eastern corner a new distinction: Bagpiping mecca.
‘Kind of a big deal’
Across from a CBD/vape shop, Roddy MacLellan is turning African blackwood into pipes that win raves worldwide, a demand heavy enough for a yearlong waiting list, an attraction great enough to pull a Florida-bound customer off Interstate 95.
“In the bagpipe world,” said partner Joe Brady, “Roddy is kind of a big deal.”
The road to Zebulon bagpipes began in MacLellan’s native Glasgow, where he emerged from art school in 1980 with few job prospects in the early years of Margaret Thatcher. On a trip to New York, he delighted in the balmy weather by Scotland standards, so he took a job as a silversmith and made jewelry for the likes of Cartier.
But when he got married, he returned to Scotland for the wedding and heard his cousin play the ceremonial bagpipes, and a sense of culture and history tickled his craftsman’s brain.
“The sound, the culture, the history,” he said. “Growing up in Scotland, I was surrounded by it. You take it for granted.”
Back in New York, he combed Manhattan music stores and found the bagpipes disappointingly plastic and shiny — as inauthentic as Groundskeeper Willie. So he started fashioning his own, working inside his one-car garage.
Before long, MacLellan was turning out instruments that his bagpipe teacher called as good as any they might buy. So he turned full-time piper and fled expensive New Jersey for Monroe, just outside Charlotte, where his reputation grew.
It’s not really possible to mass produce a bagpipe. MacLellan’s blackwood all requires a special permit, collected in Tanzania by dealers who also replant. Once it’s purchased, the wood sits and dries for months.
But compared to MacLellan, who can turn out about 90 in a year, some of the bigger European manufacturers manage 30 a month. Here in the Triangle, MacLellan could connect with the Raleigh Pipe Band, which boasts a small army of 70 players and includes Brady as a founding member.
“I played trumpet in grade school on the South Side of Chicago,” said Brady. “But Irish-Catholic, on the South Side, you’ve got to play bagpipes. It’s that or become a priest.”
Zebulon caught their eye
Looking around for a suitable spot near the pipe band took two years. “We went to Raleigh,” Brady recalled, “and they were like, ‘Bagpipes? We don’t want anything to do with this.’ “
The Zebulon spot caught their eyes only after they played a bagpipe gig for Olde Raleigh Distillery, the whiskey maker that opened there in 2017, and noticing an empty spot next-door.
Now, with Raleigh pipers as volunteers, MacLellan hopes he can boost annual production to 120. The doors haven’t officially opened, and MacLellan already sparked a sidewalk impulse buy.
“Just a guy who walked by and wanted to buy a bagpipe,” Brady said.
Zebulon officials were so excited by the prospect of a bagpipe maker downtown that they asked whether MacLellan could serenade the sidewalk every day for afternoon tea. With the distillery next-door, they make a powerhouse niche duo, adding to cheeky fun already provided by Zebulon’s catfish-themed baseball team.
One imagines the Carolina Mudcats presenting the National Anthem through the bagpipes’ mournful tone, offering discounts to fans who arrive in kilts, presenting MacLellan as the honored guest who brought liveliness, prestige and a caterwaul no other town can match.