00:00 Introduction to Irish Music Sessions
01:12 Barry Foy's Journey in Irish Music
04:50 The Importance of Psychological Safety
09:35 Navigating the Unspoken Rules
16:15 The Evolution of Irish Music
25:16 The Role of Technology in Music Sessions
34:08 Creating an Inclusive Session Environment
42:51 Advice for Newcomers to Irish Music Sessions
51:44 Reflections on the Future of Irish Music
Conversational Transcript
*[This is an edited conversational transcript, lightly shaped for readability while keeping the spirit of the original conversation]
What does an Irish music session mean?
Tara:
Today I am with Barry Foy, all the way from Minnesota in the United States of America.
Barry, you have written a book called Field Guide to the Irish Music Session, or Field Guide to the Irish Music Session: A Guide to Enjoying Irish Traditional Music in Its Natural Habitat.
Thank you so much for joining me.
I am going to start by asking the same question I normally ask everybody.
What does an Irish music session mean to you?
Barry:
That is a very big question.
I took up this music nearly fifty years ago. I cannot believe I am even saying that.
I came to it from extremely different kinds of music. It was a very unlikely place for me to end up.
I was so enthusiastic that I decided to go over to Ireland after I had only been interested in the music for about a year.
I lived in Dublin for about ten months, and very early on I became a regular attendee of the Four Seasons sessions, the Kelly family session on Capel Street.
So I was extremely spoiled.
That was some of my earliest session experience, and it was an extremely confident session. We are talking about quite a lineup of musicians.
Since then, sessions have represented some of my greatest pleasures and greatest miseries in life.
There has been torture and delight and everything in between.
Barry:
For me, because I did not grow up with the music, there was also anthropology in it.
There I was, this overenthusiastic Yank venturing into a world that was drastically different.
The Ireland of 1976 would have been drastically different even for you.
For me, it was rich with exotica.
When I came back to the States after that year, I already had a very concrete notion of what sessions were, how they worked, what they were supposed to accomplish, and their potential for delight and misery.
Those ten months in 1976 and 1977 were incredible.
The music was blazing.
If you were in Dublin, you would eventually see everybody. You could go to The Meeting Place or Slattery’s.
When I came back to Chicago, even though Chicago was very musical, I felt a culture shock. For many years after that, I had a quiet search for the quality of session I had experienced in Dublin.
There was no shortage of fantastic Irish musicians in Chicago then or now, but it was not quite the same.
From avant-garde composition to Irish music
Tara:
What instrument do you play?
Barry:
When the book came out, I was a flute player, having moved to flute from fiddle and a few other things.
But I am a fiddler.
That is confirmed now. I left it and went back to it a couple of times, but fiddling is really what I do.
Tara:
What music did you play before Irish music? How did you come into it?
Barry:
Most directly, I came to Irish music from being an avant-garde art music composer, or aspiring to be one.
In the seventies, that was mostly noise. A lot of our notation was squiggles on paper or just text.
I had played soul music and rock and roll in high school.
My high school friend Larry McCullough came to Ireland for a college year abroad, discovered Irish music and brought it back to me.
There was a little lapse in my engagement with art music, and Irish music sneaked in like a thief in the night.
Tara:
And it has not let you go since.
Barry:
It has let me go a couple of times, and I have let it go a couple of times, but we always came back to each other.
It is probably not a healthy relationship, but it is all I have got.
Being tolerated in early sessions
Tara:
How were you treated in that first session on Capel Street?
Barry:
With extreme tolerance.
My gratitude for that is deep.
I was just another in a string of overenthusiastic Americans dropping in.
I was making the transition from mandolin to fiddle, and my fiddle playing was terrible.
Yet the Kellys treated me with great tolerance.
I remember young John saying one time, “Well, Barry, I have got to give you this. You are sure giving it a good try.”
And I was giving it a good try, that is for sure.
But for them to have to listen to me giving it a good try, that is a certain kind of patience.
They let me be there.
I was going to three sessions a week there sometimes: Sunday afternoon, Sunday night and Thursday night. I did my best to get to all three.
Patience, impatience and repertoire
Tara:
Do you think an Irish musician needs patience?
Barry:
No. I think an Irish musician needs impatience.
There is a line in the book about how a good Irish musician lives in a constant state of mild anxiety over all the tunes he does not know yet.
Nothing but impatience is going to get those tunes into your repertoire.
Tara:
I remember going to university in Cork and realising I did not know any of the tunes.
