Dumbarton and District Pipe Band will be back representing the town in this year’s Scottish Pipe Band Championships – after four years away.
Strict lockdown measures introduced due to the Covid-19 pandemic saw numbers in the band, which was formed in 1968, fall drastically.
However, they have now re-formed, been re-graded and are all set for the Levengrove Park showcase on July 29.
Pipe Major Mark Dunlop has said he’s delighted that the band will be returning to action, but insists there is no pressure on the band – with Levengrove the first competition for many of its young members.
Mark told the Lennox: “The Scottish Championships at Levengrove will be our first competition out.
“I’m not really getting too hyped up about it. You need to set goals for bands, if you don’t do that then people will get fed up and drift away. So this is our goal to get out.
“We probably haven’t been practising enough to be doing very much in the grade itself, we’re just happy to be getting out there.
“This year I wanted to get everyone together, get out to some competitions and have some fun.
“Regardless of how it goes it’s the first step towards building a better band.
“I’m not worrying about the competition at all, I’m just excited for the band getting out. There are players who haven’t competed before.
“I’ve been competing since I was 11 and I’m now 46, I’ve been at it a long time. And it’s so nice to see the youngsters compete for the first time.
“I know some of them will be nervous. When you go to an event like Dumbarton, which is a major competition, you know that you’ll have a lot of folk standing about listening to you. That will be a new experience for them.
“We’ll probably need to have a few wee talks just to calm everyone down at times, but I’m hoping that they will enjoy it as well.”
It comes after a difficult spell, with lockdown measures seeing practice banned – and leading to many members drifting away,
“The band started back around 1968. Dumbarton had three different graded pipe bands at one point, but that fell back to just the wee novice juvenile band that I used to take,” explained Mark.
“But then Covid came along, so a lot of the kids we had got older and drifted away. We weren’t practising or anything so it kind of fell apart.
“We then decided that we’d allow some of those players to play again, but they couldn’t play in the novice juvenile grade because they were too young.
“We got the band re-graded last week as a 4b. We have 16 pipers at the moment, with a mixture of young players from the ages of 14 and 15, to players in their 60s.”
And Mark is now optimistic that the band can return to its former glory, with lockdown a distant memory – and more performances on the horizon.
He added: “There have not been many years where the band hasn’t competed. It’s just been over the last wee while since the pandemic.
“There has always been a Dumbarton band out, so it’s great to get the band back out on the road for competitions.
“We fell away from doing the Remembrance Day parade for a few years. So it was great to get out and do that again down in Levengrove.
“It’s nice to be taking the name and association with the town back out to perform.
“Our first competition won’t easy.
“But I’m not going to be putting any pressure on anyone. We’ll do our best and we’ll enjoy the experience.”
