After listening to James Gavin and Adrian Lever on the 13th, my enthusiasm for our 15th September session began to wane. Also, the usual fears crept in; who and how many would come?
It turned out to be a brilliant afternoon – more socially than musically, I hasten to add! Nobody (myself included) had practised much during the summer. It also began to look more like a session with non-players and musicians sitting together with no fixed seating arrangement.
We have no age bias so it was wonderful to welcome young Manos on concertina and ocarina. He did a lovely rendition of Morrison’s jig. Later in the afternoon Ersilia, an Italian fiddler, egged on by my wife, joined us. She sounded great, sight reading our Father Kelly’s/Reconciliation set.
In all, I think there were nine regulars, the aforementioned newcomers, and Rob’s daughter, who was persuaded to sing – also by my wife. And needing no encouragement was an Australian called Brent. We obliged him with a few songs but, unfortunately for him, our Van the Man repertoire was lacking.
On www.thesession.org someone has written to ask me if he can join us in our next session on Oct 13th, so we continue to grow.
Anyway, here is a clip that I’ve just uploaded to YouTube: https://youtu.be/mktDE9yjRMM
And a snippet that was uploaded to Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/domna.ioannidou.3/videos/543013558128823/?fs=e&mibextid=UalRPS&rdid=GsknaG57Gsvdnueo
Our next session is on Oct 13th, which means it’s our third anniversary. Our first session was held on Oct 17th 2021. In marriage it is the leather anniversary. Maybe we should turn up in biker gear.