Hohenlohe Highlanders, Pipes and Drums

The band is recruited from the entire Hohenlohe area. So - roughly speaking - along the A6, between the Weinsberg and Feuchtwangen-Crailsheim motorway junctions and beyond. Our western band members come from the Kraichgau, we continue east via Heilbronn, Mainhardt, Schwäbisch Hall, Ilshofen to Langenburg in the north, from there to Crailsheim via Dinkelsbühl (Bavaria) to Heidenheim an der Brenz. Our southernmost band members are far away from Hohenlohe, almost in Upper Swabia, in Bad Saulgau. The band covers a one-way distance of over 800 km,

When two men met by chance at a mutual friend’s birthday party in 1999, they didn’t know that they both play Scottish bagpipes. They found out by accident - days later. By another coincidence, another Piper was spotted in the area - through a newspaper ad he had placed: “Hardy the Piper - plays for all occasions”. Again by chance, a drummer named Martin Adolf also read exactly this ad, contacted Hardy and immediately brought another drummer to a first meeting - and there were five!

That was the beginning - and the beginning was dark. Nobody really had any idea about the mutual interaction of pipes & drums. Hardy, arguably the best of these three pipers, became musical director. Martin Adolf fought for the first building blocks on the Scottish side drum and Sven Balle took over the pulse, the bass drum. Sources were quickly found from which each of these five could educate themselves. So it slowly got light and a little band formed - a pipe major, a piper, a side drummer, a bass drummer and a drum major, who actually preferred to be piper. The name of the band developed from the area from which the band is recruited - and strictly speaking, Hohenlohe is a high plain, i.e. the Highlands.

The band grew from the five men mentioned at the beginning to their zenith of up to 14 pipers and eight drummers. Six successful international tattoos were carried out in Ellwangen, international performances were denied, close friendships were developed with other bands and even two competitions were entered: once in third place and once in eleventh place - with eleven bands…

As of today, the band consists of eight drummers and twelve pipers. Nobody could have imagined all this in the year 2000 - but it was never planned to found a pipe band.

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