Themed sets by name.

At our Ivy House session we have recently been having a bit of fun putting together sets based on the relatedness of the names of tunes. It has of course been done before, such as on the Paddies Glackin and Keenan album Doublin’, where Glackin did the two Pitchforks - Rambling and Sporting.
As for our modest ensemble, we have a Gates set: Pigeon on the Gate, The Green Gates, Swinging on a Gate.
And now there’s the Green set: The Green Mountain, The Green Gates (again!) and maybe The Green Fields of America.
There are so many tunes to choose from and it does no harm. As long as some key changes break them up, they can still sound like nicely balanced sets. As I said, just a bit of fun.
Never tried it but you could easily do a “Humours of…”, a “Paddy”, a “Favourite” or a“Kitty” set.
Anyone else do something similar?

Jimmy Shand has a set with : “Kiss me quick, my mother’s coming”, “a babe in the woods”, and “over hills and far away”….

Mick O’Connor (banjo) does this every week at the Sunday session at the Crown Hotel in Cricklewood (and probably all his others). Although common themes may recur from time to time, a given set rarely ever will.

I like to do The Rolling Wave with Out On The Ocean. They segue very well.

I like to do slow tunes going into fast ones, like (When You And I Were Young) Maggie going into Over The Moors To Maggie.

Then there is The Rainbow’s End and The Crock of Gold.

Well how about (as I may have suggested on a thread years ago) a chain:
Jerry Holland’s 50th Birthday (by Howie MacDonald) into The Many Faces of Howie MacDonald (by Brenda Stubbert) into Brenda Stubbert’s (by Jerry Holland) into Jerry Holland’s 50th Birthday….. er, you get the idea.

Rick Payman, thanks for reminding me. I haven’t had a tune with Mick for years. I have some DIY stuff to do, but I wouldn’t mind heading across the river on the motorbike to join you guys at some point. What time? The DIY stuff I’m doing right now is so repetitive that it requires mind-numbing ethanol-based sedation. Thus the timing is crucial.
Thanks

leisg: Mick’s Sunday session (https://thesession.org/sessions/1261) nominally runs from 4:30pm to 7:15pm, but Mick O‘C rarely makes an appearance much before 5pm (they don’t refer to him as “the late Mick O’Connor” for nothing!).
Note that the Friday evening Crown session is no longer running.

I once tried segueing ‘Cameron’s got his wife again’ into ‘Tythe Pig’, as a reference to a now-former PM’s porcine proclivities.

Thanks Rick, if I do make it and if you are there it will be a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance, having only ever seen your profile online.
However my priority right now is sorting out my attic. I have to go slow at that just now for health reasons.
Stoopid old eegit, I find it difficult to slow down despite the body saying otherwise.
Wouldn’t have it any other way though.

[leisg: just checked the Wraggle Taggle gig list (http://www.wraggletaggle.com/giglist.htm#open), and they appear to have a booking for tomorrow evening 31/7/16, so will most probably have a stand-in for the session]

Aye, nae bother. If I can make it I will. I might be able to struggle through a few tunes somehow.
Don’t worry about me. I’ve been around the houses a wee while.
Is Ciaran Bradley likely to be around?
Cheers
Danny

Paddy Fahey’s, Paddy Fahey’s and Paddy Fahey’s.

Two can play at that game!
Ed Reavey’s/Ed Reavey’s & Ed Reavey’s

At our session, a popular set is the maids….Sligo maid, Maid behind the bar, and of course finished with the banshee:p

Paddy Fahy’s? - a bit of a cop-out since he has never named his tunes. They’re all called Paddy Fahy’s, numbered x, y and z.

I have one with travel themed names I’ve been working on, albeit with mostly relatively obscure tunes:

Slow Road to East China
Dash to Portobello
Centennial Highway Reel
Ryan’s Fancy Arriving

Actually, that reminds me that Christina Smith and Jean Hewson have a set of Emile Benoit tunes named after TV shows he appeared on that they call the “TV Set”.

Some friends of mine came up with Mouse in the Cupboard into Christy’s Cats into The Spotted Dog. For short called the “mouse, cat, dog set.” (Christy’s Cats is written by one of the friends in question.) Also the Hag set. If I remember correctly it’s hag’s purse, old hag you have killed me, hag at the churn, not nec in that order.

Three reels I’ve been putting together lately are: Free and Easy, The Knotted Chord, and Last Night’s Fun…

Nice tunes, but when you say it like that it sounds a bit dodgy. Kind of tried NOT to put a title on that set, to be honest…

Silver Spire/Silver Spear

Christmas Eve/New Year’s Eve

“Mick O’Connor (banjo) does this every week at the Sunday session at the Crown Hotel in Cricklewood (and probably all his others). Although common themes may recur from time to time, a given set rarely ever will.”

Yes, I remember one of Mick’s sessions (not at The Crown), where all present collaborated to construct an ornithological set - not a difficult theme, since tunes containing bird names abound. One of the more challenging ones I can remember was an entomological theme (one of the musicians happened to be an entomologist). A certain amount of associative license was allowed here, to include The Fly-By-Night.

Every now and then I enjoy if someone calls out a theme and we make up a set as we go along. “Poultry” is nice if you have pipers around!
“Suggestive titles” can make for quite a long set! Amazing what people come up with! Can be quite hard to play the tune, try to remember the name, realise what people were thinking (and just how descriptive some tunes suddenly seem) and continue playing….

I’ll be thinking about the entomological theme all day now…. was there anything in it that wasn’t a fly of one sort or another?