- Kevin Godbee
- Feb 20, 2009
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Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 602. Our featured interview tonight is with Kevin the Hobbiton Piper. Kevin was originally on the show in August 2021. The Hobbiton Piper YouTube Channel has 9.24k subscribers and over 120 videos with pipe and tobacco reviews, box openings, food, drink, and more. Kevin’s interview was one of our early novice pipe smoker features, so we’ll check in and see how his pipe smoking and YouTube channel have progressed. At the top of the show, we’ll have an “Ask the Pipemaker” segment with pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 601. Our featured interview tonight is with Rich Esserman. Rich is one of our regular guests that has been on the show many times, and is returning after a 15-month hiatus. Rich has penned innumerous articles about pipes and tobacco for several publications, and he is known for collecting quite large pipes. We’ll get caught up with Rich, and also get his take on some of the same questions we asked Steve Fallon on his recent episode. At the top of the show we’ll have a tour of the tobaccos that Brian is most coveting in his collection right now.
I confess. I’m a Latakiaphile. Ever since I first smelled the smoke of the dusky leaf, I’ve been in love with it. I know this is no surprise to anyone who has followed any part of my weird journey through pipedom, but I wanted to state it openly, get it off my chest. Mostly, because I seem to have been in something of a weird state of denial about this fact myself for some months. It started innocently enough during the heat of last year’s summer, a time when I find myself feeling the gravitational pull of lighter tobaccos. While winter weather and bigger, bolder Latakia mixtures have always been my ideal companions in the colder, moister clime, they can be a bit overwhelming to me when the mercury rises. While I enjoy the taste and aromas of those first few puffs, as the bowl progresses, my senses soon feel fatigued, overwhelmed, like putting on a comfortable but heavy top coat and wandering out into the blazing sun. In the summer months, I have always turned to “lighter” blends, sometimes with just a whisper of Latakia, more often with none at all. Virginias, with or without the added condiment of perique or oriental leaf are just the ticket when short sleeves and tee shirts are the uniform of the day. Even burley blends tend to feel more apropos then. I know there are many who smoke the same blends year-round, but I’ve never been one of them. If I’m honest, I am a little jealous of those folks. It’s a bit of a curse to have my tastes tied inextricably to uncontrollable forces of nature. (Though, I do recall a rather oddly delightful experience of finding myself, exactly once, smoking a pipe in the shower. Another story. Another time. Maybe.) Last year presented no exception to the rule. Once spring had come and gone, I put away the dark mixtures, and turned to the softer, gentler side of tobacco goodness. I always enjoy this little “reset,” but equally, I look forward to the return of the cooler days and colder nights when I can come back home to the comfort of those mixtures that have always provided me with an indescribable solace. I love fall and winter the most, and not just for smoking. I don’t really hate the sun, but I’ve never thrived in its heat; my constitution prefers cooler weather. I’ve always been a fall and winter lover. But, something strange happened last year. Even when the temperatures dropped, even when the air got misty, the rain began falling, and I traded short sleeves for sweaters, I kept reaching for my summer blends. Occasionally, I might dip into the jar of Westminster, prepare a slice or two of Spark Plug, or reach for one of my vintage tins of Orient Express #11 or Bengal Slices, but I found myself routinely returning to the lighter side of things when it was time to fill my bowl. Nothing about this should be upsetting, of course, but it’s just not who I am. It’s out of character. It’s like I was subconsciously denying something that is fundamental to the very core of my pipe smoking existence. Looking back on it now, it feels like I was in some strange parallel universe, an alternate reality. It strikes me as just plain wrong. It’s an odd thing. For most of my pipe smoking life, I’ve always enjoyed these forays into the lighter side of things, but at the same time, my craving for Latakia forward mixtures has always ruled. I remember when I first began exploring Virginias, I’d reach the end of a bowl, feeling somehow unsatisfied, and would immediately want something else, something smoky to scratch the itch that remained. As I became more familiar with them, that itch gradually subsided, but never fully disappeared. The pull of the dark side remained strong. I’d spend the summer enjoying my Virginias, but always looking forward to the season’s change so I could once again dive happily into the deep, smoky richness of my most favored leaf. Last year, though, I kept on an almost steady diet of Virginias all summer, of course, but also right through the cold and wet months. On a whim one cool, blue day recently, as the sun revealed itself from behind wispy clouds, I pulled an open tin of my beloved OE11 from the Tupperdor in which the open tins reside, savored the aroma for a few minutes, then filled a bowl with those luscious dark ribbons and enjoyed an almost magical smoke, rich, deep, satisfying, the wonderful incense-like scents enveloping me as I puffed in absolute bliss. Then, reality hit me over the head. With spring teasingly peering out from around the corner, last year’s winter having pretty much come and gone, I realized I’d managed to miss out on all those wonderful cold, damp days and the perfect harmony they create when the misty air embraces the leathery, campfire aromas and rich flavors from my beloved mixtures, and I didn’t even notice. It’s not just that the window of opportunity for my yearly Latakia fest was about to be slammed shut, but, worse, it’s that I wasn’t even aware that I was missing it. It’s not that my tastes had changed, or anything so dramatic; I’d simply fallen victim to the power of inertia. I was enjoying what I smoked, and simply, unconsciously paid no attention to the fact that the season was coming to a close. Hot weather is on its way, and if history holds, it’s probably coming fast. Soon it will be time to return full-stop to tee shirts, cold showers and lighter tobacco fare. It feels like I’ve slept through Latakia season, like I’ve missed out, and I’m feeling a little melancholy about that. I’ve got at most a few weeks to catch up, to make up for lost time. Hopefully, we’ll see a few more days of rain before that […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 600. Our featured interview tonight is with Dylan J. Schlender. This is the return of our series of interviews with “Journeymen Pipe Smokers” – guys that have been smoking pipes between five and 10 years. Dylan started smoking in 2018 with a Winslow pipe, and Captain Black. (He soon learned that he likes English-style blends much more.) He resides in CT and works in IT. He also co-hosts his own podcast, “Reels of Justice – The Official Fake Movie Court Podcast”. He is one of four co-hosts where they put a movie on trial each week. At the top of the show, in celebration of upcoming St. Patrick’s Day, Brian will read “Paddy Larrigan’s 100th Birthday” by Chuck Stanion. It was originally published on SmokingPipes.com’s Daily Reader.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 599. Our featured interview tonight is with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA. Jeremy has been a pipe smoker for over a decade and is passionate about pipes, pipe tobacco, and blending tobacco. Tonight’s discussion will focus on Oriental Tobaccos, and Brian said HE even learned something. At the top of the show, Brian will continue the tour of his pipe collection with the “Satou Reds”.