People were asking, “Do you know this one?” And I did not.
I remember thinking, “God, I am the weakest link here.” I thought I was pretty good, but there was so much to learn.
Ever since then, I have been focused on repertoire.
Barry:
Did they ever say, “Why don’t you play some of your music?”
Tara:
They probably did, but I was too young. I was in first year and did not want to tell the fourth years what to do.
Barry:
I understand a little bit. I am a big fan of Sliabh Luachra polkas.
I know what it is like not to get a chance to play your music, or to see scowls on people’s faces when you try.
Who was the book written for?
Tara:
One of the first lines in your book says that if you live in Ireland, the notion of a book on the nature of traditional music sessions is bound to seem ridiculous.
Is it still like that, or have we caught up and realised it might be needed?
Barry:
When I conceived of the book, it was not for people in Ireland.
Over the years, occasionally I meet someone from Ireland who knows the book or likes it, and I am always surprised, almost concerned. I think, “You do not need this. Leave this to us.”
I do think there are different pressures on sessions now, coming from the way we live.
There are pressures from mobiles, from bodhráns, and from changes in pub life.
Where I live is a second-tier Irish music city in the United States.
You have New York, Boston and Chicago in the first rank. Then the rest of us are in different degrees.
Here, we are distinguished by having a very good Irish music school and a few other things.
But sessions here are not the same as if I lived in Galway and could walk down the street to a session.
Here you have to know what is happening. You have to construct the world of Irish music for yourself over and over.
Tara:
It is like creating a mini Ireland.
Barry:
Yes.
That is not to make my locality sound naive or weak. We do fine here. We have some great musicians.
But it is not like Galway City, where I can go down a few streets to Tigh Coili and I am in business as a player or listener.
Tara:
I never really thought about the tiers of Irish music cities in the United States.
Barry:
Irish music in Ireland would have been completely different if it had not been for New York.
Michael Coleman did not do his recording in Ireland.
New York, Boston and Chicago have Irish music by heritage.
St. Paul, where I live, has long been recognised as an Irish city too, but it did not have the same explosion of musicians.
Irish music as a global machine
Tara:
The reason I started the podcast was to help people coming to Ireland to play in sessions, or people in Ireland coming to sessions.
Irish music is almost a victim of its own success.
People play Irish music outside Ireland all over the world. St Patrick’s Day is celebrated in so many countries. I do not know of any other country with that global reach.
Barry:
That is absolutely true.
You can trace a lot of that back to Riverdance. The fact that my book happened at all was partly riding on that wave of interest.
That interest faded, then surged again.
Ireland has become not just a home of Irish music, but a machine for Irish music. A huge Irish music factory.
I do not know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
I heard Mary McNamara being interviewed recently, talking about teaching and coaching. She said that when she was a child, there were maybe half a dozen young musicians in her locality. Now there are hundreds.
It is a cottage industry.
Tara:
The sheer quantity of quality in Ireland now is astonishing.
Barry:
Not only is the music in vast quantities, but it is ridiculously virtuosic.
These nine-year-olds are killing me.
Why Barry wrote the Field Guide to the Irish Music Session
Tara:
What was the main reason you decided to write the book?
Were you looking for a formula for the best possible session?
Barry:
There was a large helping of frustration.
I was living in Seattle, and Seattle was roaring in the nineties. It was a very nice Irish music scene with great musicians.
I was running a Sunday night session for a few years, and I would see people come in without a clue. I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Why should they have a clue?
We were not in a place where they had grown up with the music.
The same reasons kept recurring for why the session was not happening and what people did not seem to know.
One day I started making notes about exactly how I felt about it.
After doing that for a while, I realised I had a lot more to say than I thought.
All those years, I had been paying attention, noticing things about sessions, and comparing them with what I had seen in Dublin.
I was scarred for life by it.
Holding an instrument does not entitle you to play
Barry:
There is one line in the book that is really what the whole book is about.
If the book consisted of one sentence, it would be this:
The fact that you are holding a musical instrument in your hands at a session does not automatically entitle you to play it.
That is it.
Irish music is to be played by people who play Irish music.
Do not come in and try to bluff your way through.
This is not bad intentions on anyone’s part. People just do not get it.
They would never think of going up to the conductor at an orchestra rehearsal and saying, “Can I play my didgeridoo here?”
Barry:
I was in Galway once, playing a little session, and I saw a guy walk in with something long in a pouch hanging over his back.
