Unlikely session venues…

There has just been a report on the news relating to the activities of certain bars in Edinburgh. I’ll not go into detail but most people in the area will be aware of this particular “triangle”.
😉

Anyway, I remember a brilliant “one off” session featuring the Hom Bru boys and friends circa 1982 as part of the celebrations for Gary Peterson’s birthday. This took place in The Burke and Hare(or was it Tramps?).
These pubs, even then, were well known a certain type of “dancing” but they also featured music on some nights too. The Fiddlers Arms further down the road was a particular favourite for tunes although it was a more regular type of establishment compared to those in The West Port.

Anyway, what are some of the more unlikely places you have had a tune? Unsalubrious or otherwise…

Under the blades of a massive U.S. Coast Guard helicopter in a hanger.

https://thesession.org/discussions/7443
https://thesession.org/discussions/24191
https://thesession.org/discussions/26156

And, of course, this one - https://thesession.org/discussions/2785.

I’ve had a few sessions in airports. Usually with the people I am traveling with, but during a long layover at JFK in New York, waiting for a flight into Shannon, we ran across some other players that were headed out on the same flight, and ended up having a session. Airports aren’t the greatest acoustical environments, but it’s interesting how a little bit of music really attracts people when it’s out of context like that. I guess people are looking for anything to break the stress and monotony of travel. We ended up with quite a few folks gathered around to listen.

Slightly off topic BUT! I played with our other musicians whilst our Border Morris side danced in the large underground area at the bottom of the escalators at Tottenham Court Road tube station.

I really hoped to have a session at a undisclosed classified depth under the ocean in a nuclear powered fast attack submarine off the coast of San Diego. The captain was a fine whistle player in our session. He invited us to go on a “VIP cruise” one Saturday afternoon on his boat.

It was amazing, but the session didn’t come together, our whistle playing captain had to stay in character.

Sorry GW,

I had an inkling that this has been discussed before. Even more embarrassing is the fact that I started a similar thresd myself.

🙂

On a ferry from Beaver Island to Charlevoix, Michigan.

Not all that outlandish really, but:

- aboard an ocean ferry. Not unusual—I know of people around the world who’ve done the same.
- several times in airports, either in pubs or while waiting at the gates.
- in various churches. The acoustics are often wonderful.
- in an underground parking garage. Ditto on the acoustics but it was chilly.
- next to the registers at a grocer’s. No, we weren’t busking.
- in a hospital room.
- in the stands of a football (“soccer”) stadium.
- in a ski resort lodge. All the people clomping around in ski boots sounded like an army of bodhrans.
- in the halls of a small country’s parliament (a session while not in session).
- in a library (shhhh!)

At my wife’s Aikido dojo while they were training. Our session got pre-empted that night because of sportsball.

On the return flight from Havana to Shannon in 1995 (actually the Lima to Moscow flight with two stop-overs). With a Peruvian band, a lot of vodka and those unfiltered dark tobacco cigarettes. From the time of smoking/non-smoking sections on airplanes.

On a bus driving to a fleadh cheol on Englands motorways, several times in the 70s.
On the Liverpool Dublin ferry (not surprising)
In a hostel in Tulufan, Xinjiang province, China
On a London Overground train last year

In the toilets at Redcar folk festival campsite-a recreation ground football pitch?It was after pub kicking out time in the early hours and too wet outside.
Circa 1979.We had all being playing at the festival venue earlier with Phil and Jonny Cunningham and other members of Silly Wizard.
Also sessions erupted spontaneously when as Clitheroe Morris men musicians we met up with other Musicians from other sides.

Somewhere on youtube you can find a group of musicians playing “Crossing the Minch” whilst on a traditional sailing boat crossing the Minch.
The Minch is the water between the Isle of Skye and the outer Hebrides in Scotland.

Actually, ffill, you just reminded me of a good one. I learned the tune Crossing the Shannon while in a rental car on the Tarbert ferry crossing the Shannon. Not exactly a “session”, but it was crowded 😉

On the train from Edinburgh to Kings Cross, London - all the way: this included people doing the Canadian Barn Dance and Gay Gordons in the aisles. Resumed after we got on the Eurostar to Paris.
Ferry from Rosyth to Zeebrugge: we were allowed to play in the bar until after midnight.
On the quay at Zeebrugge waiting for ferry back - more dancing!
On the Edinburgh tram - end to end - to the airport and back: our “flashmob” for St Andrew’s Day a few years back.
On top of an Edinburgh tour bus, as part of some BBC music day.
On the Union Canal several times, but including this last year’s 200th anniversary celebrations - Trumpet Hornpipe much requested from us pirates!
Cruising round the Western Isles of Scotland - playing Mingulay Boat Song as we passed Mingulay.
Playing Calum’s Road on Calum’s Road on the Isle of Raasay.
On a bus into Lorient: our French friends singing a very funny song which included a lot of pig impersonations!

On the back of a speeding golf cart… our getaway driver was the drummer from a Scottish pipe band, who’d been ferrying a piper around the grounds before we hopped on. (Actually the golf cart can’t have been speeding THAT fast, because the mandolin player didn’t fit at first and had to play while running after us.)

A derelict house in Milltown Malbay. We’d been turfed out of The Malbay Hotel in the small hours and were welcomed by the owner of this house, a local poet, to continue the session there. On entering, we were met by an indeterminate number of men sitting in darkness around a large pile of rubble in the middle of the floor. We headed for the bathroom, the only room in the house with any lighting (that being a few small nightlights) – and the best acoustics, of course. I sat on the toilet; there was a fiddler in the bath, a mandolin player slumped against the doorframe; one musician perched on the edge of the washbasin, which stated to come away from the wall, so he had to relocate. The tunes flowed for a good half-hour or more before the Gardaí came knocking, saying they had received a complaint from a neighbour. We might have gone on to find another venue afterwards – I can’t remember – but definitely none as salubrious as that one.

My Edinburgh walking “triangle” is formed by 3 session bars (SB, CB & RO) and I was about to say I’d often played in them - until I sussed that John meant a different kind of fiddling and plucking.


Most recent unusual venue for a session was in 2019 on a stand at a geothermal engineering exhibition in Germany when a German engineer I know brought his fiddle along and we just started playing in a quiet moment. Somebody put it up on LinkedIn as “Muzik im Der Haus!” (Excuse my improvised German) and later that year at an exhibition in Ravenna, Italy.

Piper “Houston Bob” has already messaged me about a session at an upcoming conference in Stavanger to follow-up on one we had in The Hague, also in 2019 (with his whistle, not bagpipes!) where he commanded me to learn The Duck for our next meeting.

(I also think if Gary and the Shetland crew are going to have a session somewhere, even these days, it would be hard to stop them and they would soon get a mighty sound going)

At a mansion in Laguna Beach, CA for a Halloween costume party on a reality TV series about traveling nurses.

A ferry to the Western Isles.

An airport departure lounge.

The Galway bus station.

A pizza shop.

Ffill - Crossing the Minch - that could be Carol Anderson, who is a great fiddle player.

Another one: fish and chip takeaway in Whitby: it might have earned us a few extra chips!

gbyrne above mentioned Havana, which reminded me of an old thread I posted about a musical experience and my perceptions of Cuban music vis á vis Irish music, in which I related a Cuban “session” which I got roped into, not entirely unwillingly. OK, not at all an Irish session in an unlikely venue, but vaguely parallel….

https://thesession.org/discussions/32275

Once played at a session in a historic barn (built in the late 1600’s, which is old for the states). Very cool event- it was right before a concert and the audience was encouraged to show up early to take in the session. After we finished up we took our instruments, sat down, and enjoyed the concert.