I hate to bring this up but:
If you are a competant piper then I bet the accordion player is having pipe-envy… accordion players can be prone to this. Why not scan the rest of the session players and ask their opinion?
Keep us posted!
Patrick.
Or find out who is paid to be at the session. They are the key decision makers as well as the pub owner.
Whoa!!! This topic seems to have touched a nerve out there!
I was basically wondering if anyone else has run up against this kind of thing before? Thanks to those who offered their take on things. I certainly don’t want to make things into a tempest in a teapot.
As far as suggestions for responding with iron bars, shoving, pithy remarks, exclusionary sessions, swearing, “bursting”:-?, or not going back - none of these tactics are really my style (I know you were all kidding). There’s a good yet small group of people around here who really enjoy Trad music and I certainly don’t want to be the source of any pettiness.
I did say to the fellow during the initial phone conversation that I would never ‘not’ bring the pipes. They are what I love to play, although I do play other instruments and sometimes decide to play them instead depending on my whims. As I said, I have taken steps recently to get a softer reed and I’m sure that benefits everyone.
I should mention that I used to host the local weekly session in my house. The local pub we now use has just changed owners and sessions may or may not continue there… time will tell. No one is getting paid. Like myself, most everyone who attends are competent players, music teachers and/or local performers.
I think that my final response will be to continue to bring the pipes as I please and to play other instruments, also as I please… and to encourage other’s to do the same - i.e. those who want to play piano.
Paul
p.s. Patrick! I’m offended you don’t remember me from Milltown all those years ago. 
We were in the same class!!
OK, I’ll tickle the discussion a bit: I don’t think pipes are generally not particularly loved by other other musicians to play with. In Clare people will give you a dirty look if you mention them. They will appreciate a welltuned and well played set of pipes though but their experience dictates (rightly or wrongly I’ll leave that up to yourselves) those are few and far between.
Also, a session will be able to absorb a not so great fiddleplayer, a mediocre piper will stand out like a sore tooth and ruin things. I remember i was listening to a lovely fiddle session in The Central Hotel during a Willie Week soem years ago. Paul Dooley was playing the fiddle with a group of teenage rs, mostly girls and the yhad that lovely bounce and togetherness that a good Clare fiddle session has. In comes a young American (not that that matters but he was) piper who goes: WOW great I’ll sit in with you guys, puts on a roaring concert (half) set and tears into your average plodding rendition of Fraher’s, falling out of the rhythm when trying the triplets and otherwise totally devoid of the lovely lift the group had. They played on for another while but the music was out the window. It just happens too often.
Personally I never take them out to play in session, (and if you’re going to play just the chanter you may as well bring a tinwhistle). Pipes are best played on their own or at maximum with two others (not other pipers though), too much of what makes them special is lost otherwise.
You can always “touch a nerve here”. This group is always ready to voice an opinion.
It is a good thing we do not all live close to one another. We would have a vigilante mob ready to string up bodhran players or anyone that slightly pissed anyone off. Kind of like Athens and Sparta. And also, like Athens and Sparta, if there wasn’t someone else to attack we would attack each other.
So lets calm down and tell us know who’s kneecaps need to be broken. 
Can’t we all just get along!? Can’t we feel the multi-instrumental love? Did we learn nothing from Kitty Lie Over?
Time to preach tolerance for multi-instrumental relationships - imagine pipes and fiddle and accordions and harps and flutes and whistles all together in one session - a Coke commercial in the making - is it a dream to be realized by our children only!?
Uhhhh wait a minute…maybe it’s the caffeine and wing grease talking, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been part of such an arrangement on many occasions north of the border as of late, and it was maaaaaaaaagic, and nobody was wishing for the departure of anyone involved, least of all the pipes.
Paul, you need to look the accordion player straight in the eyes (if that’s possible) - and offer him a set of pliers to be used to remove the rod shoved up his arse.
Cheers…
I recall one Miltown when a rather well oiled local was telling me how peeved he was that a certain bar owner was making a fortune during the festival, when they would never let Clancy play in their bar when he was alive.
You’re never a hero in you own home town, especially if you are a piper in Clare it seems.
Unless your dead of course.
David
Tell the SOB where he can go!!! I have had alot of experince with this kind of person, and the best way to react is with defiance!
