Musician has played worldwide, even in war zone

The pedestrians could hear Mike Gilbert long before they saw him. Slowly, but surely a small gaggle emerged from nearby shops and sidewalks, collecting outside the gazebo at Depot Park in Whitefish. Beneath it, in full Scottish regalia, Gilbert rewarded their curiosity with an impromptu performance, delighting the audience with the hauntingly beautiful cry of bagpipes.

Gilbert is a traveling bagpiper, playing at milestone events such as weddings, funerals and even boat launches throughout the valley and beyond.

“I’m a free-range piper — No cage, no GMOs,” Gilbert joked.

He’s been playing for the past 20 years, but was drawn to the instrument in his youth, after seeing a piper play for the first time while vacationing in Nova Scotia.

“There’s just something about them… I’ve seen what they do to people, what they mean to people,” Gilbert said. “To me, they’re a spiritual instrument. The sound comes from a time before people even wrote.”

Bagpipes are most commonly associated with Scotland and Ireland, but have been played throughout Asia, Europe and north Africa throughout history. The precise origins of the instrument aren’t entirely certain — some sources credit ancient Egyptians with developing the bagpipe while others allege they were first designed by the Greeks or Romans. Gilbert plays Scottish Highland pipes, which are blown by mouth, rather than a bellows like Irish pipes, and includes three drones, a mouthpiece and a chanter, where the melody is created.

Gilbert finally decided to pick up the instrument at age 40 to keep a promise to himself that one day he’d learn to play.

“I decided at 40, either learn this, or forget about it,” he said.

His career in the Air Force took him to Rapid City, South Dakota, where he found an instructor and began lessons. As Gilbert moved around the world to different duty stations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, the bagpipes came with him. While his official title was chaplain, he also played a secondary role as a piper, performing at funerals, military celebrations and even atop Saddam Hussein’s palace. In the early days of the Iraq War in 2003, Gilbert was assigned to the operations center in the Green Zone, located at the palace.

“I actually left behind some of my chemical gear just so I could fit in my bagpipes,” Gilbert admitted. “It turned out, there were maybe five or six other people from other countries and they brought their bagpipes too. Bagpipers, we’re kind of different like that.”

At night, he’d climb to the top of the palace dome — back then, there weren’t as many rules — and play for the troops below.

“I would be up on top overlooking Baghdad and then the last prayer tower would stop and I would play,” Gilbert said. “The last thing I would play was ‘Amazing Grace.’”

For Gilbert, his bagpipes were more than a means of providing entertainment. They became a form of outreach for his chaplaincy, especially during a particular morning physical training session. Thousands of trainees were in the midst of their 2-mile run when Gilbert decided to take a risk. Without approval from the higher-ups or any kind of forewarning, he busted out his bagpipes and started to play.

“All of a sudden everybody’s going, “Yeah!” I didn’t know if I was going to get in trouble. I just did it,” Gilbert said. “The training leaders — the drill sergeants — I saw them coming up and I thought they were just going to go: ‘Stop that,’ but they asked me if I could play a certain tune.”

His PT serenades became a tradition and he’d perform during the exercise sessions whenever his schedule allowed. But his playing also served a larger purpose.

“As a chaplain, one of the challenges is getting known to people. You can go around and say hi to people, but as soon as I played bagpipes with over 2,000 guys, they all knew who I was,” Gilbert said. “It was like instant, that rapport. It breaks the ice with people. They see you in a little different way than just a religious person.”

When he wasn’t piping, Gilbert was counseling soldiers. He’d go to where they were, whether that was Guantanamo Bay or down a missile hole at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls.

“Most people, especially young people, they don’t face their mortality much. They [the troops] have to think about that,” he said. “I had one week, just one week in a deployment in Afghanistan where I intervened in five suicides. That’s five people that are still around.”

He was also there when the soldiers didn’t make it back from their missions.

Gilbert played at funerals for some of the first casualties in Baghdad, including a young soldier who had only been in country for a week. He made a rare exodus from the Green Zone in a convoy of open-air Humvees, rolling through Baghdad without any armor or protection.

“Playing bagpipes for those guys, that was a big deal,” Gilbert said. He also performed at a memorial for a senior United Nations employee who died when a car bomb exploded after driving into his building. The service took place on the tarmac which became so hot that Gilbert started seeing spots and nearly passed out.

“The following day, my mother-in-law emailed me. She saw the funeral on TV and she heard bagpipes and she said, ‘I was thinking of you,’”Gilbert said. “Actually, that was me. I mean, what are the odds?”

With 35 years of service under his belt, Gilbert retired from the Air Force and began a new adventure — finding a place to call home. He embarked on an extensive road trip throughout the U.S. and came across Whitefish.

His nearly year-long search was over — he was home.

Today, Gilbert still travels, only this time it’s wherever his bagpipes take him.

He finds joy in adding the distinctive melody of bagpipes to mark life’s milestones.

There’s something special about them, something that touches the hearts of people that hear them.

Oftentimes, listeners will approach him after an event to say that they’ve forgotten much of what happened, save for one thing.

They always remember the bagpipes.

For more information call Gilbert at 406-868-7859 or visit www.montanabagpiper.com

Reporter Mackenzie Reiss can be reached at (406) 758-4433 or mreiss@dailyinterlake.com.