Sept. 15, 2025

Pipeman Interviews Neil Giraldo at Bourbon & Beyond 2025

https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-adventures-of-pipeman--941822/support for PERKS, BONUS Content & FREE GIVEWAYS! Bourbon & Beyond is the World’s Largest Bourbon, Food & Music Fest Bourbon & Beyond Kicked Off America’s 8 Biggest...

Show Notes
Transcript

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Bourbon & Beyond is the World’s Largest Bourbon, Food & Music Fest

Bourbon & Beyond Kicked Off America’s 8 Biggest Days In Music on September 11-14 In Louisville, Kentucky

World’s Largest Bourbon, Food & Music Festival Featured Headliners The Lumineers, Benson Boone, Alabama Shakes (Thursday), Phish, Khruangbin, Joe Bonamassa (Friday), Sturgill “Johnny Blue Skies” Simpson, Jack White, Vance Joy (Saturday), Noah Kahan, Goo Goo Dolls, Megan Moroney (Sunday), Plus Dozens More Rock, Americana, Bluegrass And Alt Rock Artists Along With Elevated Bourbon & Culinary Experiences.

The seventh Bourbon & Beyond welcomed fans from over 50 states and around the globe and over 120 music artists on five stages to Louisville, Kentucky over the weekend. The World’s Largest Bourbon, Food & Music Festival was held from September 11-14 at the at Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, Kentucky and featured an incredible music lineup of music legends and rising stars with headliners The Lumineers, Benson Boone and Alabama Shakes on Thursday; Phish, Khruangbin and Joe Bonamassa on Friday; Sturgill “Johnny Blue Skies” Simpson, Jack White and Vance Joy on Saturday; and Noah Kahan, Goo Goo Dolls and Megan Moroney on Sunday. The lineup also included Cage The Elephant, Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo, Collective Soul, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Iron & Wine, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Switchfoot, Third Eye Blind, Ringo Starr & His All Star Band, Pixies, Lake Street Dive, Dashboard Confessional, Foreigner, Blues Traveler and many others.

This year, Bourbon & Beyond’s newly expanded footprint doubled the square footage of past layouts, and made greater use of the Kentucky Exposition Center’s infrastructure, creating a more comfortable and resilient experience for fans. In addition, all festival passes included FREE access to amusement rides inside Kentucky Kingdom.

This year’s festival was packed with unforgettable performances, surprise collaborations, and historic moments that will be remembered for years to come. Take some zany and serious journeys with The Pipeman aka Dean K. Piper, CST on The Adventures of Pipeman also known as Pipeman Radio syndicated globally “Where Who Knows And Anything Goes.”

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Check out our segment Pipeman in the Pit dedicated to Music, Artistry and Entertainment.

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WEBVTT

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Hi, you have THENTO.

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Yes, that's true. For see Wow, crazy young listen, it's

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the pipe Man.

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Here.

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I'm the Adventures pipe Man W four cy Radio, and

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I'm here with.

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Yeah Neil Geraldo. Here I am man.

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Nice here, a nice bourbon and beyond perfect place for

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you to be with this killer bourbon.

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You ev. Let's talk about this, okay.

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Yeah, I got a great team three cord Bourbon.

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You know.

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It began on May twelfth, twenty sixteen. It was boring,

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and it was born because I was writing a hybrid

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documentary screenplay and I wanted to feature and highlight some

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of the local musicians that I knew growing up, or

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phenomenal musicians and seeing what their lives are doing. So

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a friend of mine saw me post what I was doing,

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and he says, why don't we get an angel. Let's

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get some angel investing sub seed money. We could do

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a trailer May fifty thousand, maybe one hundred thousand dollars.

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I said, why don't we start our own spirits companies.

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It was that day, nice yeah.

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And that's all began. And then we had to go

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find a whiskey maker, and on and on and on,

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and I got lucky, got a great team.

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So what's the secret behind your bourbon compared to other bourbons.

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Well, I don't think there's much of a secret other

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than the fact of there's one rule bearing board rule.

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It better smell great, it better when you raise that

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glass in your mouth, it better smell great. There's some

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spirits where people say, don't worry about the smell or cheesus,

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don't care about the smell, it taste gat no, sorry

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it got.

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I'm with ye. If it's smelling as I'm bringing up,

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I don't.

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Want no, no, no, Absolutely, we try to do different things.

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We keep it all in the spirit of bourbon maker.

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You can't get fancy and you can't get cute. You

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don't do it right. So I can't think of the.

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Word I don't want to no, no, not that.

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Disruptive in a positive way, a positive disrupt disruptor.

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So and we take chances. So we tried different stuff.

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And we're a democracy company, meaning everybody has a vote

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in the spirit.

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I love that.

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Yeah. If I like it and then nine other people

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don't like it, you're out. I'm out. It don't work,

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that's it.

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I learned something new every day from whiskey make it.

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So I'm really happy with my company.

