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How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Where I live, there has been a regular Irish music session since 1995 and it has had to move approximately ten times since it was started in 1995. The moves have been made for various reasons such as changes in policy; changes in management; offers to move the session to a new venue because there supposedly were better opportunities for playing music; and other reasons.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
how 'local' is local Laurence?
my latest (in it's infant 12th week) may be knocked on the head after tonight, this time (same as the previous) due to lack of punters _ despite no worries on the music front, up to 15 on a couple and some seriously good ones with it
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Since 1999, my Wednesday Slow Session has been held at:
The Inca Restaurant
The Nova Hotel ("Chic Murray's")
The Castle Bar
The Tass Bar *
The West End Hotel
Bennet's Bar
The Borough Hotel
and
Bennet's Bar
So that's eight venues (one twice). Reasons were usually conflicts with football (Wednesday used to be the worst night for sessions because of big games on TV - now they're on every night!) or new management who'd rather have two punters watching a game than 25 musicians creating an atmosphere.
I find it difficult to find a venue for a session. Having said that, I've always succeeded. It's a job I don't particulalrly like, but I believe in our session so strongly that it's worth it.
* = The Tass session, although it started as my Wednesday Slow Session, carried on after I left, and I'm pleased to say it's still running.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Lisaniska, I live in central Arkansas and a "local" session for me usually (but not always) has meant some place either in Little Rock or across the river in North Little Rock.
I am willing to extend my personal meaning of "local" to include sessions in Conway and Hot Springs Village because some of the musicians who live in both towns frequently drive all of the way to Little Rock or North Little Rock to participate in sessions here.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
The session scene here in RI USA goes back decades. In terms of location, some of the venues have hosted sessions for more than a decade, but often, the sessions last as long as the venues do. In terms of 'do sessions move,' it is not so much whole sessions moving, as individual people moving as time progresses.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
My first session, which I inherited, moved three or four years ago when the landlord sold off the lease, and we moved down the hill to another pub.
By then I'd started another more local one on a different night of the month. After two previous moves we've ended up in the same pub as the other one, on this different night, because the landlady is welcoming - the worst thing about pub landlords is when they change their minds about you and won't tell you the truth; indifference we can cope with, it's being p*ssed about that p*sses us off.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
There have been regular sessions in one pub or another in Aberdeen continuously for at least the last 20 years, and intermittently for probably most of the previous 20.
But to me, a session in a different pub is a different session. I guess there are some, like the SCAT sessions in Aberdeen that are basically the same wherever they go, but otherwise the venue is what defines its character
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
My local session, (Ballydehob, Co. Cork) moves every week! This is because unusually, rather than being based in one pub, it moves round 5 of the 7 pubs in the village in rotation. The session has been running for over 23 years and when I started it in 1987 was based in one bar, (Rose O' Sullivan's) the rotation started after Rose died and her pub was temporally closed.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
One of the Durham sessions has been going for some 35 years.
In its (and some of its members') youth it travelled through Durham's more tolerant pubs like one of those demented fireworks that you keep thinking has stopped, but bangs off and leapfrogs somewhere else.
Partly this was in pursuit of some mirage of a pub that would give us lock-ins and let us play music and help ourselves to free beer all night. Some of the sessioners had probably spent a lot of time enjoying such hospitality in Ireland, and thought it a bit tight of Durham not to supply it. Durham did not, of course, supply it. Ironically, the pub that extended the most leeway was the one we started from. (And eventually, we ended up right back there!)
Partly, I think, it was because one or two session members were so alarming and so capable of doing literally anything that they caused deep apprehension, even if they did nothing at all except get blotto, play loud music and engage in hectic disputes and declamations. When these were to do with buying more beer after closing time, it frightened the bar staff.
We ended up back at Pub No.1 and entered sedate middle age.
Our only move since has been occasioned by brewery policy (i.e., no live music licence) ruling out staying in the first pub.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
The session I cohost at The Ould Sod in San Diego has been going on at the same place since 2000. The key is having the support of the owners, who happen to be native Irish.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
My local session is in my regular local ‘drinking and reading the paper’ pub five minute walk from my house. The session has been going strong for years before I ever started joining the session (which I have been doing for about seven years now). Also ‘locally’ are three or four sessions which are well established and maybe two or three miles away. No sessions I know have ever ‘moved’, just new ones fleetingly appearing and adding to the existing plethora. Additionally there are very well established sessions further away and needing a £20 or £30 car/ cab/ taxi ride. So spoilt for choice actually!