I thought, “Oh no.”
He approached the table and asked, in a French accent, “Do you mind if I join in with my didgeridoo?”
I thought there was obviously no problem, because no session leader would let this happen.
Then I saw the session leader’s face crumple.
Something in his mind was telling him he could not say no. Maybe the pub management had told him not to turn people away.
So he said yes, as long as it did not get in the way.
The guy sat down, took out the didgeridoo, put it in position, and just before he started, he said, “Could you please let me know when you are in the key of D? Because that is the note I have.”
I thought, “Wow. Did that just happen?”
I have great respect for the didgeridoo, in its natural habitat.
Uninformed, not misinformed
Tara:
Do you think some people are socially uninformed, not just uninformed about sessions?
Music is often described as a conversation. Are they unaware that maybe they should not just jump in?
Barry:
The right word is uninformed.
They are not misinformed. They have grown up with other musics, and Irish music in a session functions differently.
It is a unison art form. We are all playing the same thing.
Then there is this optional element called accompaniment. We do not need it at all. It is great if it works.
People walk in and have not seen that kind of thing before. They may be used to a blues jam, pop songs or other forms.
They do not know the discipline that session musicians are adhering to.
It looks like people spontaneously playing music, but there are all kinds of rules and conditions that are understood.
Tara:
There is subtlety and “less is more” in the background of everything. Even the rules are subtle. The music is subtle too.
Barry:
It is very simple.
If you play this music, come play this music.
Otherwise, we would love to have you listening.
If you listen enough times, you will start to get it too. Then we can renegotiate.
Learners, slow sessions and the need for sparks
Tara:
What about people who are learning Irish music, but are not quite up to the standard yet?
Barry:
Those things have to be worked out organically. They depend on the personal dynamics of the session.
If the better players do not pause every now and then to let the lesser players start a tune, that is bad behaviour on the better players’ part.
It is bad form for the great player to make the lesser player look bad.
Very few good players would ever do that. It is understood that this is supposed to embrace the community.
At the same time, there is the institution of the slow session. I would never go to one.
I am all for them if that is how people best enjoy the music.
But when I first took up this music, I needed thrills. I needed masterful playing at whatever speed they could play masterfully.
It was the thrill that drew me to the music.
The slow session implies that the music is going to come to you, to your position, so that you can improve or feel good about yourself.
That is the catch.
I want a session where we can slow down to play a set from a beginner player, but if nobody kicks up sparks, where is the fun?
Tara:
There has to be a balance. If you have master musicians and too many learners, and everybody has to get a chance, when do the master musicians get to thrill everybody?
Barry:
You may run across a session that is of such high quality that you should not join it.
You should just listen, which is what we are all there for anyway.
Tara:
That includes experienced and advanced musicians too. There are times I go into a session and ask, “Can I add to this?”
If the answer is no, I add to it by listening.
Barry:
That is exactly the approach a person should take.
Those of us who play and those who do not play are ultimately there to listen to Irish music because we like the music.
If you happen to play it, that is nice.
But if someone is doing a good job of playing it, and you are doing a good job of listening to it and enjoying it, that is the whole story right there.
The craving to express yourself
Barry:
This is brutal to say, but some people do not know good music when they hear it.
Maybe they have not learned it yet.
Everybody who plays the music has some combination of wanting to listen to it and wanting to play it.
They want to express something.
Sometimes people’s craving for expressing themselves swamps their taste.
They are so intent on getting the instrument out of the case and playing that they are not really noticing what is happening.
Sessions present you with situations that cannot always be resolved.
Only under certain circumstances can you say what needs to be said. Otherwise, you just play on, hope for the best, and look forward to next time.
Tara:
Could you describe your ideal session?
Barry:
I like the session to settle into a tempo that is generally the tempo it sticks with.
If you are giving lesser players a chance to play, you may slow down, and that is great.
But constantly playing one set faster, the next slower, and so on, can be irritating.
I also like singing in a session.
If there is a singer around and the place is quiet enough, absolutely. We should hear some songs.
That enriches the experience massively.
I like a little noise from the house, but not too much.
If you have six people, you have enough to fulfil any need. But sometimes you have a lot of like-minded people, and the session can be bigger and still coherent.
Pubs, cafes and session venues
Tara:
What kind of venue do you prefer?
Barry:
Unless there is an event of some kind in a hall, a pub is always preferable.
In the States, the idea of your local down the street does not predominate in the same way.
