Lurcherjohn

Having discovered Irish traditional music late in life, in Summer 04, hearing Brendan Power at the Broadstairs Folk Festival I am trying to make up for lost time. I’ve had to reduce my accordion and guitar playing because of carpal tunnel problems so have taken up Irish music on harmonica.
I’m fortunate in living close to a friendly weekly pub session at The Anchor at Wingham, and have started quietly joining in. Retirement means I have the time to learn tunes and this brilliant site keeps me supplied with tunes. I’m also playing mandolin, very much a beginner.
Since writing the above I have now obtained a mandolin banjo, I use my mandolin for practice at home and the mandolin banjo at sessions. I had trouble hearing the mandolin against U pipes, accordion, 3 banjos, whistles and flute, no problem hearing the mandolin banjo.
January 2007 I’ve just bought a banjo from Andybanjo. Now I’ve got to adapt from mandolin.
After a year I had worn the fret so much that they had to be reground. Andy advised me to relax my “Vulcan death grip” on the banjo and my next banjo bought in 2009 has not shown such wear.
2012
I sold the mandolin banjo, I could hear it OK but didn’t like the sound. I bought a vintage (1926) Gibson banjo because I liked its sound and also a better mandolin.
I usually play mandolin, 2 banjos at a session give quite enough pleasure without a third joining in.
Our session has moved to Molash on Wednesday evenings
mostly the same people over the years.
In 2022 we continue meeting at The George, Stone Street on Sundays but not every Sunday. During Covid we met by Zoom every Wednesday and still continue, number 130 passed even though Covid restrictions have long been ditched.
We have a large store of sets that we recorded which Paul organises into a list each Zoom session. He mutes us and plays a set which we individually play along with or just listen. Paul also includes other recordings as long as they are in pitch. At the end of a set we unmute ourselves and chat about the tunes, who was playing and where it was. We have mystery sets we play then try to remember the tune names, like a real session.
Because Zoom isn’t synchronised you can see other players fingers moving differently from the music which looks odd but the lag is less than a second so you still feel you are playing together. We play about 15 sets in 90 minutes.