Cé hé Chip Doehring?

Chip sits in his creative loft at home in Tuchoměřice

William F. Doehring III (a.k.a. “Chip”), tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m a baby-boomer born in 1964, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and except for some holidays and U.S. Army camps and schools, I remained a resident Baltimorian until I was 22 years old. In classic American fashion, my ancestry on my mother’s side is Irish, my father’s side being German. While attending the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore City (finishing with a bachelor’s degree in Visual Communication), I was also enrolled in the Johns Hopkins University Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) to become an officer in the U.S. Army.  Graduating from MICA with an art degree and being commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant as an armour officer with the U.S. Army were 2 of the 4 vital ingredients that set me on the path of everything my life has become and where I am today.  The 3rd ingredient, being the learning of the Great Highland Bagpipe, which began for me at the age of 10.  And finally and most importantly, the 4th ingredient, my family.

It was the army that brought me to Europe (1987-1990), my art that led me to teaching children at the International School of Prague (ISP), the Pipes that have connected me with all that I’ve come to be as a musician, and my family that anchored me soundly in the Czech Republic. And to be quite clear and to complete the picture of who I have become as a person in all that I do, none of all that would be what it is nor have nearly as much meaning as it does without Šárka, my wife and best friend of nearly 30 years and the family we have become, with our children Anna (27) and Liam (24). 

Chip with his family

After 10 years of the military (which included a deployment in the 1991 Gulf War with a tank battalion) and coming to the Czech Republic in 1995, I really attribute Šárka for the time and chance I had to find myself and discover who I was.  When I came here after leaving the army, I had an open-ended ticket to return to the U.S. 6 months after I arrived.  Before that 6 month time period was over, I met Šárka, and we decided to see where our relationship would go…I never made that plane back to the states.  During that time of finding my footing post-military, I worked as an Art Director in two advertising agencies, tried 6 months as a free-lance illustrator, 10 months at Bertlitz Language School, and then took a job as an Instructional Aide in the 4th and 5th Grade at the International School of Prague in 1999.  Within a year and a half of aiding, I was hired as the full time art teacher teaching Grades one through five, finally finding my place in the world at the age of 35. While in my early years of teaching at ISP, I spent 4 summers earning my Masters in Elementary Education, Grades K-8, on the island of Mallorca with the College of New Jersey.

Hats off - Chip has a large collection of baseball hats and other memorabilia from his wide-ranging career.

How did you first get into music?

With growing up in a family that had strong Irish roots, St. Patrick’s Days and other Irish events in the family were pretty big.  My great grandmother Delia Garvey was from County Galway and my great grandfather Matthew White was a fiddle player from Roscommon, they arrived in the US in the 1880s.  All the girls in our family, by the time they were four or five years old, were in the Hibernians Irish dance troupe. Every St. Patrick's Day, the family always found out where the pipers were going, so that's where we went, a bar of course. Uncle Jack, one of the sons of Matthew and Delia was a fiddle player, and he would always play for the Irish dancing and singing old songs from Ireland. So that's what I grew up with in the 60s and 70s. By the time I was nine years old, I had gone to my dad at one Parade, and I said, “Dad, can I learn the pipes?” Whenever I heard the pipes, especially around St. Patrick’s Day, something from the pipes was already grabbing me, like tapping my spine. And so, we went and found the pipe band, with my Dad asking, “how could he get started on the pipes?” So it was with the Baltimore City Pipe Band that I started taking lessons once a week at the age of 10.  I was on the chanter [the part of a bagpipe used to play the melody] for 5 years. At the age of 15, I finally got a set of pipes as a present. 

