A first-timer’s guide to Irish trad sessions

A traditional session is not a gig. Nobody is on a stage, nobody has a set list, and the people playing are usually not being paid to perform for you. A session is a group of musicians sitting around a table in a pub playing tunes together, mostly for their own enjoyment, and the rest of the room happens to be there. That distinction explains almost everything about how to behave at one.

Most sessions are “anchored” by one or two musicians the pub pays a modest fee to turn up every week at a set time. Everyone else who sits in is there because they want to be. That is why the same pub can have four fiddles on a quiet Tuesday and a lone box player on a wet Sunday: the core is fixed, the rest is whoever shows up. It is also why LocalJams lists sessions as recurring weekly events rather than one-off gigs. The listing tells you the pub, the night and the start time, and the music tells you the rest.

The other thing that confuses visitors is the difference between a session and a “trad show”. In the busiest tourist streets of Dublin, Galway and Killarney you will find pubs with a small stage, a PA system, a band playing a mix of ballads and well-known songs, and a crowd singing along. That can be a great night out, but it is a performance, not a session. If you want the real thing, look for the musicians at a table in the corner, no microphones, and a room that is at least half locals.

What you will hear are mostly dance tunes: reels (fast, in four), jigs (bouncy, in six), hornpipes (slower, with a swing), and, depending on where you are, polkas and slides, which belong to the Sliabh Luachra tradition along the Cork–Kerry border. Tunes are short, so musicians string them into “sets” of two or three, changing tune without stopping. A set lasts a few minutes, then there is a pause, a bit of chat, someone starts another one. That is the basic rhythm of the evening.

The instruments you are most likely to see: fiddle, wooden flute, tin whistle, button accordion (“the box”), concertina, uilleann pipes (the Irish bellows-blown pipes, played seated), tenor banjo, and some combination of guitar or bouzouki providing accompaniment. A bodhrán, the frame drum, may or may not be welcome depending on the session and who is playing it. Songs, when they happen, are usually unaccompanied and the room is expected to go quiet.

Sessions tend to start later than advertised and finish when the musicians feel like it. An evening session listed for 21:30 is often properly going by 22:00 and runs until closing. Afternoon sessions, common on Saturdays and Sundays, are gentler and a good first experience: in Dublin, The Cobblestone in Smithfield and Devitt’s on Camden Street both run weekend afternoon sessions alongside their evening ones.

The rules are simple once you understand that the musicians are not there to entertain you specifically. In rough order of importance:

• Do not sit at the musicians’ table, even if there are empty stools. Those seats are for players who may arrive later. Sit nearby instead.
• Talk quietly, and go silent for songs. Background chat during tunes is normal and expected; chatting over an unaccompanied singer is the single rudest thing you can do.
• Do not request tunes or songs. This is not a band. If you want to hear “Whiskey in the Jar”, find a stage show.
• Clap at the end of a set if you like, but do not clap along mid-tune, and do not try to keep time on the table.
• Keep phones down. A quick photo from your seat is fine; filming the whole thing with the flash on, or walking up to the table to get a close-up, is not.
• Buy a drink. The pub is paying the anchor musicians out of the bar take. If you nurse a glass of water for three hours you are, in a small way, the reason sessions disappear.
• If you want to buy the musicians a drink, ask the bar staff to send one over rather than interrupting a set.

None of this means you need to sit in reverent silence. A good session is a sociable thing, and the musicians are usually happy to chat between sets. Just read the room: the louder the pub is, the more relaxed the rules, and the quieter it is, the more it matters.

If you are a musician and want to join in, the first rule is: ask. Arrive with your instrument in its case, listen for a set or two, then catch the eye of whoever seems to be leading and ask if it is an open session. Most are, but some are closed or semi-closed (a specific group that plays together), and an invitation is always better than an assumption.

Once you are in, follow rather than lead until you know the room. Play the tunes you know and sit out the ones you do not; there is no shame in it, and tapping out a tune you half-know at full volume is worse than silence. Do not start a set unless you are asked to. Match the tempo of the session, not your own. And if you play guitar, bouzouki or bodhrán, be aware that one of you is usually plenty; if there is already an accompanist, the polite thing is to ask before adding a second.

Singers: wait to be asked, or ask quietly between sets whether a song would be welcome. One song is the norm. A quick unaccompanied song in a good session, with the whole bar gone quiet, is one of the best things that can happen in Irish music, and it happens most often to people who waited for the right moment.

Almost nothing. A pub session has no cover charge in the overwhelming majority of cases; you pay for your drink and that is it. Where LocalJams has positive evidence that a listing is free, you will see a “Free” badge on it, and most genuine sessions carry one. The exceptions are concert-style trad nights in venues like The Cobblestone’s back room, or sessions programmed as part of a festival, which may be ticketed. If a listing shows a “from” price, it is not a pub session in the ordinary sense.

One quiet warning: a few city-centre pubs have started charging admission at the door on busy nights, or operate a minimum spend. That is more common in the stage-show pubs than the session pubs, but it is worth a glance at the door before you walk in on a bank-holiday Saturday.

Open Explore, set the date to today, pick your county, and filter by genre for trad or folk. Sessions appear as regular listings with their usual start time; because they recur weekly, the same pub will show up on the same night each week. Look for the “Free” badge and a start time in the evening or weekend afternoon. If you are in a city, the city page is faster: Dublin, Galway, Cork and Belfast each have a section on where the sessions tend to be.

A few starting points we are confident in, because they have run weekly for years and show up consistently in our data. In Dublin, The Cobblestone in Smithfield is the obvious first stop, with sessions most days of the week and a strong Sunday evening. Devitt’s on Camden Street runs sessions several nights a week plus a Saturday afternoon. In Galway, The Crane Bar on Sea Road in the West End has nightly sessions from around 21:30, and An Púcán near Eyre Square runs early-evening ones from 18:00 several days a week, which suits anyone who wants to be in bed before midnight. In Cork, Sin É on Coburg Street has early-evening sessions most nights, and An Spailpín Fánach has later ones from 21:30. In Belfast, The Deer’s Head runs a Friday session from 17:00 and the pubs around the Cathedral Quarter fill in the rest of the week.

Outside the cities the picture is patchier, and that is where the real gems are. Clare (Doolin, Ennis, Miltown Malbay), west Kerry, Sligo and the Donegal coast all have deep session traditions, but many of those pubs do not publish anything online, so they will not always appear in listings. If you are in one of those places, the local advice is still the best: ask in the music shop, ask the barman, and follow the fiddle cases.

If sessions get under your skin, the next step is a festival. The Willie Clancy Summer School in Miltown Malbay in early July and the Fleadh Cheoil in August turn whole towns into sessions for a week; our festival season guide explains how the year is laid out. If you would rather plan a city trip around a few good nights, the music weekend itinerary guide does that for Dublin, Galway and Cork. And if you want to understand why one listing says “session” and another says “gig”, the explanation is in how LocalJams listings work.