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So was there a plenty in time, like years ago

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that you had this as like a goal that you

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want to make your own type of spirit or something.

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Well, when I was a child, my family Sicilian, right,

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so my father would make wine.

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My uncle's all made wine. Right.

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So my grandfather used to make gropa in the basement

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when he came from Sicily to America. So there's always

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like a it. Actually, the funny story I'll tell you

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because you like it is one of my aunts was

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at the house and they had still in the basement, right,

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But they have jokes of whiskey, you know, gropa whiskey made. Well,

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somebody knocked on the door. She looked through the things.

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She opened the door.

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She goes, oh my god, it's the police. She closed

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the door, she dumped the whiskey out, opened the door.

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It was a fireman. A fireman.

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And then when my grandfather found out come home, he

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was not happy. I think it was at Nancy. But

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it's in our blood to make spirits and stuff.

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So yeah, my grandfather one hundred percent Italian Red Morone. Yeah,

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of course Red wasn't his real name name. He owned

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the speakeasy back in the twenties.

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Oh that's super yeah nice.

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So there you go, Maroni, yeah, Rony yeah yeah yeah.

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And I didn't really know much about until I was adull. Yes,

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if you understand what I mean.

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I understand. I had a couple myself. In my family,

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they had a fireworks factory. Let's just say leave it

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at deest, yeah exactly. Yeah, so there's a lot of

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culture there.

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But actually, when I was a kid too, when I

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was about five or six years old, I remember my

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Grandpa Nunzio would put me on his lap, on his knee,

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and he would give me gropa in his coffee coffee needle,

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sip and sip. Oh, Papa, that's no good, right, So

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it's the cure, all right, Yeah, heure's everything. Yeah, your

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teeth and your teeth are coming. They put whiskey on it.

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Exactly. That's what we should to do.

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Yeah, the guy, that's the old school way you do it.

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If you do it now, you'd probably go to jail.

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Oh yeah, on that right out somewhere. But it works.

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It did work, absolutely.

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So I also love one of your passions. It's charities

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and yeah, helping others, including kids. Yeah, that's the big

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one for me, Like, tell me about that. Yeah.

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Belonged to multiple nonprofit foundations, a children's life saving Foundation,

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a bit a board member with them for about thirty years.

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Child abuse. Certainly, when we wrote.

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Hells for Children, we just was exposing something. We didn't

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have that in our families, Patricia and I. We were

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just exposing that from an article that was written in

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the New York Times that Patricia started and our bass

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player Roger Kapsen, And to know that that exists is

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just heartreaching, you know. So a lot of foundations give

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a note. I'm doing a lot of work with them now.

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It has to do with music education, keeping kids off

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of drugs, stay at school, learning and learning. Different careers

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are for Action, which is working to extinguish gun violence.

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As you know, it's a topic, hot topic right now

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and it's always a topic.

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It's terrible. This gun violence should not be occurring in

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this ridiculous.

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It's terrible.

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Even with festivals like I do festivals here Europe, UK.

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People don't need to ENTERWA clear bags in the UK

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or Europe, but they do here.

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Yeah, for that same reason.

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It's not good it's not good, so that you know,

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it's a whole coalition to help with that subject. And

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also a lot of things that I'm rolling out for

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twenty six twenty six as well.

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Nice And one last thing, I want to talk about

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your performing here at Yeah, A little important thing. The

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thing how does it feel to be a performing still

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after all these.

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Yeah, it's great, it's great. You know you feel as

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soon as you hit that stage. I call it jeral

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Ley Lewis blood. When I get there, I'm gonna be there.

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I'm there. I'm not just hanging around. I'm gonna be

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present and be there.

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I love that's a true artist.

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Well, no, it's because I don't want anything. I don't

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want to feel anything else. I want to be in

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the moment of presence is important. You want to be

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and respect the moment you're in right at that moment.

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And that's funny, it makes a few yell because compared

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to a record, when you record a record, it's there

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for life, it's there for life. A performance, you give

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it all, then you walk off stage and give the people.

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Yeah.

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Like I always said when charl was trying him to retire,

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that if he didn't perform he would pass away, and

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look at what happened after the last performance.

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It's strange how life just happened that way.

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For it is, but thank god you're here.

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You're at Bourbon Beyond.

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That's right.

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I need to go catch your set, so I'm gonna

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add the interview and you need to get to your set.

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I do have to sell out at stage for something.

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I think.

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Let's do it. And thanks a lot for being here.

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Thanks for all that you do for children. Thank you

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for Bourbon Yes, and for Bourbon Beyond, and thanks for Beyond.

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The pipe Man on the Adventures of Pipe Man, Finch

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is a pipe man.

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I like it.

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Hey, this is Neil Gerald.

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When you're listening to the Pipeman on W four c

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Y Radio, thank you

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For listening to the Adventures of Pipeman on W for

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c u I Radio.