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
We're just about to loose the oldest Irish session in our town as the brewery are closing the pub. As it's several hundred years old it needs work and they simply haven't invested in it. So we play our last session there next month and that's it after 20-odd years.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
This thread reminds me of a line in a Steve Martin film (can't remember which one) where he's taking a girl on a little sight seeing trip round a posh part of LA. He turns down a street and proclaims, "... and some of these houses are almost TWENTY years old".
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Not all of them, no.
But there I fell in love with the sacred ceol and made lifelong friends and argued and played and learnt and played met all types of musicians from ITM stars, the man mistaken for Lord Lucan, those still with us and those gone before us. I made friends for life and played some more and drank beer and . . .
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
The first two local sessions in 1995 were held at a local seafood restaurant called The Oyster Bar and then the sessions moved to the bar in a local restaurant called Julie's. It was an independent restaurant which was locally owned and operated.
After two or three years at Julie's, the session musicians were invited to move to the local branch of the Barnes & Noble bookstore chain. When this company changed their policy concerning live music in their stores, the musicians moved back to the Oyster Bar.
Since then, the session has moved several times.
When Cregeen's opened here in North Little Rock (where I live), the session musicians were specifically invited to start holding the sessions there.
When one of the managers at Cregeen's left to open his very open pub and grill, he invited the session musicians to move to his new place. And now the local sessions are being held at Khalil's Pub & Grill which used to be Julie's Restaurant. Julie's went out of business a year or two ago and Khalil (who is originally from Egypt) bought the restaurant and everything in it (tables, chairs, stoves in the kitchen, etc.) from the original owners. Khalil hired some of the people who used to work at Julie's and he hired some of the staff from Cregeen's to work at his Pub & Grill.
Which means that the local sessions have come full circle and are now in an imitation Irish Pub & Grill which is owned and operated by an Egyptian immigrant.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Some people mentioned how far they had to travel or how they get to their local sessions.
The nearest session to where I live in North Little Rock is twelve miles away at Khalil's. The next nearest session (in Conway) is approximately thirty miles away and the session in Hot Springs Village is almost twice as far away as the Conway sessions.
For the sessions at Khalil's and in Conway, I can use an interstate highway for most of the drive. However, if I want to go to the session in Hot Springs Village, I can use the interstate for half of the drive and then I have to use a narrow, winding, two-lane highway for the rest of the trip.
If I remember correctly, our interstate highways are comparable or similar to an "M" class "Motorway".
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
I have seen more ITM sessions close after the "singers", guitar "players" or amplifiers appear, than being thrown out by the landlord or the pub closing.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Thank you for the warning about your roads in Britain, Guernsey Pete. I will keep in mind if we ever visit Britain.
This narrow, winding, two-lane road is Arkansas state highway 5 and I have to use it to drive through a hilly, forested part of Arkansas to get to Hot Springs Village. I use Interstate 30 from North Little Rock to Benton and then I have to exit onto Highway 5 for the rest of the drive to Hot Springs Village. Since it is a state highway, that means it isn't built up to the same standards as an Interstate. Unlike an interstate, the lanes are narrower and the shoulders are either narrower or unpaved.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
""".....a narrow winding two-lane highway....".
In some parts of Britain that's a major road.""
"Unlike an interstate, the lanes are narrower and the shoulders are either narrower or unpaved."
THE main road from Glasgow (the biggest city in Scotland, mind you) to the West Highlands, the A82, has a significant stretch alongside Loch Lomond where it's so narrow and windy two buses or lorries can't pass each other on the bends and there is NO shoulder whatsoever, just the banks of the loch on one side and a steep embankment or rock wall on the other.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Is the A82 so narrow and windy because there isn't enough traffic to justify spending the money to upgrade the road or is the government too cheap to improve this road? The A82 sounds like some of the highways in northwest Arkansas.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
The road gets more traffic than it can handle. The government is too cheap to upgrade it but in fairness, it would be an epic engineering project to do it. Not just a matter of widening a road, but you'd have to either blast out A LOT of hillside and then stabilize it in an area prone to rock slides and erosion, or you would have to build the road out over the loch.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Perhaps they should try to relocate or re-route the A82 or build another road from Glasgow to the West Highlands. If the traffic is really that heavy, I should think the expense of building it could easily be justified--despite the reluctance of the government to spend the money.
