The Harp

The session gets going around 9. Definitely friendly. Regular core of common tunes plus excursions
into new tunes depending on who shows that night. Typical evening is about 10 folks.

Good session, nice people. Regular traditional Irish session standards/expectations apply.

I played a session at The Harp in Amherst last night. Watched the Yankees loose and saw some of the Red Sox game.

People were friendly and just made music. I watched, I listened, and I played.

Thanks - you all boosted my confidence (don’t worry - not over confident).

-Deborah

also see the Harp’s Thursday session:

Weekly at 4pm. Best session in the Pioneer Valley! Very open and friendly people, laid back. Starts slow and builds up steam. Corner of Cowles Rd. and Sunderland Rd. Parking in front or along Cowles Rd.

Hey all, the Friday night session has a new time on Friday nights. Same place, people, and 1 free pint. Starts at 6 pm now and wraps up around 9. Also, the new cook, BJ, is great, and food is now worthwhile, so dinner is an option, too. Come have some tunes!

Hey session friends. Trying a time shift. Until you hear otherwise, the session will go 8-11. Also, BJ is no longer cooking at the Harp, so I can no longer recommend dinner there. But the people, tunes, and pints are always worth the trip!

The pub is closed for renovations and a shift in management. The fate of the Friday night session remains undefined (the new management may have other plans for Friday nights). For now, we’re getting together at the houses of some of us regulars, which has been really lovely. Message me if you want to find out where/when. I’ll post news when it is clearer.

The Harp is now back open, and the Thursday session is running again - same time etc. I do not know for sure the fate of the Friday session, but others said that it was cancelled.

I attended for the first time last night and was warmly greeted by a large (~12+) group of players. This session has a wonderful feel -- everyone is welcome to start and lead tunes. The mix of instruments was good (guitar, fiddle, concertina, accordion, whistle, banjo, even bagpipes) and the overall skill level was high.

Those present confirmed that the Harp now hosts only the Thursday session. It’s a very good venue: the setting is spacious and accommodating of a large group, the staff is friendly, and the food and drinks are quite good! I will definitely be back.

Yep. The Friday night session is now a thing of the past. It was my first session. You never forget your first. Thursdays continues on.

Just a brief update. The Thursday session at the Harp continues unchanged. Roughly 4-7. An open session, generally between 10 and 15 players. Hopefully welcoming to all.

A previous post criticized the food. It is now very good. There is a large dinner crowd, and quite a few regular fans of the music come every week.

Because the town reduced the parking along Cowls Rd (changing it from head-in to parallel parking), the owner has requested that the musicians use the overflow lot about a third of the way down Cowls Rd, in order to allow easy parking for the other customers. If you are a newcomer, don’t worry about this. But the regulars and semi-regulars should try to comply with this request from our host.

As you probably expect, this session is on a COVID-19 hiatus at the moment. We will plan to update this if and when the session gets going again at the Harp.

We have started up again at the Harp, with an outdoor session. This is presently 4-7 on Thursdays. Bring your own chair at the moment, as the old white one are in storage. All this may change as we are possibly starting a delta surge, and students at UMass are coming back. But for the moment we are trying an open session - outdoors - at the Harp on Thursdays.

We have now closed down for the fall/winter. The open session worked with us playing outdoors - weather permitting. But now it is cold enough that we are not able to play outdoors anymore. And most of us are not ready to play indoors at the Harp. So we will be on hiatus until spring.

We are starting up again, initially as an outdoor monthly session on the third Thursday of the month. We will play roughly 4:00-7.

As I wrote last year, this could change if we start to feel comfortable moving inside again.

The weekly Thursday Harp session (indoors) is back on. The Harp opens at 4:00 these days, so that is when folks will start to arrive. Probably going until about 7.