HAHA! Of course magroibin… it is you! How could I forget
Was it Leo Rickard’s class up the Ballard Road in the semi-detatched houses? I don’t generally remember much of Willie Week I’m afraid Where about’s do you live?
Patrick.
This issue might be a bit more complex. During Willie Week, every pub is flooded with attendees. Out of the 40 pubs in that area, they all don’t feature traditional music during the year but are semi-expected to be traditional-friendly for the 12 day period of Willie Week. In fact, in the early 1980s, more than one pub closed down for that period because they couldn’t be bothered with the crowds that turn up.
Any town in Ireland has a slim ratio of traditional music nights in pubs versus country, soccer/football, etc. Matt Molloys has music every in his pub in Westport and pubs like that are very welcome when so many other commercial choices are out there.
My one and only visit to MM’s was entirely ruined by a bunch of drunks in the backroom singing the Fields of Athenry. They would have made a pipe band sound comparatively quiet and in tune. Even the presence of MM himself wasn’t enough to make me want a second pint. I headed to another little pub close by where there was a lovely little session going on (although, not a piper in sight).
But, Jim, your point is taken. Even the MM Choir from Hell is better than the typical Late Bar.
Just an irrelevant comment about UP’s and accordions:
I did hear an incredible concert given by the great accordion player Paddy O’Brien from Minneapolis and an equally great UP player whose name I have unfortunately forgotten (it was some years ago). I’m sure, being such accomplished musicians, they worked things out so that their instruments were singing together rather than in opposition, but it is possible.
Cynth - there are no irrelevant comments. Just irrelevant commentator. Thankfully, none of them here!!
I’ve heard some recordings in which concertinas and UPs are played together and sound lovely. The Road to Caraçena by Bill Whelan (Seville Suite) features a concertina/UPs duet.
Also, I’ve a recording of Leo Rowsome playing a double chanter. When I first heard it, I was convinced it was a concertina or accordion.
Finally, although I play neither concertina nor accordion (and some would add the UPs to that list), I find they add very much to a session, particularly if there are too many fiddles (OK now I’ll have all the fiddle players after me - but I like fiddles too … Oh never mind).
My pipes and my wife’s accordion work just fine together!! I’m very happy with the combination. "Course, she doesn’t play the basses and I leave the regulators alone. Sometimes I wish she’d play a little louder, though - sometimes she’s a timid little gal.
Paddy O’Brien played with Tim Britton for a while. Cillian Vallely toured with Paddy one season a few years back too.
Paddy’s Poalo Soprani is a rocking bold accordion… great tone! I miss listening to it.
I’m repeating myself, but we go up north at Christmas and pass through Minneapolis. If we are lucky we can hear Paddy O’Brien play at a place called Kieran’s. I am sorry to say that there are often very few people in the back room where he plays, they are all up in front listening to loud rock Celtic whatever and getting drunk—drinks are served in the back room too, so that’s not the reason.
He hardly ever said a word a number of times when we saw him except to say what the tunes were. I just thought, oh, a very quiet man. Then one time he was talking away and telling jokes, good ones, and I was pleasantly surprised. He told the audience that someone had told him that he should talk because people like to hear his accent, so now he does! And it is a lovely accent indeed.
Many is the time Paddy and I played that back room… uh oh, I’m starting to get misty…
When did you stop playing there? Of course the chances of my having heard you would be very slim since we see one performance a year, if we are there on the right night. I don’t remember hearing him in Minn. with a UP player. That was in Des Moines.
I guess this is getting off the topic in a serious way. Sorry. 
Let’s get back to the iron bars and such! 
It was a quite a few years ago, and I played guitar and fiddle with him.
Peter Laban wrote “…Personally I never take them out to play in session, (and if you’re going to play just the chanter you may as well bring a tinwhistle)…”
Peter, may I ask why?
In addition, how can you compare a chanter to a tinwhistle 
There is no comparison in sound whatsoever. Anyhow, it is quite common here in the UK for a piper to play chanter only if the situation deems it sensible, especially in a “busy” session where ones drones may get “knocked”. Also, if the session is especially noisy one can’t hear the drones to tune them so they are better left switched off:sniffle:
I’ll go a step further and also state that some of the sessions in Ireland I’ve attended from Dublin to Kerry have been “droneless” for the very same reasons.
Joseph (the UK one)