You have young people learning to play this music and becoming very good at it, and I ask myself: where are they going to play?
Where do they think Irish music happens?
If it is not the pub, where is it going to be? How do we get them there? How do they go there one night a week?
Tara:
There has been a shift in Ireland too. Pubs are closing down and being replaced by cafés. Cafés are not the worst place to play in.
For me, it is the acoustics. The best acoustics I ever played in were in a tiny pub with hard surfaces and a small room.
Barry:
I do not consider the word session to be synonymous with pub session.
Sessions can be wherever you have them.
In this country, so many planets have to align for a place to become a session venue.
The biggest factor is interest and tolerance on the part of the public. They need a reason to let you do it. Maybe it draws in customers, or maybe they are Irish and miss Irish music.
Barry:
I should say, as a disclaimer, I am not legislating how Irish music should be conducted.
I am nobody in terms of Irish music.
It all comes back to what aspects of the music attracted me in the first place.
Tara:
That is every single person, really.
Barry:
Yes, but I was attracted to it a very long time ago, so my outlook is rapidly getting obsolete.
Performance versus the session
Tara:
In recent years, I have noticed some younger musicians seem more performance-focused. It can feel like there is less emphasis on sessions.
Barry:
The notion of performance is a pet topic of Dáithí Sproule’s too.
Most people in the world understand playing music as performing. If you are not performing now because you are in your living room, you hope to do it someday on a stage.
The idea that we would all sit in the corner of a dark bar, not be listened to, and not aim any higher, and consider that fulfilling, is unusual compared with much of the world’s music.
Tara:
For me, that is more important than performing on stage.
In a session, I can bounce off the musicians. I am not under pressure to perform at a certain level. I am there to have fun and enjoy the music.
That is when I play better than I ever do on stage, because of the freedom.
Barry:
One more thing about an ideal session: I like variety in the tune types.
I am a big polka fan. I am a big barndance fan. I like hearing somebody play a strathspey now and then.
When a session becomes reels, reels, reels, reels, that is all great, but I would like a little something else if you have it.
Tara:
Sometimes in sessions here, we forget about reels and jigs.
We could go a whole night and then realise nobody has played a reel or a jig.
We play highlands, barndances, mazurkas, waltzes, marches and songs.
Barry:
When I hear that, I may fit into your session better than I thought.
Tara:
What are your thoughts on recording in a session?
Barry:
If somebody is informally turning on a phone to learn a tune, I have lived by recordings in sessions.
I would not know any tunes without that.
It is great to pick up something in the room, but you need to be there a lot of times for tunes to soak in.
There is something exciting about having a stash of tunes recorded and going home to learn them.
Tara:
Some musicians hate recording. Others say it is grand because that is how they learned.
Barry:
It probably comes down to personal discretion.
If you stick the phone in front of somebody’s face, that is no good.
Mine is usually down by my thigh. You cannot see the display.
Advice for people going to sessions in Ireland
Tara:
If you had advice for people going to a session in Ireland with an instrument, what would it be?
Barry:
I have the perfect advice.
There is this little book called Field Guide to the Irish Music Session.
I have always felt that you will be better off if the person walking into your session has read this book than if they have not.
There are many times I think my session was spared ruination because people heard about the funny little book and read it.
Here, there is something people know nothing about, and I can hand them this little thing and say, “Here. This is all there is to know about it. Once you have read it, you will be perfect.”
Songs that do and do not belong
Tara:
What advice would you give people in Ireland listening to this podcast?
Barry:
I cannot speak to those people.
The didgeridoo problem was a problem.
I went to another session in Galway where there were a couple of songs. I always like a song, but neither had any relationship to Irish music.
That is great at home in your kitchen, but it was not what I was there for that night.
But it was not my session. I had no right to decide.
Tara:
If we are in a session and there are no singers, we might say to someone, “Sing anything, please.” Especially if the room wants a song.
Maybe it is different if someone decides, “I will grace you all now, and you shall listen.”
Barry:
My rule of thumb is that the more reluctant someone is to sing, the better singer they probably are.
Someone might sit listening to you play instrumental music for an hour and then come up and ask if you do Dirty Old Town.
You think, “Did you notice anything, sir? None of us are singing.”
Barry:
A book written in 1999 is going to have a different thing to say about mobile phones and tuners. Those parts of the book are historic now.
But I will say one thing about phones.
I have noticed musicians who, the minute you go into a tune they do not know, pick up the phone and start checking something.
