Why it’s time to pay the piper...

The jig isn’t up just yet for this famed instrument maker

IT WAS chance and good fortune that led Michael Vignoles to become one of the country’s finest bodhrán and uilleann pipe makers.

But after hitting the right note with traditional musicians for four decades, the Covid-19 crisis has meant the Galway man has to tune into new ways of doing business.

And the craftsman is hoping the Shop Ireland €1m free advertising campaign for Irish businesses launched by DMG Media will help attract new customers.

Michael began his career as a mechanical fitter but he started his pipe-making after falling in love with trad in the Seventies and buying his own set of pipes. He recalls: ‘I started teaching myself the pipes.

But after about six months the bellows went. I drove 40 miles to Clare to a pipe maker called Eugene Lambe. He said to me, “You’re the lad who’s the fitter from Galway”, so he gave me the leather and the wood and told me to come back to him the next week.

‘He said he’d have a look at what I had done the next week and that then he would show me how to do the reeds. He wouldn’t take any money because he said I had spent the money on petrol going to him.’

Since starting his instrument making business with his son Paul in 1993, the self-taught musician’s instruments have made their way into homes all over the world.

Singer Seán Keane has a set of the Galway craftman’s uilleann pipes, as does American-based musician John McBride.

Among those who have one of Michael’s bodhráns is former De Dannan member Johnny ‘Ringo’ McDonough. And his innovative walking stick with an in-built tin whistle has become a firm musthave every St Patrick’s Day on the American QVC shopping channel.

Michael says since the crisis, he has had to shut his shop, but that he still sells a small number of his instruments online.

He adds: ‘My pipes have gone all over the world… America, Germany, England, France and even South Korea and the Philippines where an Irish lad is trying to market Irish music.

‘But the pipes take a long time to make and it is the bodhráns that keep the business going. I had started bodhrán-making classes in schools just in January before Covid and every student got to make their own bodhrán. But that has stopped now.

‘I sell quality bodhráns but a lot of stuff is coming in from China. There are even some coming in from Pakistan.

‘All we have is the Irish market because there won’t be any tourists this year. It’s a serious situation and I would just hope that people would support Irish business.’

Which is just what the Irish Mail on Sunday’s parent company, DMG Media Ireland, is doing during the pandemic with its €1m Shop Ireland fund.

Each of the businesses featured in the campaign is one of 200 small firms to which DMG has given an advertising package worth €5,000.

So if the pipes – or bodhráns – are calling, Michael’s website is michaelvignoles.com

‘It’s bodhráns keeping the business going’