Pipe dream: For this RI bagpiper, performing at King Richard's Faire feels full circle

WARWICK – As a grade schooler growing up in East Greenwich, Aaron Lindo fell in love with bagpipe music when his parents took him to King Richard's Faire, in Carver, Massachusetts.

Now 35 and a Warwick resident, that introduction still shapes his life, including this Saturday, when he takes over as the main piper at New England's largest renaissance fair.

"It's just a unique sound," said Aaron. "It's fun for me to play. There's only one volume: loud. It kind of attracts attention."

After King Richard's Faire, his mother got him a chanter, the part of bagpipes where pipers place their fingers to control the tones coming from the instrument. It's the first step in learning to play. After a year, when his mom realized he was serious about playing, she got him lessons. Eventually, he joined the Rhode Island Highlanders, an East Greenwich-based group , where he played regularly and performed publicly.

Aaron's playing enchants a high school friend

When he was a student at East Greenwich High School, he met Sarah Oberbeck-Friedlich in a photography class. Eventually, she dated a boy who lived near Aaron's family.

"I would hear it coming through the windows at my boyfriend's parents' house," Sarah said. The music enchanted her, drawing her out onto the lawn for a closer listen.

As the years went by, Aaron studied music at Rhode Island College and followed other pursuits – today he's the assistant town planner for Portsmouth – but the bagpipes were never far from his life.

When the King Richard's Faire piper, Charlie Rafferty, stepped down in 2019, a friend of Aaron's took over the job, occasionally having him fill in for her on days she wasn't available. That primed him to step into the full-time role this year.

By 2022, he had reconnected with his high school "photo buddy" Sarah, and the two started dating. On Oct. 8 that year, he was filling in for the day as the piper at King Richard's Faire, when his duties brought him to perform on the tournament field after the second jousting performance of the day.

King Richard gives Aaron a royal opportunity

When it was over, King Richard addressed him:

"Bagpiper, as our royal emissary, I grant you whatever your heart desires. Name your wish."

Aaron replied, "I'd like to honor my girlfriend by asking her to join me on the joust field."

When Sarah joined him in front of a hundreds of spectators, Aaron got down on one knee, as the crowd began hooting and hollering.

Today, they are husband and wife.

What is King Richard's Faire about?

For the most part, King Richard's Faire is like any other fair, featuring food, live entertainment, games, rides and shopping.

But, it's all done with a Renaissance theme that would fit in the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, "Game of Thrones" or the "Lord of the Rings." To that end, one of the main entertainments is the three-times-a-day jousting show on the tournament field, in addition to musical comedy and side-show-like acts.

The rides are of the low-thrill variety and the games include archery, knife and axe throwing, and a children's joust, where they ride down a horse on a cable and try to thrust a wooden sword through a metal ring.

The food is a variety of fair-type foods, including, of course, the signature roast turkey legs.

Ze Whipper is out, El Zappo is in

Jack Lepiarz, a perennial fan favorite at King Richard's under the name of Jacques Ze Whipper , will not be back for 2024.

In February 2023, Lepiarz left his job as a radio anchor at NPR's WBUR in Boston to perform full-time. He has become a TikTok celebrity, with 3.5 million followers, and appeared in two episodes of America's Got Talent in 2022, featuring some of the whip-cracking tricks he had performed at the fair.

While not strictly replacing Jack, his father, John Lepiarz, a long-time circus performer, will appear at this year's King Richard's Faire as El Zappo, performing a circus variety act. Son Jack will appear at three other Renaissance fairs in the coming months, including the Maryland Renaissance Festival, now through Sept. 29, and the Louisiana Renaissance Festival, in November.

All "Sirs," but no "Dame" in the joust

Also missing this year will be a female knight in the jousting show. Before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the fair for 2020, a "dame" had joined the "sirs" as part of the jousting show for a couple of years, according to showrunner Paul Hoerner, of Hanlon-Lees Action Theater, who is also one of the knights in the show.

But, in 2023, performers' schedules did not line up for a woman to join the show in Carver, Hoerner said. Besides the seven-week run of the show, performers have to be free from other commitments two weeks before for rehearsal and one week after to close up.

"I'm disappointed we don't have a dame this year, but we're going to do our best to fill that spot in the future," he said. "That's something in my mind that's important for little girls, and little boys, to have heroes."

Hoerner said he tried to recruit four women for this year's show, but none was available. Another woman connected with the show is training to be a knight – which involves stage combat with long swords and falling off horses – but that training probably won't be done in time for this year's run of the fair.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Pipe dream: For this RI bagpiper, performing at King Richard's Faire feels full circle