Automatically. Instantly.
They came to that place to be engaged in music, and they bail out so quickly the minute the music is not giving them something to play.
Why are they not listening to the tune they do not know so they can learn it?
Tara:
Their love is fickle.
Barry:
Yes. They are two-timing us.
When phones first appeared, the implication felt like, “I have something more interesting to do than pay attention to you.”
In a session, I feel snubbed.
Tara:
I usually have my phone away in my bag unless I am waiting for something.
I know people who feel disgruntled when phones are left on the table and constantly checked.
Barry:
I remember going to Ireland around 1999, after not having been there from 1979 to 1999.
I went to a session with a lot of young people, and they were putting phones on the table. I hated those things.
At one point, sarcastically but with a smile, I said, “I think we need some more phones on the table.”
Of course, three or four more people reached into their pockets and put phones on the table.
The joke was on me.
The ship has sailed on phones.
If there were a remedy for every awkwardness, it would not be folk music.
Humour as a way to talk about serious things
Tara:
If something is created now for people coming to Ireland, there is a balance between being too descriptive and letting things happen organically.
You do not want to be too prescriptive, but you also do not want things to fall apart.
Barry:
My strategy when I wrote the book was to make it funny.
This is a topic nobody really wanted to get serious about, yet it was of interest to people.
I thought if I did not make it funny enough, people would not take it seriously enough.
It was an iron fist in a velvet glove.
They would not know what hit them.
The hammered dulcimer and getting it wrong
Barry:
When the book came out, one guy on Amazon completely trashed it.
I found out he was someone I had turned away from a session once.
I never turned people away, but he was a hammered dulcimer player. I have a feeling that instrument does not belong in a session. To me, it creates a sonic cloud hanging over the music. The clarity is gone.
I very politely, and with “nothing personal,” told him not to join.
He got his revenge and gave the book a very bad review.
I misjudged that one. I do not know what I should have done.
Tara:
Maybe this podcast is partly because I am trying to make amends for things I have said to people in the past.
There have been a couple of incidents where I could have been gentler or more thoughtful.
Sometimes it was day ten of Miltown Malbay, or the last day of the Fleadh, and everyone was exhausted.
Barry:
Were you a heavy hitter in the session?
Tara:
I might have been the more accomplished musician in that particular session.
But Irish people struggle to see ourselves as above others. Even the phrase “Irish music stars” makes me feel slightly sick.
Barry:
I looked at your CV online and thought, “This is an overachiever if I ever saw one.”
Tara:
Maybe I am just good at writing CVs.
Tara:
The last guest leaves a question for the next guest.
The question for you is: which would you rather sit beside, the spoons or a shaky egg?
Barry:
I am appalled that those are the only two options.
I used to be a percussionist, and shaky egg was one of my things.
Give me one on each side. I will take them both.
Tara:
Thank you very much, Barry. It has been such a pleasure.
Barry:
Thanks so much.
Barry Foy’s conversation brings a different kind of honesty to the question of session etiquette.
He came to Irish music from the outside, but early enough and deeply enough to understand that the session is not simply a casual jam where anyone holding an instrument gets to play.
That may be the hardest lesson for many newcomers.
Barry’s clearest line is also the heart of his book: holding an instrument in your hands at a session does not automatically entitle you to play it.
That sounds severe until you understand what he is protecting.
A session is not only a gathering of people with instruments. It is a shared musical language with its own discipline, restraint, humour, listening, hierarchy, generosity and local understanding.
It looks informal from the outside, but it is not random.
Barry also reminds us that humour can say difficult things without making them brittle. His book works because it laughs at the absurdity while still naming the truth.
The didgeridoo in D is funny because it is ridiculous.
But it is also useful because it reveals the basic problem: many people walk into Irish music sessions using assumptions from other musical worlds.
The work is not to shame them.
The work is to help them understand where they are.
At the same time, Barry does not let experienced players off the hook. Better musicians need to make space. They should not humiliate lesser players. They should remember that listeners are part of the music too.
But learners, visitors and outsiders also have a responsibility: listen first, notice the room, learn the music, and do not mistake access for entitlement.
That is not exclusion.
That is how the session survives.
Barry Foy - Amazon books
Field Guide to the Irish Music Session - Hodgest Figgis booksellers
Field Guide to thte Irish Music Session - AbeBooks
Session Etiquette Questionnaire
Support the In Tune with Tradition podcast