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
I love your optimism and logic Laurence but thats how it is over here. If I remember rightly when I lived in Scotland and travelled regularily from Dundee to Ullapool I used to use the A9 ( An A class road is one down from a US Interstate classification but not actual size!) the A9 was SINGLE LANE with passing places ie not single lane either side JUST ONE LANE for both directions - it was a fairly major road at the time.
I had to laugh when two US Aviation engineers told me that they were late coming from Stansted Airport (2nd/3rd largest Airport in UK) to Norwich in East Anglia because they quote "got lost and ended up on this tiny 2-lane road called the A12"
the A12 is the major road thru East Anglia!!!!
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
To be on topic sessions in and around Norwich have moved fairly frequently - although the "same session" has existed for 20-30 years or more it moved usually because the landlord who liked the session moved away and the new guy told us to Foxtrot Oscar. One one occasion the drunken landlord insulted a female member of the session so badly that we left that week - never too return even though the session had been there for 3 years at this time - to be fair this drunk had been irritating us for some time and this was the final straw.
How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Where I live, there has been a regular Irish music session since 1995 and it has had to move approximately ten times since it was started in 1995. The moves have been made for various reasons such as changes in policy; changes in management; offers to move the session to a new venue because there supposedly were better opportunities for playing music; and other reasons.
Laurence
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by fauxcelt
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
how 'local' is local Laurence?
my latest (in it's infant 12th week) may be knocked on the head after tonight, this time (same as the previous) due to lack of punters _ despite no worries on the music front, up to 15 on a couple and some seriously good ones with it
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by lisaniska
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Since 1999, my Wednesday Slow Session has been held at:
The Inca Restaurant
The Nova Hotel ("Chic Murray's")
The Castle Bar
The Tass Bar *
The West End Hotel
Bennet's Bar
The Borough Hotel
and
Bennet's Bar
So that's eight venues (one twice). Reasons were usually conflicts with football (Wednesday used to be the worst night for sessions because of big games on TV - now they're on every night!) or new management who'd rather have two punters watching a game than 25 musicians creating an atmosphere.
I find it difficult to find a venue for a session. Having said that, I've always succeeded. It's a job I don't particulalrly like, but I believe in our session so strongly that it's worth it.
* = The Tass session, although it started as my Wednesday Slow Session, carried on after I left, and I'm pleased to say it's still running.
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by nigelg
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Lisaniska, I live in central Arkansas and a "local" session for me usually (but not always) has meant some place either in Little Rock or across the river in North Little Rock.
I am willing to extend my personal meaning of "local" to include sessions in Conway and Hot Springs Village because some of the musicians who live in both towns frequently drive all of the way to Little Rock or North Little Rock to participate in sessions here.
Laurence
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by fauxcelt
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
The session scene here in RI USA goes back decades. In terms of location, some of the venues have hosted sessions for more than a decade, but often, the sessions last as long as the venues do. In terms of 'do sessions move,' it is not so much whole sessions moving, as individual people moving as time progresses.
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
My first session, which I inherited, moved three or four years ago when the landlord sold off the lease, and we moved down the hill to another pub.
By then I'd started another more local one on a different night of the month. After two previous moves we've ended up in the same pub as the other one, on this different night, because the landlady is welcoming - the worst thing about pub landlords is when they change their minds about you and won't tell you the truth; indifference we can cope with, it's being p*ssed about that p*sses us off.
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
PS; not my asterisks.
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Our local session has been going on for 8 years in just one location. Only the musicians have moved, or moved on over time.
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by Bill Reeder
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
There have been regular sessions in one pub or another in Aberdeen continuously for at least the last 20 years, and intermittently for probably most of the previous 20.
But to me, a session in a different pub is a different session. I guess there are some, like the SCAT sessions in Aberdeen that are basically the same wherever they go, but otherwise the venue is what defines its character
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by Bren
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
My local session, (Ballydehob, Co. Cork) moves every week! This is because unusually, rather than being based in one pub, it moves round 5 of the 7 pubs in the village in rotation. The session has been running for over 23 years and when I started it in 1987 was based in one bar, (Rose O' Sullivan's) the rotation started after Rose died and her pub was temporally closed.