Sadly, by the age of 16, my piping fell by the wayside, and I pretty much ignored it over the next 15 years. Only when Šarka told me all about Strakonice (where she was born), and Švanda Dudák, I took the pipes out of storage, started playing again…and the rest is history.   After a few years of working to get back up to snuff on the pipes, what followed was me teaching the pipes for free for four years to the generation of pipers that would found and develop Prague’s share of pipe bands and pipers over the next 25 years.  This includes the “1^st Bohemian Highland Pipers”(defunct) “1^st Czech Pipes and Drums”(defunct) “The Rebel Pipers”(current) and the “Blue Squadron Pipe Band” (current).  During those years of teaching the pipes, I piped for Ballentine’s, Grant’s and Glenfiddich Whiskies, and I did some piping for a British Insurance Company (Commercial Union).  As well during this time in the early 2000, I studied piping on 4 separate occasions at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow.  Piping has taken me to all corners of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Some of my most prestigious hirings have been playing on several occasions over the years for British Embassy events. Currently my most prestigious hirings are for the Annual CIBCA St. Patrick’s Day Parades!

Magnum opus - Chip with the large mural he created for ISP in 2016

So you've been a teacher at the ISP for 27 years and counting…? You must love it!

For sure, there’s no question being an art teacher was my calling and what I was truly meant to do. For me, it’s not just a job, but a mission, I do indeed love it.  I've always felt and promoted myself as somebody who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. I'm not just the art teacher, I'm a practicing artist – a painter, a graphic artist, a practicing musician, I keep memoirs, I write poetry…I deeply understand personal expression, passionately.  And so I believe have the knowledge and understanding that I think can help kids create, observe, imagine, express and grow.  And I get to be a goof-ball everyday working with kids…I may grow old, but I’ll never grow up!

Chip with a reduced-size print of one of his works - a 2B pencil drawing based on part of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

What do you think is more important to you? Being a painter or being a musician? 

Yeah, there was the Chip&Co. Band for 6 years and during that time of the band I started playing around a few Irish pubs in Prague.  Currently I’m playing at “The Three Fiddles” about twice a month.  This December I’ll play on the 12th and 19th, 19:00-22:00.  If you’re still looking for a fun, cozy place to spend New Year’s this year, consider “The Three Fiddles,” I’ll be playing sometime after 21:00 and then piping Auld Lang Syne on the pipes out on the street at midnight.  Currently more significant to me than playing solo, is teaming up with Jan Veselý on the fiddle as the duo “Tuppence.”  If we’re lucky for those Three Fiddle gigs twice a month, Janík can join me for us to play as “Tuppence.”  We’ve also tailored our “Tuppence” repertoire for the stage and other functions and venues. 

To answer your question, and it’s a good one, both being a painter and musician, and even in writing poetry, they all share the same relevance in my heart, mind and soul…for me it’s about the avenue or track that a particular type of expression needs in order to get out and be shared.  It’s tough to make this sound positive, but to want to express yourself as a musician and a visual artist, or a bit as a writer, it can be burdensome because you've got things inside of you that you want to get out, and you're not sure which direction to take. When you choose one direction, it pushes the other one out, if you choose another direction, it pushes yet the other one out, but you know that you've got something to share, and then even on top of that, you know that no matter what route you choose, time will always be the enemy.  Aargh, these beasts!!

Můj domova - drahý a jediný [My Dear Sweet Home] - a print from a recent work of Chip's which captures in painstaking detail and beauty the abode of every Czech Babička. Chip uses the same under-painting technique as the Flemish Masters.

Any big plans for the future? 

Well, I haven't yet done a significant self-portrait of myself as an adult, so I think that’s very close to the top of the list, if not next.  I believe it will be something related to me teaching children art.  With the music, I also believe I have enough material now for a solo CD endeavour, full of things I’ve written going all the way back to my university days. We’ll see which love wins the fight in my heart first!

Šarka and Chip with Lady Luck smiling on them - when traveling through the U.S.

You can find more about Chip and follow him on social media here. Chip and Tuppence are available for hire to play for a variety of functions and venues. Chip also has prints of a number of his paintings and works of art available for purchase. For Chip’s music with the band Chip&Co., you can find their CD “Full Circle” on Spotify and Apple Music.

More photos from Chip's multi-faceted life below-