Emily’s Welcome To Portland reel

By Joe Walsh, track #4 on "Sweet Loam" album (2011).

I started (many years ago) playing Irish music on mandolin, but mostly play
accordion, concertina, and tenor banjo these days. But I decided to revive my mandolin
playing by signing up for Joe K. Walsh’s online course "The Advancing Mandolinist" on
Peghead Nation. (If you play mandolin, it is well worth doing. Joe is an excellent teacher.
Though most tunes taught are from different fiddle/mandolin traditions than Irish, there
are lots of fun tunes to play and many new skills to learn.)

Anyway, Joe taught this composition of his and noted that it had appeared on thesession.org,
but in the wrong key. He composed it in F (as part of a project to learn the key of F well).
I learned the mandolin version from his lesson (which I highly recommend) but then I decided to try
it on concertina.

This is the version I now play on concertina. It works remarkably well on concertina (where the key of F
major is sometimes a bit tricky). However, my concertina does not have a low B-flat, so I did like a flute
player would and moved the low A and low B-flat up an octave. Then I found myself slightly simplifying the
tune so that the transitions between the parts were always the same (no first and second endings).
I put in a few rolls, and the major difference is that in the penultimate bar I put in a B-natural,
changing the chord from G-minor to G7. That change seem to make the tune "more Irishy", but you may
not agree. So try it both way (B-flat, B-natural). Also, in the first bar of the tune you can play the A and B-flat
an octave lower.

So now Joe can complain that thesession got his tune wrong again!

It’s in the 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 6th bars that the A and B-flat can go an octave lower.