Shack Session

songwriters at The Shack in Athlone

What you see above you are two songwriters from different generations, representing the kind of great that the Shack sessions can be.

This week’s Shack session was everything these sessions should be. The turn-out was tremendous, the participation was enthusiastic and the instrumentation was varied. Myself and the 15-year-old vietnamese boy arrived to find ze germanz there with his lovely fretless bass guitar. Normally these sessions are strictly acoustic, but ze germanz are hypersensitive to the sound level of the necessarily electric bass and its presence really put some fantastic oomph into the session. Feeling boisterous, we ordered ourselves some pints and shorts and the night was off with a bang.

The troops quickly filed in with the sherrif, Des, Ronan, the bean and annie and several others squeezed in around the table. The tunes came fast and furious; there were a number of guitars, bongos, bodhran, flute, banjo, mandolin and everyone was in great spirits. Everyone chimed in on the sing-alongs and even on some of the original tunes that were floated out on the evening. Bass humming, banjo twanging, bongos rolling along and multi-part harmonies was the order of the evening. This song is a great specimen of the craic that was had; rough and ready, but loads of fun.

Come on the town!