Interesting times in the snug of the Startled Stoat of late. Some of the stalwarts have been hors de combat for a while another is being trained in far off parts and the weather have all conspired to make the Wednesday night sessions a little irregular and sparsely populated. The few extras that we attracted for a while have drifted off again leaving a core of enthusiasts.

Nevertheless the sessioneers have fought on bravely and played some decent sets of tunes. We completely skipped over St David’s day as we don’t do anything remotely Welsh and we are hurtling headlong into the festival of blondes in black skirts* – probably dyed green for the night.

There’s been Bekesbourne (Sunday) and Molash (Wednesday) and Ospringe (Sunday) and back to Molash (Wednesday) this week and the Spoonerism at Wingham on Sunday coming because although it’s the first Sunday they were expecting us last Sunday but we were where we usually are in the last Sunday which is Ospringe. I hope that’s clear.

By the way, The other venue where we play mixed music – The  Shackled Yak is to regain its leaders this Thursday when they return from Foreign climes. The composition of the session will change at this time back to the normal band of  sessioneers.

*Guinness. Not what you were thinking.

Huddled in the snug of the Startled Stoat last night, just before closing time when the instruments had been lovingly laid to rest in their velvet cocoons and the last strains of the reels and jigs had died away, the question arose.

“What about the Anchor?”

For such an innocent question and so late at night, there followed a debate of such heat and forthrightness that one could have been forgiven for thinking that the assembled throng had been magically transported to a market tavern in the morning time.

There soon emerged two conceptual camps. Let us call them the purists and the socialists. The purists want sessions to preserve their identity by only playing tunes essentially being a closed group within the pub. The socialists prefer sessions to be aware, interactive with the other clients and to be a more open and social affair. This was embodied in the question “Would you sing Wild Rover if somebody asked?”

This did nothing to resolve the original question which was “Should the session stay here (Molash) or should it move back to the Anchor?”. There have been good email debates about the pros and cons. In the snug, there emerged another two camps. One advocated caution in moving to a new and unproven management of a pub which has already failed once while the other urged throwing caution to the wind and living for the moment.

There is probably a research project available in drawing a matrix of these two areas of two camps and drawing conclusions. The purists and the socialists and the conservatives and the free spirits. I suspect that purist conservatives will field quite a side and so will the socialist free spirits. But are there any purist free spirits or more unlikely, any socialist conservatives?

I am not stating any preference here, other than to record that I am happy to turn up and play wherever the session pitches up, and join in with the general kind of entertainment being partaken with good grace.

Who said there wasn’t any politics in sessions?

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Is it twenty-ten or two thousand and ten? We got used to saying the eighteen whatevers and nineteen whatevers so logically it is twenty whatevers. Anyway Happy New Year to you all.

The Irish Session was badly hit by both the holidays and the weather so it was a month or so before we met again. This is one of the drawbacks of a session in a country idyll. Climate and season are no respecters of idylls. The Bear seemed to continue without a break ignoring the fact that it was Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and the snow was up to a Great Dane’s most prized bits. Benefit of a town venue. One all.

Unexpectedly this week, the normal first Sunday in the month venue (Ship, Ospringe) had to cancel because of a party and we found ourselves before a log fire in a revamped Anchor at Wingham. Very nice it was too. However, before everyone gets all misty eyed and nostalgic, there is some serious debate going on about using it more regularly as a venue. Ranging from one of the Sunday sessions to the regular weekly Wednesday session. There are two camps. The old romantics and the been-there cautionaries. If you would like to post your comments here, I’d be happy to host them as always.

Just to mention, a very enjoyable Burn’s Night at the Bear and thanks to Mike & Ruth and all the others involved for organizing the evening which included haggis neaps tatties and whiskey for all and a real Scotsman!

Festive Greetings to the Sessioneers!

