Karl Espe plays the violin. His recollection of how or why he chose to start playing this wonderful instrument jumped ship long ago, but the memories of the trials and errors since then are still onboard. Karl's first instructor, his father, started taking him to lessons and sat through many practice sessions when Karl was 7 years old. Many of these sessions ended with tears and cries of "I quit!" from the young student. But Karl didn't quit and he learned that crying was for sissies. He continued to privately study classical violin in the Suzuki method, which has the ideal that young children should learn to play an instrument in the same way that they learn their own language: by listening, watching, and copying. Karl didn't learn to read music until he was forced to after joining an elementary school orchestra in Bemidji Minnesota.

The orchestra life is the good life. After joining the orchestra, Karl realized that he enjoyed playing music in groups rather than by himself. Although being in the school orchestra was not a social grace in the minds of junior high school students, he stuck it out. By the time Karl arrived in high school, he was numb to what was considered 'cool'. Most of his school days were spent in the orchestra room playing music and conversing with his high school orchestra director about this and that.

Around this time, history was made. While Karl was wrapping up his junior year in high school, Brian Miller approached him about learning some Celtic tunes to perform in front of the class for a history project on the Irish in America. Karl didn't know anything about Celtic music, but he thought, "Why not? I'm not busy this week." So he and Brian learned a tune and played it for the class. They liked it so much that they decided to learn another tune, and then another. This continued until they had enough tunes memorized that they thought, "We should be a band." And with the addition of friend Eric Carlson and his bodhran, it was made so.

Now Karl spends his time between gigs attending the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis studying to become a computer scientist. He, with the help of Eric, has just completed working on The Gaels' website.

Although Karl was not brought up on traditional Irish music, he has really taken a liking to it. There aren't many feelings that top the one that you get from being part of a group that just changed from a jig and is now barrelling away on a quick reel. Try it some time.