February’s International Pipe-Smoking Day was more than just another moment of relaxation for Pundit. It took me back to a time in Paris when I was wandering somewhere around the 10th Arrondissement of that great city and happened upon a shop with a sign that read: Tabac. I had to go inside and look around and gaze at the goodies. Inside that delightful French pipe shop I had my first encounter with French pipes of any sort. Pundit was enamored of English pipes at the time and was dimly aware of much else. Let alone historic French-made. The shop owner walked us around his charming very French shop, flooding me with his broken English. My college French had lived beyond its best by date. The owner waltzed over to a counter and showed me a Chacom, of the famous Chacom and Comoy family of Saint-Claude, a small town in eastern France, which is the self-described “world capital of (the) pipe.” For good reason as it turns out. A billiard Chacom was purchased immediately. But now sadly, or perhaps inevitably, that particular Chacom pipe from the Paris Tabac shop has been lost to time. Who knows where or how it disappeared? Traded, perhaps? But the time in that tobacco shop was well spent. It was here that I learned something of Saint-Claude and its pipe history, foreign to me up to then. Never mind it was the birthplace of briar pipes. Yes, there are holes in Pundit’s knowledge of pipe history. Briar pipes were born in Saint-Claude, with Chacom. Giving the French pipe bragging rights as offspring originals of pipes we love today. It’s even more remarkable that we can still find pipes that have been seasoning in the historical air of Saint-Claude for years and purchase them at extraordinarily reasonable prices. Many pipe smokers are attracted to the history of pipes, Pundit included. And those made in Saint-Claude are some of the most genuine, historically relevant pipes that any enthusiast can enjoy. While roaming the “Ville lumière,” the City of Light, in the early 2000s, Pundit felt like a foot-loose expat in Paris, say of the 1920s. For Pundit it was something akin to hanging out with the original expats such as Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, and James Joyce, just to name a few of the Pundit’s favs. Naturally, a couple of these literary icons smoked pipes: Ezra Pound and James Joyce certainly. Hemingway—however, there are arguments on both sides of “did he or didn’t he?” smoke a pipe. Since Hem was a Pundit “code hero” I favor the “he did,” side of the question. Now before drawing any wild conclusions, this is no manner of imagination means to infer that Pundit is included in the writing circle of the above names. But you get the idea. The expats of the 1920s were singular. I suppose I became overawed when I discovered Hemingway’s Paris apartment and then later enjoyed dinner in the corner booth of the famous literary restaurant Les Deux Magots where Hem and wife Hadley had night-out repasts. You get the notion, I hope, that Paris was special. And the Tabac shop made it even more of an event of a lifetime. And if you need further reading on the birthplace of briar pipes, I suggest you check out Chuck Station in Pipe Line at SmokingPipes.com. His piece on the history of the Comoy and Chapuis pipe families is simply fascinating surrounding the advent of briar for pipes. And now, some pipe smokers of the past. Let’s start with Albert Einstein, the German-born master of theoretical physics. We think of Mr. E=MC2 as the greatest scientist of any generation. He was also famously known for smoking a pipe, mostly Revelation (of course) tobacco. Einstein was born March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany, and died April 18, 1955, in Princeton, N.J. By now you are familiar with Einstein’s famous quote about pipes. If not, here it is again: I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs. Next up is Vincent Willem van Gogh, a Dutch Post-Impressionist. In his masterful works, Van Gogh painted self-portraits of himself smoking his pipe. And you can find some shapes named for him in Ser Jacopo’s Picta Picasso Pipes. Van Gogh was born March 30, 1853, in Zundert, Netherlands, and died July 29, 1890, in France. The famed artist demonstrates how much he loved his pipes with this observation: To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one’s fling from time to time, smoke one’s pipe, and drink one’s coffee in peace—Vincent Van Gogh. And to finish with a bit of musical flair is Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer known for orchestral music such as the mighty Brandenburg Concertos. Bach was born March 31, 1685, in Eisenach, Germany, and died July 28, 1750. And as we enter the stretch run into spring, here is a parting shot from one of the most celebrated of pipe smokers: In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours—Mark Twain.