Portland Metro Pipe Band – Band Member Profile
Name: Ben FinleyPiper or Drummer: Skins and tambourine
When did you begin playing pipes or drums: I started way back when I was a wee child of nine. I thought I’d suck at sports, maybe I'll try music’. It seems to have worked out for me thus far.
Provide some info about your piping/drumming background, musical influences, and other bands you've played with: I started with SJMPB when I was a kid, I took a year off to "find myself", and after I got back from hiking the Himalayas I thought I’ll give pipe band another go. Now here I am. Pipe band will have me in its cold, drunken, Scottish clutches until the day I die. I think pipe band also drove me into the loving hands of European and Skandanavian death metal. So I thank it for that at least.
High point(s) of your band and/or solo career, including awards or trips: I think some of the biggest highlights for me in the pipe band world would probably be trips to Scotland. I always dug goin’ over there and playing in what I like to refer to as the ’Olympics of pipe band’ to ’outsiders’. Which is usually followed with the ever so popular but rarely asked, "so what do you wear under your kilt?". I won the grade 2 aggregate in solo competition back in 2004 or 2005 some time around then, which was pretty hip at the time. Sortly after that I retired from my solo career. Better to go out with a bang eh?
Funniest band moment(s): This band is chock full of funny people, so there’s never a dull moment. One of my favorites has to be when Mark let out an audible expletive on stage at the BC indoor when his metronome crapped out on him. Also it wasn’t funny at the time, but make-shift tent we set up at our very first Bellingham games was the saddest thing you would have ever seen. I think we cannibalized three tents to make one single Franken-tent that would look more at home at a Burning Man. The Homeless Metro Pipe Band.