We find ourselves in the hiatus which is the middle of the syncretized* English winter festival. It must be one of the most mixed up and muddled festivals of the year. Please note, I do not in any way shape or form advocate ‘Winterval’ or some such silly pseudo-PC term for what is a perfectly respectable and long standing winter event. Christmas is just fine.

Those of us who live in the Northern hemisphere, have to cope with days getting longer and shorter in the annual cycle and it’s nice to know when it reaches the turnaround point so we have something to look forward to. So add together Winter Solstice (Pagan), Dies Natalis Solis Invicta (Roman), Yule (Germanic/Scandinavian) and Christmas and add a touch of Saturnalia and a fair dollop of material commercialism and here we are in the middle of the sales.   No matter that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th (think of it as his official birthday), nor that the calendar shifted by 12 days anyway in 1752. Hoorah for a couple of Bank Holidays! And then there is St Stephen’s day and then the Plough Stots and it’s Easter before you know it.

But what of the sessions?

Well, the Irish session continues to thrive although it hasn’t picked up or held onto new sessioneers as well as hoped. We must keep up a concerted campaign. The regulars had a very enjoyable Christmas meal on the 23rd and many thanks to the staff at the George for everything. The session started a little later than normal because of that at around 9:00 and one new sessioneer with Bodhran was sitting there waiting. Apparently, the previous week he got lost and arrived after closing time.

Lara, our current student-with-fiddle from Indiana (near the Kentucky border) was there for her first English Christmas Dinner with her father. It was a pleasure sharing our cultural differences and enjoying conversation and humour with them both. Sadly, a couple of our party were ill and could not make the meal and session, but I hope they are well now and that we see them in the new year.

There will be no Irish session this week, so back to normal on January 6th which just happens to be Little Christmas in Ireland (Epiphany, Twelfth Night, Old Christmas Day, whatever). Take your decorations down.

The Thursday entertainment has been taking place with the annual carols on the week before Christmas and something happening on Christmas Eve which was unexpected. The Bear must have been heaving! (yes, savour any of the images that you now have in your mind). I haven’t had a report yet of exactly what. Distance, Weather and family prevented me going.

A Happy New Year to all, especially the loyal and regular readers who urge me to keep writing this lunacy, and Good Sessioning in 2010.

*Look it up!

The Irish session is still going well although some of the early rank-swellers seem to have fallen by the wayside. Never mind. It’s better than it was and fingers crossed it will get better. Come on all you chaps and chapesses, it’s not hard to find.  Just head to towards Maidstone, Ashford, Faversham or Canterbury (unless you live nearer to Molash than these places)  and head for Challock. Challock has a (is a ?) roundabout where these 4 roads intersect (actually 2 roads, the A251 and A252).

That means repectively:

• A20 / A252
• A251 North /A252
• A251 South/A252
• A28 / A252

The George is on the A252 on the outskirts of Molash and very easy to find. Easy to park as well. Good beer – Adnams. Reasonably priced in these days of inflation (£2.70). Coffee, food, friendly locals and staff. What more could you want?

In the snug last week, we were discussing various country dances that we have been party to and the venues that they were held in. AndyBanjo recalls one gig with an enormous set of 50 or 60 couples where one on the objectives was for top and bottom couples to change places. This involved such high speed movement that we contemplated the Large Country Dance Collider where if a collision were to take place, certain sub-particles would be released. These are called Cloptons of course and are fundamental to a unified theory of ECD. There are other particles released although some believe they permeate free space all the time. Like the Reverson which magically transposes instructions and bodies along the R-L symmetry leading to the time honoured cry ‘The Other Left’. Also the Drifton which affects particularly square sets where a member will start to drift away from the rest leaving a partnerless particle which then remains in a highly charged state.

I must mention the Sunday session at the Ship at Ospringe. In the window were two wire frame figures which others tried to persuade me were angels with a mechanical trumpet that raised and lowered. I think they are Daleks. If you’re passing, have a look. They might become as famous as the Faversham nativity scene with Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus and the Polar Bear. (It’s above Freeman Hardy and Willis in its normal place).

