The Celtic Connection

Most refreshing of all is the presence of musicians whose love of playing is in no way tied to a desire to see themselves aggrandized, or in some cases even known. A fiddler with a shaved head and goatee, caught making a beer run, declines to give his name on the grounds that he's in the Witness Protection Program, on the run from the International Anti-Irish Mafia. In a reasonably authentic Guinness-fueled brogue, he blarneys "... and so is everyone else here, so if they see my name in the paper and track me down, it would be a disaster for everyone involved."

Shyness, rather than questionably real paranoia, seems to influence a blond woman in purple velveteen shorts, who remains on-stage throughout the night, a blissfully ecstatic look on her face as she plays flute and tin whistle. At the evening's close, accompanied only by gentle, rhythmic thumping on guitar and fiddle, she sings in muted tone to a crowd of a dozen stragglers a long tale of the hard life of a woman, blushing gently with the outrageously bawdy double entendres. When asked her name, she blushes again, declines and goes into the night until the next week, another Session player keeping an ancient tradition alive and vibrant.