Episode 11: Chris Fitzgerald (Fiddle)

‘The Session is about what’s created during The Session.’

So I’m (me, Dom) sitting in The Last Jar on a Wednesday night, and the session is slowly coming to life. I’ve hidden myself away in a corner so I can listen, tentatively join in here and there, and hopefully not make an arse of myself. But mainly, I’m listening. And something happens…how can I describe this without it sounding over the top? Like, there are these simultaneous impressions washing around me. I’ve only been in Australia a few months, don’t feel like I know many people, I’m shy, introverted. And I’m hearing this music that’s familiar, yet distant because of how long it’s been since I played in any dedicated way. And there’s the smell of the beer and the rhythms of the chat and while I know rationally that I’m in Melbourne in 2018, in my blood – seriously, I don’t really talk about ‘blood’ type stuff but that’s what it felt like – in my blood I have these fleeting moments when feel like I’m in Ballycastle, in the Boyd Arms on a Friday night and it’s 1985. I mean, it’s so intense, and so momentary, I’m here, I’m there, I’m lost, I’m back again. And really, it’s totally brilliant. I mean, it’s so hard to walk back out into the everyday world after such that experience. Catching the train home seems so mundane after you’ve been set alight by this music all around you, and yet, that echoing music in your head is what you carry with you. And that’s why this stuff matters in the first place – because we it carry out into the world and hopefully that makes the world infinitesimally better somehow, even if you can’t put it into words, even if politics is shit and fascism’s on the march. Playing music, listening to music - it’s not quite manning the barricades but you have to hope and believe in your heart that it’s at least one tiny, tiny act of resistance. One tiny, tiny way of making a stand.

Thank you to Chris Fitzgerald and all the musicians at The Last Jar for their generosity and for… the tunes.

‘The Session is about what’s created during The Session.’

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But I won’t.

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Thank you for listening.

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Till next time.
Darren & Dom

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