Would You Like a Little Football with Your Guinness, Sir? Watching the Big Game in the Local Pub with an Irish Session featurin

posted by John Thomas

Look, you know that you’ve come to the right spot to watch the Super Bowl when a couple of hours before kickoff the band begins to straggle in, one guitar player pulls out his Martin just after shedding the Giants jacket that he bought in 1956 “when Y.A. Tittle was quarterback,” and another guitar player snatches the jacket and proposes to raffle it off to the amused patrons of this Irish pub.   We’re in for a perfect combination of tradition and irreverence.

The pub is The Playwright in Hamden, Connecticut and the band is, well, not so much a band as an assemblage.  It’s an “Irish session” and “the thing about an Irish session,” says fiddler extraordinaire Jeanne Freeman, “is that whoever comes, comes – so it varies week to week.”  This is the weekly session hosted by fiddler Pat Stratton and he’s asked Freeman and button accordionist Loretta Murphy to serve as guest leaders.

What’s immediately apparent is that Stratton has chosen his guests well.  Indeed, these two might be properly characterized as Connecticut’s dynamic duo of traditional Irish music.  Jeanne Freeman is a classically trained violinist who fell under the spell of traditional Irish music over a decade ago when she began studying with legendary Donegal fiddler P.V. O’Donnell.  Freeman hosts a weekly session of her own in Hartford, Connecticut, and next month will front the Hartford Symphony Orchestra as guest fiddler for its Saint Patrick’s Day concert.

Loretta Murphy, too, has an authentic, uh, Green Card (sorry!) in Irish music.  She studied the button accordion with Pete Kelly, from Galway, Ireland, has toured and performed widely, and has recently completed a CD produced by John Brennan, a guitar player with Poco and Chris Hillman’s band.  After hearing her play the afternoon’s first few notes, I instantly find myself anxiously awaiting a copy of that CD.

And, yes, there are fretted instruments here, too.   Several guitarists are just now pulling up chairs.  Joe Heeran plays textbook Irish rhythm on an old Gibson while Danny Ringrose picks a Martin on the opposite side of the session circle.  Our Giants devotee, John Jarvis, sits halfway between the two, strumming his little Martin travel guitar.  In the beyond-the-guitar category, we’ve got Andrew Carey on bouzouki.  To make sure that those guitarists don’t stray from the beat, we also have a couple of practitioners of the hand-held Irish drum, the bodhran.  And, filling out the session are a couple of other fiddlers.

The music is light, airy, fun, and, well, really, really good.  Freeman and Murphy anchor the session with a casual virtuosity that’s as inviting to the other players as it is impressive to the pub goers.  I’m a noob here and don’t know the tunes, but I’m sufficiently taken with the performance that I stalk Freeman afterwards to get the names of some of my favorites.  The set opens with a four part jig, “The Lark in the Morning,” and then segues into “An Irishman's Heart to the Ladies.”  These are upbeat tunes that Freeman and Murphy begin in unison, with one occasionally departing to play a bit of harmony.  The other sessionees join in easily and as Freeman later puts it, these tunes “did the trick and drinks arrived soon thereafter.”  Which reminds me.  “Ma’am, another Guinness over here, please.”

Next up is a gorgeous, Maurice Lennon-penned waltz, “If Ever You Were Mine,” on which Freeman really lays into the harmony lines.  After a sip from those drinks – this is a pub – Freeman and Murphy launch into a couple of toe-tapping reels: “Faral O’Gara” and “Music in the Glen.”

The overall effect of the session is just about perfect.  The musicians, pros and amateurs alike, are relaxed and having fun.  The audience, ranging in age from about 2 to 80 years in age, is appreciative.  And the music is fabulous.  It’s mostly instrumentals, with good changeups from fast to slow, jig to reel, and at the, uh, halftime point, guitarist Danny Ringrose showcases a stunning voice in a duet that demonstrates why he and Freeman often perform as a duo.

The session is but “just about” perfect because Freeman, in a moment of weakness, exercises a lapse in musical judgment.  Yep, she asks me to play a tune.  I don’t know any Irish tunes, so the group has to settle for a Chet Atkins medley.  But, at least I can say that I’ve played my first session.  And, next time, I’ll have learned a jig, or two.

Oh, and I was having far too much fun to glance at the television over the bar.  Can anyone tell me who won the game?