We have a great session with a core of folks that have played together for years. We also have some newer folks that drop in & out. Most of these latter ones are bodhran players with varying degrees of experience. Bodhrans are great, but sometimes we will have 6 or 8 at a session. They sometimes play 3 at a time and it sounds like a thunder & hailstorm.
Worse than this, we have had a guy coming with spoons and a djembe for the last 9 months. He plays well but…The djembe, as we’ve told him, belongs at an African session. The spoons would be a nice addition if they were used sparingly. They are not. He plays them through nearly all tunes. It is a constant racket that makes it difficult for the melody players to lock on to each other. We have chewed him out repeatedly (and the bodhran players as well) to no avail.
Phoenix is a funny place. Because of the building of the railroad and the Gold Rush & Irish being cheap labour, etc., we have an unusually large Irish population, and therefore, our seisiun is regrettably large. We will average anywhere from 12-30 folks on a Sunday afternoon. Granted, we will have some big issues, but…
This, I believe, just would not happen at most sessions. So why ours?
I think it could happen anywhere. In my locale, usually the group itself monitors the goings-on (or, rather, backs up the more outspoken of us), but upwards of 30 people? That’s godawful unmanageable. Dangerous, even. Time for private house sessions, do you think?
What gives you that impression? This happens in a lot of sessions.
A lot of times this ends up splitting up a session. If this goes right,
you end up with two sessions, often going at the same time (though
in different places). If it gets bad enough, and no one can step up to
take charge, you could preemptively split the session by finding
another place to play and enforce instrumentation rules from the
start. Luckily, the session is large enough that a split might easily
result in two nice-sized sessions.
We have indeed started some house sessions. One has been at my place every other Friday for the last 5 years. But we love our venue. This is a fun spot. Maybe too fun!
I guess what gave me the impression that this doesn’t happen so much at other sessions is that I’ve not seen it in my travels. We have a few guys at session from other cities that have complained the loudest, saying that this guy’s djembe would never have made it out of his car. Or after the 3rd tune, his spoons would have been relocated to an interesting spot. Hhmm…
So how do they enforce that? The Sunday before last I confronted the spoons man politely and he near bit my head off. I then became very blunt. When I looked about me, my friends all seemed to be looking another way. The spoons man continued to play and I was the one who left in disgust.
Get a core group of solid melody players together and start your own session elsewhere, hopefully at the same time.
Don’t tell the guitar owners, goatwhackers, and spoon merchants what’s up. Let them try to do a session without any strong melody players and see how well that goes
Depends on how widespread the hatred is. If everyone agrees, when
he keeps playing after being asked to stop, then people pack up and
leave. Eventually he’ll have noone to play with, and will stop
coming. Or, you can be less passive about the agression, and just
throw him out. Does the venue have a stake in this? Maybe they’d
be willing to enforce session rules (though I doubt it)?
A fairly effective method is for all the melody instruments to stop playing. Get up and go to the bar for a refill, off to powder your nose, outside to the smoking area, whatever. I know there are some people too obtuse to catch on right away, and you may have to do it several times, but eventually the message sinks in that no-one else is going to play when the guilty parties are acting up.
Nah, the pub lets us play there. Mind you, we bring in a crowd (between players and listeners) but they don’t pay us, unless you count the free first round. The only time they had anything to say about the session was when a new fiddler marched into their kitchen demanding free food. Of course we did band together and throw that guy out of the flock. People amaze me.
I’ll have to suggest the idea of moving the core group for a bit. I don’t know what kind of reception the idea will get. We’ve been at this pub for years.
I co-host several sessions and if I were hosting your session, I’d gently take the spoon man aside and invite him leave and never come back and explain to him exactly why. End of discussion.
Its a horrible thing to have to do, but sometimes it has to be done. I always make sure that I have express consent from the pub owner for the sessions I host that if we need to toss someone, we can, and they will back our decision.
I’ve had to do this perhaps 5 times in the last 10 years and everytime its happened, its been awful, but I’ve been universally thanked by the other players.
Now, one time, it was one of the managers of the pub who came in on his night off, he got very drunk and started in with the soup spoons. Talk about an awful night, we couldn’t do a thing about it without risking the future of the session. Luckily, that never happed again.
You should not have to put up with that kind of nonsense.