Don’t forget that Advent is the time to get your sprouts on boiling in time for Christmas. If you delay, they won’t be nearly mushy enough or grey enough.

We’re still debating a session at Wing-ham, gateway to the East where the scent of brassicas hangs in the air like … well school kitchens really but that’s not the point.

Let’s see what tonight brings.

Au revoir, mes brave sessioneers.

As you know, I usually start these posts off with an historical fact or seasonal aside. It turns out that nothing at all remarkable happened today. So maybe today is remarkable for its unremarkableness. Or so I thought.

Apparently Edward 1st (longshanks) became King today in 1272 and England declared war on Holland in 1780 for the 4th time and gained the East and West Indies as a result. There was pretty much a big argy-bargy at the time with France, America, Spain and Holland. Ah, the stuff of folk songs. All together now, Arran sweaters on and fingers in ears. Edward 1st was not universally loved for it was he who made parliament a permanent institution. And he was unkind to the Scots. More folk songs.

The relaunched, revamped Irish Session has been going very well. There are encouraging signs of growth (no, not like the economy) with some new and different faces. It will take a while for all the hard work to filter through but it is being widely advertised in the local press and on the KentFolk web site and theSession.org site.

The session brings forth an array of recording devices as the start of each session is a gentle run-through of selected sets or tunes and this is ideal for practice. The ensemble plays the same tunes or sets later at normal tempo when the ‘real’ session gets going.

On the subject of recording devices at sessions in general, I have seen a wide variety and tried a few myself. There is the traditional hand held cassette recorder, the something-plugged-in-to-the-ipod, the dictaphone (microcassette and digital), the minidisc recorder and the digital recorder. I’ve also seen a laptop being used. Now with all these devices, the storage medium is not drastically important as far as recording quality goes (give or take), but the microphones are. The other considerations are:

• battery life
• recording time
• portability
• ease of navigation of the recordings
• ease of use

The traditional cassette recorder (Play/Rec FF, REW)  is therefore hard to beat except on ease of navigation of the recordings which is an inherent problem of linear tapes. Sod’s law says the recording you want is at the other end of the tape. They also suffer from not knowing whereabouts in a tape you are, especially if you’ve taken one out, put another in and messed around with the counter reset. Oops, there goes the priceless recording of when you met Willie Taylor and in its place is a bloke who wandered in with a djembe with a vague Irish tune in the background. Don’t mention the wow and flutter or the head alignment. Bear in mind that the Tascam 4 track (on cassette) did more for affordable reasobale quality recording than any other device. Their modern one is digital and that’s the way to go if you have a computer. Stereo, stunningly good noise-free recording etc. etc. Some of them will do 26 hours of recording on 1 AA battery (its true – yamaha and olympus both) while others do about 4 hours and worst of all, only have a rechargeable internal battery! Useless for sessions really.

Now there was much stirring of interest when Beau announced that our old haunt, the Anchor at Wingham, the well known spoonerism was open for business with an Irish landlady and a sound recordist husband. Having been disappointed on previous occasions by going back to old venues (particularly the George on Stone Street), we approached this one with caution. The sessioneers consisdered it in the snug and agreed to try a one-off to test the water. Everything was set. It was a Thursday which meant foregoing the English Mixed Lumpy. And what do you suppose happened next boys and girls? You’re right. It was cancelled. Some story about not sure whether their music licence covered Thursday nights. Why not just say no thanks and be honest? We might try again.

Anyway, as a result I did get to go to the English Mixed Lumpy which is the Bear and it was a normal session going round the assembled musicians who wanted to play. Event of the evening must be Barbara and friends teaching some Romainians the Gay Gordons while the rest of us played Cock of the North (ABAB ad nauseum). There was a bit of Mazurking going on and there would have been some Bourée-ing if any of us could have come up with a Bourée. There were some faces there not normally seen when it isn’t a session, but a good smattering of the regulars as well. Songs were included and I hope a good time was had by all.

