With their bagpipes and drums and bright kilts, the Stockyard Kilty Band has been part of Chicago for 100 years. The band will celebrate its centenary Saturday with its 100th Anniversary Tartan Ball.
Through the years, the band has been populated with memorable musicians passionate about keeping the ancient traditions of pipe bands alive and relevant. Today’s members keep that spirit going.
Dan O’Brien, originally of Palos Hills, started taking drum lessons with the band when he was 10, thanks to his neighbor, Tom Carroll, a longtime bass drum player with the band. This year, O’Brien celebrates his 25th year as a side drummer, and also serves as the de facto historian of the band.
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Originally called the British Legion, the Stockyard Kilty Band was formed in 1921 and made its debut at Chicago’s Decoration (Memorial) Day Parade on Michigan Avenue in 1922. The band was founded by brothers Bob and Jim Sim who emigrated from Scotland after World War I. To recognize the British military roots of this type of band, O’Brien said, the pipers and drummers wear military-style uniforms for parades, along with kilts made from a colorful tartan of the Buchanan clan.
In 1925 or ’26, the band accepted the invitation to become part of the American Legion post at Chicago’s Union Stockyards, which gave the band a place to practice — the Stockyard Inn — and led to its current name.
O’Brien has a personal connection to this part of the band’s history. His great-grandfather and great-uncle were drovers at the stockyards, and as a boy, his grandfather watched the band rehearse. The stockyards and the Inn are long gone, but the band helps keep their memory alive.
O’Brien called the band “one of the last living relics of the stockyards.”
“It’s something you can experience in person,” he said. “It’s special for me to have this family heritage with the stockyards, and I can continue it by playing with this band. I have worn my great-uncle’s belt buckle from when he was a cowboy as part of my band uniform.”
There’s also the camaraderie of the band, especially the time spent on the bus to and from performances when the old-time stories and songs are shared.
“That’s a huge part for me,” O’Brien said. “Tom Carroll was like a third grandpa to me, a bonus grandpa, and being in the band with him gave me the chance to do this with someone I loved. I’ve met a lot of people who are like family to me.”
He said many of the current members grew up seeing the band in the South Side Irish Parade or other parades and became intrigued with playing the bagpipes.
This is true for Annie Poelstra Dow. As a youngster, she loved the sound of the bagpipes approaching from blocks away as she waited for the South Side Irish Parade, to reach her vantage point on Western Avenue.
That love of the “skirl” of the pipes — their distinctive shrill, wailing sound — led to bagpipe lessons at the dining room table of longtime Stockyard Kilty Band piper Dave McKee Sr., for Poelstra Dow and her twin sister, Megan Poelstra Bacarella, during their high school years. The Poelstra sisters, from Mount Greenwood, have now been pipers in the band themselves for about 20 years.
Annie even met her husband through the band. Doug Dow, also from the South Side, joined the band after service in the Navy. Annie and Doug got to know each other through classes around the McKee table, countless practice sessions, competitions and parades, and being part of a band trip to Scotland. They married in 2012.
“It’s been wonderful to do the parade and competitions alongside my sister and my husband. The band has been there for my husband and me through the most significant parts of our lives. For me personally, they played at my high school graduation party, at our wedding, and they were at the church for my dad’s funeral. It’s great to be part of such a unique group of people from different backgrounds who come together for the band. I am very grateful to them. I have no intention of ever leaving the band,” Poelstra Dow said.
Much of the credit for the band’s longevity goes to the McKee family of the Beverly/Mount Greenwood area, who Poelstra Dow calls the “core of the band.”
Her teacher, Dave McKee Sr., was a band member for 60 years and served as pipe major — the head of the band — for 28 years. He died in 2013. He has been succeeded by his son Matt McKee as pipe major, and is sons, Dave, Luke, and Dan, and granddaughter Grace, are all in the band. The tradition of offering bagpipe and drum classes in their homes continues.
In a recent write-up about the 100th anniversary of the band, Matt McKee said Bob Sim, one of the founders, told his father “without sociability, you won’t have a band.”
“That sociability and friendship has seen the band persist through good times and bad,” McKee wrote.
In addition to the sociability within the band, Poelstra Dow and O’Brien both mentioned the connection to the South Side community as well.
“The band is a unique part of the neighborhood, also. It’s exciting to walk down Western Avenue (as part of the South Side Irish Parade) with neighbors and friends cheering on the band,” Poelstra Dow said.
O’Brien said people come up to band members all the time to share memories.
“One woman from Blue Island told me how as a little girl her grandfather would take her to watch the band practice at the Stockyard Inn,” he said. “Whenever she hears us play, the bagpipes make her think of her grandfather. There’s something more here, not just for the band, but for the people listening to the music.”
O’Brien encourages anyone who wants to learn the bagpipes or drums to contact the band through their website or on social media. The band’s Tartan Ball celebrating its 100th anniversary is from 3 to 7 p.m. Saturday at 115 Bourbon St. in Merrionette Park.
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“We look for people who want to carry on what the band has been doing for one hundred years. That’s what we’re really celebrating — it’s onward to the next one hundred years,” O’Brien said.
Carol Flynn is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.