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by cathycook
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
One of the Durham sessions has been going for some 35 years.
In its (and some of its members') youth it travelled through Durham's more tolerant pubs like one of those demented fireworks that you keep thinking has stopped, but bangs off and leapfrogs somewhere else.
Partly this was in pursuit of some mirage of a pub that would give us lock-ins and let us play music and help ourselves to free beer all night. Some of the sessioners had probably spent a lot of time enjoying such hospitality in Ireland, and thought it a bit tight of Durham not to supply it. Durham did not, of course, supply it. Ironically, the pub that extended the most leeway was the one we started from. (And eventually, we ended up right back there!)
Partly, I think, it was because one or two session members were so alarming and so capable of doing literally anything that they caused deep apprehension, even if they did nothing at all except get blotto, play loud music and engage in hectic disputes and declamations. When these were to do with buying more beer after closing time, it frightened the bar staff.
We ended up back at Pub No.1 and entered sedate middle age.
Our only move since has been occasioned by brewery policy (i.e., no live music licence) ruling out staying in the first pub.
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by nicholas
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
The session I cohost at The Ould Sod in San Diego has been going on at the same place since 2000. The key is having the support of the owners, who happen to be native Irish.
# Posted on September 26th 2010 by Michael Eskin
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
no truer words Michael
i think any pub (anywhere) is only as good as those running it, and it's only human nature to work these things out quickly for yourself
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by lisaniska
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
My local session is in my regular local ‘drinking and reading the paper’ pub five minute walk from my house. The session has been going strong for years before I ever started joining the session (which I have been doing for about seven years now). Also ‘locally’ are three or four sessions which are well established and maybe two or three miles away. No sessions I know have ever ‘moved’, just new ones fleetingly appearing and adding to the existing plethora. Additionally there are very well established sessions further away and needing a £20 or £30 car/ cab/ taxi ride. So spoilt for choice actually!
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by yhaalhouse
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
We're just about to loose the oldest Irish session in our town as the brewery are closing the pub. As it's several hundred years old it needs work and they simply haven't invested in it. So we play our last session there next month and that's it after 20-odd years.
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
This thread reminds me of a line in a Steve Martin film (can't remember which one) where he's taking a girl on a little sight seeing trip round a posh part of LA. He turns down a street and proclaims, "... and some of these houses are almost TWENTY years old".
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by ...
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Ah, but they were good years.
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
You mean they were your years.
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by ...
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Not all of them, no.
But there I fell in love with the sacred ceol and made lifelong friends and argued and played and learnt and played met all types of musicians from ITM stars, the man mistaken for Lord Lucan, those still with us and those gone before us. I made friends for life and played some more and drank beer and . . .
Ah, well. Such is life.
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
The first two local sessions in 1995 were held at a local seafood restaurant called The Oyster Bar and then the sessions moved to the bar in a local restaurant called Julie's. It was an independent restaurant which was locally owned and operated.
After two or three years at Julie's, the session musicians were invited to move to the local branch of the Barnes & Noble bookstore chain. When this company changed their policy concerning live music in their stores, the musicians moved back to the Oyster Bar.
Since then, the session has moved several times.
When Cregeen's opened here in North Little Rock (where I live), the session musicians were specifically invited to start holding the sessions there.
When one of the managers at Cregeen's left to open his very open pub and grill, he invited the session musicians to move to his new place. And now the local sessions are being held at Khalil's Pub & Grill which used to be Julie's Restaurant. Julie's went out of business a year or two ago and Khalil (who is originally from Egypt) bought the restaurant and everything in it (tables, chairs, stoves in the kitchen, etc.) from the original owners. Khalil hired some of the people who used to work at Julie's and he hired some of the staff from Cregeen's to work at his Pub & Grill.
Which means that the local sessions have come full circle and are now in an imitation Irish Pub & Grill which is owned and operated by an Egyptian immigrant.
Laurence
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by fauxcelt
Re: How long have you had a hot water bottle collection and how often has the wig glue not set?
All the time, Dorothy, all the time!