Have the complainers expressed their concerns to the offenders, or have they simply bitched to you and other non-offenders? Unless you are the host, then it’s no more your problem than it is the complainers, and they should be gently encouraged to stop triangulating and direct-dial with their concerns.
If you are the (co-)host, then of course it is your problem. As well as the earlier suggestions, you could say something like this to the offenders:
“We (Ben, Fred, Paddy, whoever, and I) have agreed on this: when you do X, it means that we cannot play effectively. For us to play effectively, you need to do Z (eg spoons no more than 1 set in 3). If you continue to do X, we will have to do W (eg stop playing, move the session).”
It’s just like parenting really … clear statements about what behaviour you want, and what the consequences will be if you don’t get it AND consistent follow-up behaviour. But to make it work, you need clear prior agreement among all non-offenders about what will happen.
Mary
PS I haven’t participated (not nearly good enough), but have watched a session in Boston where there were at least 6 bodhran’s playing at the same time. No one there seemed to mind, but even to my uneducated ear the sound was a bit “muddy”.
yeah, my guess is that the session in question in Boston is the Green Briar, which would be my usual monday night haunt. it’s kinda a madhouse at times, but usually those sorts of people get pushed to the back of the group and they tend to leave early, so actually by sitting towards where the session leaders are, ignoring everything going on behind me, and staying til the end, it’s manageable. unfortunately I don’t know of any way to get rid of those sorts of people gently. I suppose it’s worse too when they’re not very nice people and disinclined to listen to you. however, the sound to someone listening would be ‘muddy’. it’s not the sort of session one would want to sit around and listen to in my opinion.
I always make sure that I have express consent from the pub owner for the sessions I host that if we need to toss someone, we can, and they will back our decision.
This is something we have not thought to establish. Thank you. It’s something I guess we just never thought about. If a guy is bad enough for us to actually come together to oust, even the pub must want him gone., right? Maybe not?-Yikes.
It’s tragic enough when you finally confront the guy who we have ALL been complaining about and no one backs you up.
Many of us have approached the offenders on several occasions. Never as a group. Perhaps that is the problem. And the spoons guy was last quoted as saying “I’m here for my own enjoyment F**k what everyody else thinks.” Nice guy, eh?
Don’t get me wrong, I am taking notes and will try some of these ideas next week at session. I appreciate the suggestions!
I am an offender in all the above areas I have played bodhran, djembe and spoons (along with udu, talking drum and darbuka) at sessions.
WRT to your bodhran players, if you have some sympathetic melody players, get them to practice duets outside the session itself, it will be amazing how they will come on when they have to hear themselves against a single instrument rather than in an amorphous session. The melody players will get some fun out of it and maybe thier timing will improve as well. If you have melody players that are a bit hesitant in the session this can be a non threatening way to build thier confidence up.
A good way to handle the spoons/djembe man would be to find somebody that can actually play djembe/spoons properly and bring her/him to the session and show him up It is obvious that he cannot, otherwise you would not be complaining in this fashion. (I have been used as a sickener before - funny thing in most cases I have ended up teaching the offender and resolving the situation that way). From what you say though, this guy is an asshole, good luck in getting rid of him.
I’m not a big internet chatter. What does this mean? I am a good bodhran player myself. I was taught by a master long ago (**dirtyheel-**I’ve seen him on this site, in fact). But I no longer take my drum to the pub because although we usually take turns, by the time my turn comes, I’ve had enough and want to hear a set or two without the bodhran. It’s pointless to bring it. Rather depressing, actually.
I do know someone great at the spoons that might do as you suggested, but I’m thinking that might send our offender a mixed message. Our biggest problem with him is that he plays them too much. Wouldn’t bringing in more spoons (even played sparingly) say to him “the more the merrier”?
WRT = With Respect To
It was pretty common shorthand even before the internet.
The military, and (perhaps by extension) engineers, love
Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs)
The “show them some tasteful, skilled playing and maybe they’ll understand” technique only works if the offending party is basically well meaning and interested in improving. Your spoon man doesn’t sound like he cares at all what you think and has clearly told you that he’s there for his own enjoyment. This won’t work. Let the pub owner know what’s up, as a group confront this arrogant bastard, get in his space, tell him its time to go, and walk him to the door.