The main topic of the moment is of course the fascinating discussion taking place about the future course of the Wednesday night Irish session. There have been some wonderful insights into why people don’t come and some very helpful suggestions to swell the session to beyond critical mass.

I can’t wait to see what happens on Wednesday now that this much interest has been generated and the promise of some new faces (well, new to Wednesday night anyway). I have met a lot of sessioneers in other sessions who would love the Irish Session if they came. What puts them off? I don’t know – see the discussion.

On a cheery note, last Thursday at the Bothered Badger, one of the sessioneers was a certain Gordon Newton whom some of you will know or have heard of for it is he who started many of our festivals (sweeps, hops etc). It was a great pleasure playing some English tunes with him and his very enjoyable melodeon style.

On this day, 943 years ago, the Battle of Hastings was fought and started the Norman rule of England.

Just thought you’d like to know.

For those of you who weren’t there on Sunday in the Unicorn at Bekesbourne, there was an excellent Irish Session, almost capturing the spirit of the glorious past sessions. In no small part was this thanks to regulars Andy and Ian but also by Chris Taylor making a welcome visit and a new fddler – Lara.

Tonight will be the normal weekly Irish Session which has dominated the news recently and we will see what that brings. All sessioneers are welcome to post their views here as ordinary comments but I have opened up a discussion forum to take it away from the main diary blog. The discussion is at session-diary-discussions on this site and I have re-posted all the previous comments.

Just a reminder that not everyone has access to the internet, so not all our sessioneers can participate.

And a personal plea. I do not want the session to be like a club with an AGM and meetings and votes. I just want to play music.

The Irish Session on Wednesday was a good one and although only 6 sessioneers turned out, half of them are very good melody players with large repertoires.

An idea was mooted which I think is very good. It is designed to help beginners and the less experienced by devoting some time to a particular set or sets to get the tunes right and the changes familiar.

Thursday was normal. Aided by the lovely Heather, we apparently played 75 tunes in 2 hours.

An American girl from Indiana came along and brought her fiddle but didn’t get a chance to play anything. With a stock of Appalachian tunes, it would have been interesting to hear. Maybe next time.

Some nice English tunes were played, but I wish we would lay off the Irish. It somehow doesn’t work with the particular set up at the Bear and I feel I’m fighting the other instruments which are by and large in lumpy English mode. We also take many tunes far too fast or they get speeded up. Some tunes can handle this – Trumpet Hornpipe and Fairy Dance being two. Some tunes just get all out of shape and ugly and unmusical.

Mind you at the other end of the scale, some tunes drag too slowly because of where they are in a set, so striking a happy balance is quite an art.

Sunday night is the Unicorn at Bekesbourne for Irish minded sessioneers. Or if there are very few, any sessioneers.

So it looks as though the Irish Session has run its course – as Judy feared. The session now is nothing like the session that started 12? 14? years ago so Andy’s point about the illusion of continuity is well made.

When it comes to sessions, I think of myself as a Darwinist – sessions do evolve and change and adapt and they will not stay the same. So I guess it’s natural that the participants change as well. Natural selection weeds out the nuisance players and a few people upgrade to alpha-sessioneers.

I’m game for starting something else and changing the format – we’ll discuss it tonight no doubt.

I am pleased that the Conyer session is happening again, and I hope all went well last night. Good luck to Shiner and the Bear cubs.

I am reminded that there is a session at Eastry (I think), sometime (Sundays?) which attracts quite a draw of reed players of the steel and brass variety. No scraping or hooting as far as I can tell. Players of twangy things are welcome though.

Not sure what is going to happen tomorrow. Given Mike’s new technique of arriving late and as a sitcom character, anything could be visited upon the unsuspecting sessioneers.