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by yhaalhouse
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
"The man mistaken for Lord Lucan..."
Better than being mistaken for Shergar, I suppose...
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by nicholas
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Some people mentioned how far they had to travel or how they get to their local sessions.
The nearest session to where I live in North Little Rock is twelve miles away at Khalil's. The next nearest session (in Conway) is approximately thirty miles away and the session in Hot Springs Village is almost twice as far away as the Conway sessions.
For the sessions at Khalil's and in Conway, I can use an interstate highway for most of the drive. However, if I want to go to the session in Hot Springs Village, I can use the interstate for half of the drive and then I have to use a narrow, winding, two-lane highway for the rest of the trip.
If I remember correctly, our interstate highways are comparable or similar to an "M" class "Motorway".
Laurence
# Posted on September 27th 2010 by fauxcelt
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
I have seen more ITM sessions close after the "singers", guitar "players" or amplifiers appear, than being thrown out by the landlord or the pub closing.
# Posted on September 28th 2010 by geoffwright
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
".....a narrow winding two-lane highway....".
In some parts of Britain that's a major road.
# Posted on September 28th 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Thank you for the warning about your roads in Britain, Guernsey Pete. I will keep in mind if we ever visit Britain.
This narrow, winding, two-lane road is Arkansas state highway 5 and I have to use it to drive through a hilly, forested part of Arkansas to get to Hot Springs Village. I use Interstate 30 from North Little Rock to Benton and then I have to exit onto Highway 5 for the rest of the drive to Hot Springs Village. Since it is a state highway, that means it isn't built up to the same standards as an Interstate. Unlike an interstate, the lanes are narrower and the shoulders are either narrower or unpaved.
Laurence
# Posted on September 29th 2010 by fauxcelt
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
""".....a narrow winding two-lane highway....".
In some parts of Britain that's a major road.""
"Unlike an interstate, the lanes are narrower and the shoulders are either narrower or unpaved."
THE main road from Glasgow (the biggest city in Scotland, mind you) to the West Highlands, the A82, has a significant stretch alongside Loch Lomond where it's so narrow and windy two buses or lorries can't pass each other on the bends and there is NO shoulder whatsoever, just the banks of the loch on one side and a steep embankment or rock wall on the other.
# Posted on September 29th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Is the A82 so narrow and windy because there isn't enough traffic to justify spending the money to upgrade the road or is the government too cheap to improve this road? The A82 sounds like some of the highways in northwest Arkansas.
Laurence
# Posted on September 29th 2010 by fauxcelt
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
The road gets more traffic than it can handle. The government is too cheap to upgrade it but in fairness, it would be an epic engineering project to do it. Not just a matter of widening a road, but you'd have to either blast out A LOT of hillside and then stabilize it in an area prone to rock slides and erosion, or you would have to build the road out over the loch.
# Posted on September 29th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
Perhaps they should try to relocate or re-route the A82 or build another road from Glasgow to the West Highlands. If the traffic is really that heavy, I should think the expense of building it could easily be justified--despite the reluctance of the government to spend the money.
Laurence
# Posted on September 29th 2010 by fauxcelt
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
I love your optimism and logic Laurence but thats how it is over here. If I remember rightly when I lived in Scotland and travelled regularily from Dundee to Ullapool I used to use the A9 ( An A class road is one down from a US Interstate classification but not actual size!) the A9 was SINGLE LANE with passing places ie not single lane either side JUST ONE LANE for both directions - it was a fairly major road at the time.
I had to laugh when two US Aviation engineers told me that they were late coming from Stansted Airport (2nd/3rd largest Airport in UK) to Norwich in East Anglia because they quote "got lost and ended up on this tiny 2-lane road called the A12"
the A12 is the major road thru East Anglia!!!!
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by UKCITTERN
Re: How long have you had a local session and how often has the session had to move?
To be on topic sessions in and around Norwich have moved fairly frequently - although the "same session" has existed for 20-30 years or more it moved usually because the landlord who liked the session moved away and the new guy told us to Foxtrot Oscar. One one occasion the drunken landlord insulted a female member of the session so badly that we left that week - never too return even though the session had been there for 3 years at this time - to be fair this drunk had been irritating us for some time and this was the final straw.
# Posted on October 13th 2010 by UKCITTERN