Timbers win plays second act to The Unipiper's song of redemption

A month after the most embarrassing day of his life, Brian Kidd returned to Providence Park with his unicycle and trumpet.

PORTLAND — After one of the most unexpected outcomes of the season — a 4-2 win over San Jose that saw the Portland Timbers score four second-half goals to snap a nine-game winless streak — Phil Neville spoke pretty bluntly about the pressure he and his team faced to finally get this done. 

With their backs against a wall and jobs on the line, Neville said he told his team it couldn’t stop believing in itself. 

“I felt it,” the coach said. “I felt it all day that we were going to win.” 

Brian Kidd could relate.  

See, Kidd is known around Portland as The Unipiper — the kilt-sporting, Chacos-wearing performer who hops up onto his unicycle to play flaming bagpipes around the city. He’s played festivals, conventions — you name it. But he had never played the National Anthem before a Portland Timbers game until last month before the Timbers took the pitch against LAFC on April 13. 

It didn’t go well. 

Bagpipes don’t have enough notes to play the anthem, so Kidd instead opted for the trumpet — an instrument he said he’s played the song on more times than he can count. But Kidd didn’t take into account the nerves he’d have performing in front of 20,000-plus people at Providence Park and, well, here’s how Kidd described it in the following apology posted to The Unipiper’s Facebook page. 

“…My nerves had taken over and all of a sudden my lips were a quivering mess. And if there is one thing you don't want with a trumpet in your face, it's a quivering mess of lips. I fought my way through the first half of the song, but when it came time for the rockets' red glare, it was game over. Despite my will to play every last note, my mouth refused. I was strapped to a runaway train on a collision course with embarrassment and there was nothing I could do but hold on and pray it would be over quickly.”

“It was one of the most mortifying experiences of my life,” Kidd told The I-5 Corridor later. 

It was an experience he was determined to rectify after the Timbers reached out to see if he wanted to give it another try.

Cue the Portland-themed Rocky montage.

For the last month, Kidd said he’s been training to right his wrong, doing whatever he could to try and simulate the rush of being in that stadium.

“When you’re nervous, you’re short on breath,” he said. “So I would run a few laps and then practice on the trumpet to simulate those same levels of nerves.”

Redemption on Wednesday was scheduled for 7:35 p.m. In the minutes leading up, Kidd quietly waited in the Southwest corner of Providence Park, occasionally humming a few notes through his trumpet and making sure his sandals, embroidered with “Keep Weird” on their backs, were tight. At 7:34 p.m. he pulled on a Darth Vader mask. A minute later, he climbed onto the unicycle, found his balance, lifted the trumpet to his mouth and slowly started pedaling north. When the first notes hit smooth, Kidd came alive — playing a well-paced 80-second anthem that ended with Kidd using his one free arm to orchestrate the crowd into a frenzy.

“As soon as I start playing I know if it’s going to go well. I could just feel it. It was there,” Kidd said, sounding quite a bit like Neville. “I had no idea what to expect the first time. This time, the crowd was feeding in there with me, and I just felt it was going to go all the way to the end. And here we are.”

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor