Last night we had a very nice session at our local. Very nice players, nice people. But although the session was great, the pub was quite empty. And it's only slowly improving since we started up the session again after a break.
Any ideas as to how to get more punters in?
It could be argued that this is the governor's business, but unless we get more people in it's possible we could lose it.
Hm. Tough one, Danny. You don't want TOO many people in, even if the publican does, because after all you like to be able to hear, right? Try asking all your friends to come by on session night for a couple, as a favor to yourself. Hopefully that'll get them used to coming down as a semi-regular thing, and it should snowball a bit if you've got enough coming down.
i agree with zina. I wasn't running the session but i was asked to come down regularly as the fiddler guy.... and it was kind of bare, i invited a few of my old uni friends to come down for the craic (most of then not even trad enthusiasts), and they love it so much they come every week now, its a regular thing and i enjoy it even more due to their prescence. its ace!
List the session in the local paper.
Suppose nov/start of dec. is a quiet time of year anyway - don't worry, they'll all start comin out of the woodwork comin up to Christmas...your post might be 'How to get a pub quiet' then.
I've done quite a lot of that in the past, o promiscuous-one-in-the-stinging-ruderals, but that is certainly an area I'll revisit. It used to be well-patronised but it seems that for a while the session lost its way, so people stopped coming. Now the *session* is back on track and is healthy, maybe it's just a matter of time before word gets round again. But I'd like to accelerate the process.
Launch to session and make a big deal out of it. Get some wine and cheese and invite everybody. get some flyers, local radio time, paper ads and shop windows. Make a theme night out of it, call it "Irish Night" or something like that. Just make it one night that anybody would be a fool to miss. and then maybe you will have these new guy and girls coming back on a weekly basis.
Naw.......sherioulsly ......a sign outside the pub, preferably on the pavement. Sometimes when we're playing in the Bent Brief session, we look out the window and see people walking by - they see they pavement sign, and about half of them stop to read it. Another half of that half then walk in to the pub to see what's going on. And half of that half stay and buy beer and listen to the music. So I guess punters don't do anything by halves....OK, I'm just leaving
When I started it 2 years ago, there were not so many musicians or audiences come to enjoy the music. However, we have become kind of famous in our area now, especially after I launch the website for my session. I can see more than 20 musicians, dancers and audiences coming to my session regularly. It is good enough for the pub to maintain my session, though not all the customers spend so much money at the pub, which the pub says to me sometimes…
Now I have another problem.
I am a guitarist and on and off I do have gigs levying the door charge at small concert hall or something like that with some melody players. However, I found there are less people coming to this kind of gig (not a session)…
Most of the session comers are for them to play the music by themselves. The dancers and audiences come to the session as they don’t have to pay so much money if they can sit down and listen to the music by buying only one pint of Guiness, you know.
What I am doing for the gig is quite different from what I am doing at the session. Better arrangement for more worked-out sets. Unfamiliar tunes which can’t be heard at the session and so on….
Still, people seem to prefer to come to the session rather than gig. Do you have this kind of problem? What would you do to get out of it?
Yes, 7 pubs have closed down in Lewisham in recent years. Some of them have been dumps right enough, and also there have been some cafe bars and such opening up, but the trend is worrying, especially now that people in general have more time and disposable income. I know what you're saying, Brian, that it's the governor's job, etc., but I still want to have a good atmosphere at the session rather than playing to a 2/3rds empty pub.
About eight years ago, before I got into ITM, to my great delight an ITM session started at my local pub. The session developed an excellent reputation to the extent that many of the great and the good in ITM would drop in if they were in town. I would make a point of going to the pub on session night, but I noticed over the months that as the number of musicians grew and grew, the number of punters got smaller and smaller until one night when the only punters were me and an elderly gentleman who went to that pub every night anyway.
Not surprisingly, shortly after that, the landlord shut the session down. I was SO disappointed. Within a few weeks, the pub was full again on the night the session had been held. One or two returning punters said to me that they had deliberately stayed away on session nights, that they didn't like being at what seemed like "a private party", particularly as they weren't into the music anyway unless there was audience participation in songs which they knew. So it is a real problem - my conclusion was that a pub will only be full on session nights if either a) the session is held in a back room so that it doesn't disturb the majority of punters, but those who might be interested can wander in or (b) there is a ready-made audience of punters who like ITM, but it's difficult to find them - punters as opposed to players, I mean. Good luck with attracting people in - hopefully your posting might have an effect.
Good points, Jane. But the 3 main pubs where there are sessions down here are Irish pubs anyway - and I don't mean Irish "theme" pubs. Those are the Blythe, the Woodman and Shillelagh's. I'm led to believe that Lewisham is considered locally as quite an Irish area of London, maybe not quite like Kilburn, but comprising a substantial minority, so Irish pubs would be real Irish-inhabited pubs. Thus the music played in these pubs would certainly be more easily accepted than in a non-Irish pub. Would that have been what your local was like?
As for buying drinks for players - I put a few bob in the pot so players can have a couple of drinks, but players worth their salt will come for some tunes, not for free beer. And in any case, although all (half-decent) players are welcome, that's not what we're short of - it's punters.
Most of the people who came to our session in Reading in the 90s were students and postgrads (especially foreign ones)from the Uni. Send a couple of flyers around your local colleges and halls of residence and see what results. It might help.
the difficulty (i.e. the risk of losing the session) appears to lie in the necessity of the landlord having to pay the musicians to play in his pub. without this commercial aspect, there would presumably be no problem in staying indefinitely, whether or not the punters attended. maybe a partial solution would be to waive a part (or all) of the fee until the session has re-established itself & has re-filled the pub to something like its previous customer levels?
Yeah, tt, but those were the conditions set by the previous incumbent fiddle player. I'll be honest with everyone here, if it fails my best efforts here and elsewhere, I'll be happy to let it go into more caring hands, then we'll see who's got the wherewithall to sort this stuff out on a weekly basis. Right now it's nearly the least of my worries.
My local was in an Irish-ish area, and I believe the landlord was Irish; also there were a lot of Irish accents among the punters generally. However, what the punters seemed to really like was country music, country bands always attracted very good crowds (as did any wide-screen transmissions of hurling, gaelic football etc). My impression was that despite being Irish, they didn't really want to associate themselves with ITM. This didn't mean anything to me at the time, but since getting into ITM, it puzzles me a bit.
I don't think it should necessarily be a shock to find Irish people who "don't want to associate themselves with ITM." I don't know many people in these parts who go looking for country music or cowboy songs (they certainly exist, but being Western Canadian doesn't make it a mandatory interest.) Likewise, I've yet to meet an English person who wants to associate themselves with Morris music or dancing (though, again, I'm sure they do exist.)
I think it's a very small minority of the general public, Irish or otherwise, who relish concentrated listening to hours of Irish dance music. The ballad and folk groups of the sixties, seventies, and eighties were clever enough to sustain interest by balancing tunes with songs.
And so I think it is with sessions. If it's in the background, there's a lot of people who'll enjoy the ambience of a pub with live Irish music that's not so intrusive as to interfere with their conversations. If it's to be centre stage, then it has to be "produced" like a gig, and there needs to be variety of material that includes songs. And (unfortunately) most of the songs will need to be singalongs.
Irish traditional music is still very much a minority interest among the Irish population as a whole.
With our all-consuming interest in the music, we sometimes tend to forget this.
Yep murfbox - it took me a few trips over years ago to realise that...in fact, there's a certain amount of rebellion against it being forced down their throats, with a certain class of people. More than any other country, our minority group in another country, the Irish seem the most polarised of love it or hate it wrt Irish trad music....
Unfortunately, ITM is a minority interest in Ireland but things are a lot healthier than in Scotland, though traditional Scottish music is now shaking off the "tartan" "White Heather Club" image and getting much more popular.
You should also spare a thought for the poor English who have no interest in their own music at all. Ours(Irish and Scottish) is more prevalent than their own.
That's true, John, to an extent, but there are pockets thriving, such as here in London, Kent, and Bob-Copper-land (East Sussex, I think)...then there's the whole Northumbrian and (to a lesser extent) Devonian (and I'm not talking pre-Dinosaur life forms here.... although some of the life forms you'd see at these sessions might be mistaken for those) musical traditions. And there's the Morris tradition. So I think English music is on a revival, to a lesser extent than its Celtic counterparts, but a renaissance nonetheless.
Anyway, the main point of this post is that the pub that this thread refers to, The Woodman, will not have any more Sunday sessions till January. I'll let people know if and when it starts up again.
How to get a pub busy
How to get a pub busy
Last night we had a very nice session at our local. Very nice players, nice people. But although the session was great, the pub was quite empty. And it's only slowly improving since we started up the session again after a break.
Any ideas as to how to get more punters in?
It could be argued that this is the governor's business, but unless we get more people in it's possible we could lose it.
# Posted on November 29th 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: How to get a pub busy
free beer
# Posted on November 29th 2004 by bodhranboy
Re: How to get a pub busy
Person says to the landlord, "I know how you can double the amount of beer you sell"
"How?" says the landlord
"Fill up the glasses properly"
# Posted on November 29th 2004 by Mark Harmer
Re: How to get a pub busy
Hm. Tough one, Danny. You don't want TOO many people in, even if the publican does, because after all you like to be able to hear, right? Try asking all your friends to come by on session night for a couple, as a favor to yourself. Hopefully that'll get them used to coming down as a semi-regular thing, and it should snowball a bit if you've got enough coming down.
# Posted on November 29th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: How to get a pub busy
i agree with zina. I wasn't running the session but i was asked to come down regularly as the fiddler guy.... and it was kind of bare, i invited a few of my old uni friends to come down for the craic (most of then not even trad enthusiasts), and they love it so much they come every week now, its a regular thing and i enjoy it even more due to their prescence. its ace!
# Posted on November 29th 2004 by Mike.Vass
Re: How to get a pub busy
List the session in the local paper.
Suppose nov/start of dec. is a quiet time of year anyway - don't worry, they'll all start comin out of the woodwork comin up to Christmas...your post might be 'How to get a pub quiet' then.
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by áinenírían
Re: How to get a pub busy
I've done quite a lot of that in the past, o promiscuous-one-in-the-stinging-ruderals, but that is certainly an area I'll revisit. It used to be well-patronised but it seems that for a while the session lost its way, so people stopped coming. Now the *session* is back on track and is healthy, maybe it's just a matter of time before word gets round again. But I'd like to accelerate the process.
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: How to get a pub busy
Buy drinks for everyone all night.
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by ragaman
Re: How to get a pub busy
Launch to session and make a big deal out of it. Get some wine and cheese and invite everybody. get some flyers, local radio time, paper ads and shop windows. Make a theme night out of it, call it "Irish Night" or something like that. Just make it one night that anybody would be a fool to miss. and then maybe you will have these new guy and girls coming back on a weekly basis.
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by compaqjohn
Re: How to get a pub busy
Just watch out for the Orang-Outang with the peanuts....
-Padraig
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by Pádraig
Re: How to get a pub busy
Stop playing Irish music.
Naw.......sherioulsly ......a sign outside the pub, preferably on the pavement. Sometimes when we're playing in the Bent Brief session, we look out the window and see people walking by - they see they pavement sign, and about half of them stop to read it. Another half of that half then walk in to the pub to see what's going on. And half of that half stay and buy beer and listen to the music. So I guess punters don't do anything by halves....OK, I'm just leaving
Jim Dorans
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by Worldfiddler
Re: How to get a pub busy
Which session is this Rab?
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by Leftheris
Re: How to get a pub busy
Simon - it's the Woodman:
http://www.thesession.org/sessions/display.php/175
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: How to get a pub busy
Hi all.
I organize my own session twice a month at a pub.
When I started it 2 years ago, there were not so many musicians or audiences come to enjoy the music. However, we have become kind of famous in our area now, especially after I launch the website for my session. I can see more than 20 musicians, dancers and audiences coming to my session regularly. It is good enough for the pub to maintain my session, though not all the customers spend so much money at the pub, which the pub says to me sometimes…
Now I have another problem.
I am a guitarist and on and off I do have gigs levying the door charge at small concert hall or something like that with some melody players. However, I found there are less people coming to this kind of gig (not a session)…
Most of the session comers are for them to play the music by themselves. The dancers and audiences come to the session as they don’t have to pay so much money if they can sit down and listen to the music by buying only one pint of Guiness, you know.
What I am doing for the gig is quite different from what I am doing at the session. Better arrangement for more worked-out sets. Unfamiliar tunes which can’t be heard at the session and so on….
Still, people seem to prefer to come to the session rather than gig. Do you have this kind of problem? What would you do to get out of it?
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by lowdens
Re: How to get a pub busy
Yes, 7 pubs have closed down in Lewisham in recent years. Some of them have been dumps right enough, and also there have been some cafe bars and such opening up, but the trend is worrying, especially now that people in general have more time and disposable income. I know what you're saying, Brian, that it's the governor's job, etc., but I still want to have a good atmosphere at the session rather than playing to a 2/3rds empty pub.
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: How to get a pub busy
Mike V.,
Where's your session?
FMF
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by folkmasterflex
Re: How to get a pub busy
About eight years ago, before I got into ITM, to my great delight an ITM session started at my local pub. The session developed an excellent reputation to the extent that many of the great and the good in ITM would drop in if they were in town. I would make a point of going to the pub on session night, but I noticed over the months that as the number of musicians grew and grew, the number of punters got smaller and smaller until one night when the only punters were me and an elderly gentleman who went to that pub every night anyway.
Not surprisingly, shortly after that, the landlord shut the session down. I was SO disappointed. Within a few weeks, the pub was full again on the night the session had been held. One or two returning punters said to me that they had deliberately stayed away on session nights, that they didn't like being at what seemed like "a private party", particularly as they weren't into the music anyway unless there was audience participation in songs which they knew. So it is a real problem - my conclusion was that a pub will only be full on session nights if either a) the session is held in a back room so that it doesn't disturb the majority of punters, but those who might be interested can wander in or (b) there is a ready-made audience of punters who like ITM, but it's difficult to find them - punters as opposed to players, I mean. Good luck with attracting people in - hopefully your posting might have an effect.
Jane R
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by LW
Re: How to get a pub busy
Good points, Jane. But the 3 main pubs where there are sessions down here are Irish pubs anyway - and I don't mean Irish "theme" pubs. Those are the Blythe, the Woodman and Shillelagh's. I'm led to believe that Lewisham is considered locally as quite an Irish area of London, maybe not quite like Kilburn, but comprising a substantial minority, so Irish pubs would be real Irish-inhabited pubs. Thus the music played in these pubs would certainly be more easily accepted than in a non-Irish pub. Would that have been what your local was like?
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: How to get a pub busy
As for buying drinks for players - I put a few bob in the pot so players can have a couple of drinks, but players worth their salt will come for some tunes, not for free beer. And in any case, although all (half-decent) players are welcome, that's not what we're short of - it's punters.
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: How to get a pub busy
Danny
Most of the people who came to our session in Reading in the 90s were students and postgrads (especially foreign ones)from the Uni. Send a couple of flyers around your local colleges and halls of residence and see what results. It might help.
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by Geoff Pollitt
Re: How to get a pub busy
Yeah, we did used to get a crowd down from the nearby music college, but that sounds a good idea.
University of Catford? hmmm....doesn't sound likely.
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: How to get a pub busy
the difficulty (i.e. the risk of losing the session) appears to lie in the necessity of the landlord having to pay the musicians to play in his pub. without this commercial aspect, there would presumably be no problem in staying indefinitely, whether or not the punters attended. maybe a partial solution would be to waive a part (or all) of the fee until the session has re-established itself & has re-filled the pub to something like its previous customer levels?
# Posted on November 30th 2004 by teetotaller
Re: How to get a pub busy
Yeah, tt, but those were the conditions set by the previous incumbent fiddle player. I'll be honest with everyone here, if it fails my best efforts here and elsewhere, I'll be happy to let it go into more caring hands, then we'll see who's got the wherewithall to sort this stuff out on a weekly basis. Right now it's nearly the least of my worries.
# Posted on December 1st 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: How to get a pub busy
My local was in an Irish-ish area, and I believe the landlord was Irish; also there were a lot of Irish accents among the punters generally. However, what the punters seemed to really like was country music, country bands always attracted very good crowds (as did any wide-screen transmissions of hurling, gaelic football etc). My impression was that despite being Irish, they didn't really want to associate themselves with ITM. This didn't mean anything to me at the time, but since getting into ITM, it puzzles me a bit.
Jane R
# Posted on December 1st 2004 by LW
Re: How to get a pub busy
I don't think it should necessarily be a shock to find Irish people who "don't want to associate themselves with ITM." I don't know many people in these parts who go looking for country music or cowboy songs (they certainly exist, but being Western Canadian doesn't make it a mandatory interest.) Likewise, I've yet to meet an English person who wants to associate themselves with Morris music or dancing (though, again, I'm sure they do exist.)
I think it's a very small minority of the general public, Irish or otherwise, who relish concentrated listening to hours of Irish dance music. The ballad and folk groups of the sixties, seventies, and eighties were clever enough to sustain interest by balancing tunes with songs.
And so I think it is with sessions. If it's in the background, there's a lot of people who'll enjoy the ambience of a pub with live Irish music that's not so intrusive as to interfere with their conversations. If it's to be centre stage, then it has to be "produced" like a gig, and there needs to be variety of material that includes songs. And (unfortunately) most of the songs will need to be singalongs.
# Posted on December 1st 2004 by grego
Re: How to get a pub busy
Irish traditional music is still very much a minority interest among the Irish population as a whole.
With our all-consuming interest in the music, we sometimes tend to forget this.
# Posted on December 1st 2004 by murfbox
Re: How to get a pub busy
Yep murfbox - it took me a few trips over years ago to realise that...in fact, there's a certain amount of rebellion against it being forced down their throats, with a certain class of people. More than any other country, our minority group in another country, the Irish seem the most polarised of love it or hate it wrt Irish trad music....
...in my view.
# Posted on December 2nd 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: How to get a pub busy
SHR: ...*OR* minority group...lest you thought I was trying to BE Irish.
# Posted on December 2nd 2004 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: How to get a pub busy
Unfortunately, ITM is a minority interest in Ireland but things are a lot healthier than in Scotland, though traditional Scottish music is now shaking off the "tartan" "White Heather Club" image and getting much more popular.
You should also spare a thought for the poor English who have no interest in their own music at all. Ours(Irish and Scottish) is more prevalent than their own.
# Posted on December 2nd 2004 by Johannes J
Re: How to get a pub busy
That's true, John, to an extent, but there are pockets thriving, such as here in London, Kent, and Bob-Copper-land (East Sussex, I think)...then there's the whole Northumbrian and (to a lesser extent) Devonian (and I'm not talking pre-Dinosaur life forms here.... although some of the life forms you'd see at these sessions might be mistaken for those) musical traditions. And there's the Morris tradition. So I think English music is on a revival, to a lesser extent than its Celtic counterparts, but a renaissance nonetheless.
Anyway, the main point of this post is that the pub that this thread refers to, The Woodman, will not have any more Sunday sessions till January. I'll let people know if and when it starts up again.
# Posted on December 6th 2004 by Key Maniac Lad