No…God, is there more than one???
Justine
YEAH!!
J.
Steve if you show up with a washboard and I will set you up with a fiddler who plays Old Timey music who also plays off key and misses a lot of notes 
MarkB
A very good bodhran player (yes they do exist!) and prankster I know was once poking around a local music shop when who should walk in but John Williams, the famous concertina, accordion, flute, and whistle player formerly of Solas. John leads a big session at an Evanston IL pub called Tommy Nevins on Sunday afternoons. Well, this friend of mine dabbles in some other percussion traditions and was eyeballing one of those djembe things, when he recognizes John and says, “Hi John, I’m here looking at djembes. If you give me a dollar I won’t bring it to Nevin’s next Sunday!”
Every now and again there’s a Banjo player who shows up, and if he doesn’t know the tune plonks away with chords. Even worse, he plays a 5 string with finger picks. Half the time you have no idea what you are playing because it’s so loud. There’s another guy, Bodhran player, who occaisionally shows up with a Dijeridoo (sp?) One time, an old timer who occaisionally comes nastily informed the dij player, without even missing a beat while he was fiddling, that he would take the dijeridoo away and use it for firewood! Got a little tense there for a sec.
Some days, flutes hate people.
The session near me is a lovely counter-example to the unwritten rules. We have a full-blown 120-bass piano accordion, and the guy uses the bass buttons and everything. We usually have more than one bodhran. One fellow has a ukelele, a washboard and a pair of spoons. There’s always at least three guitars. Melody instruments are usually outnumbered by accompaniment.
But, all these people are really good musicians, and the whole thing sounds great. Goes to show you, etc
Caj
That’s not elitism. Even if you had a session that was an utter free-for-all with no rules about genre etc, you’d still have problems with the random guy showing up with a new instrument, no listening skills, a midlife crisis, and a desperate need for validation.
Elitism is a different thing; that’s when you fly into a rage because someone playfully ends a set with “shave and a haircut.”
Caj
You might be a bit taken aback with how we end Rakish Paddy: ending on the Cnat, and slowly sliding it up to the middle D, and with vibrato! It’s the piper’s fault. He started it. Impossible for me to do it seamlessly on the flute, BTW. I’ll sometimes keep noodling upward from there. It’s quite the flourish.
Didgeridoos. I hate them! Yes, 100% total dislike! All didgeridoos should burn! Away with all didgeridoos! They do not belong in Irish music! They don’t belong in music period! They aren’t musical! Destroy all didgeridoos(however it’s spelled…)!
hold on there, energy. Don’t confuse the instrument with the kind of attention-seeking idiot who would bring one to an ITM session.
The didge is great in the right contexts - aboriginal traditional song accompaniment, for instance. Or a studio recording situation, although it mystifies me why anyone buys such claptrap. I’ll take field recordings of aboriginal people just practicing their traditional songs any day.
My favourite didgeridoo story is of Frank Zappa. He was doing some digital sampling for one of his jazz compositions. Someone brought along a didgeridoo. He got it into his head to see what it sounded like with the bottom submerged in a tub of water. Frank had to be removed from the studio so that the engineer could get a clean sample because he kept bursting out into laughter at the sound.
djm
A kazoo session would be cool. Just imagine Dr. Gilbert’s being played ensemble!
Now there’s a thought…kazoos…I can usually sing along with a tune long before I can play it (translating what I’m singing to actual pitches is still a struggle…but getting better as I just kind of “let go” and just play)…so maybe next session I’ll bring along my brand new kazoo (and not just any kazoo…it’s billed as being Mozart’s kazoo! lol…and I’m serious…it was a gag gift for Christmas).
I’m just kidding btw…I may be pretty new to the whole session environment, but I know the etiquette!
~Crysania
I keep thinking about bringing sheet music to a session just to see those widened eyes of incredulity before they get the joke. Of course, I’d probably have to move pretty fast once they did.
Someday, someday…
I haven’t had much problems with bringing music to sessions. I can play in style but I need the notes there to remind me how the tune goes. Usually by the third time through I can look away from the music and play along…more of a crutch than anything at this point (and a way to get to play more!). I’ve always been discreet about it, placing it on my lap so it’s not very noticeable, and I’m trying to get further away from the music as I play more and more. Though I have to wonder if some of this wasn’t because of my fiddle-playing (then-) boyfriend…he’s easily accepted anywhere at sessions and I might have been accepted as a necessary tag-a-long. I guess we’ll find out how things go when I go to sessions where he’s not at! Eek.
~Crysania
Well, in my case, for a joke I’d be pulling that at my local sessions only, where everybody knows me, and it’s about the last thing they’d expect of me. That was the point of it, you see. 
Sheet music on the lap is not too conspicous if one is playing Mozart’s kazoo! 
I always thought it would be a good joke to show up at a session with those attachable marching band instrument music holders on my fiddle and flute! Someday. Maybe I’ll wait till a get better on the pipes and attach it to my chanter 
Corin
I LOVE IT!!! 
I agree with the “no bluegrass junkies” principle wholeheartedly.
On the other hand, I have met a few old time musicians that seemed to “get it.” I had this friend in college who was an amazing old time fiddler. He also played five-string banjo–not one of those big, gunky sounding bluegrass banjos though, much quieter. Anyway, we used to get together and trade tunes. I’d teach him some Irish stuff and he’d teach me some old time stuff. One time, I played a set of reels on my flute and he got out his banjo and started backing me up and it…it actually sounded really, really good. I really like the sound of flute and old-time banjo–now there’s a combination you don’t hear too often! The only problem with banjos is that they’re not very conducive to sudden key changes.
Instruments that I have heard at sessions that blended a whole lot better with the session than I would have expected:
-bass guitar
-djembe
-piano accordion
-saxophone
-five string banjo
-piano
-double bass
-feet
-nykelharpa
-bones
-bassoon
Instruments that have really irked me from time to time at sessions:
-button box
-concertina (both Anglo and English varieties)
-piano accordion
-tenor banjo
-whistle
-low whistle
-fiddle
-bones
-piano
-guitar
-bouzouki
-mandolin
-bodhran
And lastly, the big-bad-King Hell-Third Reich-earsplitting-daddy of them all:
-uilleann pipes
There is NOTHING worse than a person with a set of uilleann pipes who is surprisingly unencumbered with knowledge of their playing technique invading a session. I’d take a mediocre button accordion player over a just plain bad uilleann piper any day.
Note that I didn’t mention flutes in the “irked” category. The thing is, flute players tend to suffer from enough playing anxiety and low self-esteem anyway that should you come across a bad one, they’ll be so nervous that you probably won’t hear them much.
The point of all this is that the instrument itself doesn’t have so much to do with it. A talented bassist who can play with sensitivity toward the music will in all likelihood blend better than some total zipperhead of a fiddle player.
Oh, and should a bunch of Scottish country dancers ever discover your pleasant little session, God help you.
TSP, have we been to the same sessions???