JOYCE — Whether he’s traveling in the car or just sitting at home, 14-year-old Axel Yount just can’t stop playing his bagpipe.
“He’s the kind of kid you have to tell to put his pipes down,” says his mother, Jan Yount, of Joyce.
Fact is, Axel says, he loves the instrument so much he spends more than 44 hours every month traveling to band practices in Mount Vernon and to a bagpipe teacher in Edmonds.
And as a member of Mount Vernon’s Northwest MacGregor Pipe Band, he and his bandmates are preparing to march into the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, in August.
Axel, who attends Stevens Middle School, said he first picked up the pipes when he was only nine.
He said his parents had CDs of pipe bands at home. And when he visited Canada, he heard pipers playing in public.
Axel said he’s got Scottish heritage on his mother’s side and when she asked him if he wanted to learn, he just couldn’t refuse.
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The rest of the story appears in the Monday Peninsula Daily News. Click on SUBSCRIBE, above, to get the PDN delivered to your home or office.