Bar Metro Trad Session

Mondays are a nightmare for me. It’s deadline day for the paper and I always get home at some obscenely late hour.

When my phone buzzed with a text message during lunch, I felt my heart sink as I read it: “HEY YOUNG FELLA U FREE TO PLAY BAR METRO TONIGHT?”

There are so many Mondays I wish there was a bit of music on to kill the buzz of a long day’s work. Luck was with me this week, though: the production room was fully staffed and I was able to slip away in time for the gig.

Bar Metro is only recently opened. It’s clean, uber-modern interior really isn’t the sort of place you’d figure for a session – the neon, glass and steel don’t seem to conjure the “Irish Pub” atmosphere one usually associates the music with. That being said, I strolled in with the goatskin across my back and was greeted enthusiastically by a few older men at the bar in flannel shirts. The barman gave me a nod and a smile as he reached down to pour my pint of stout.

Well, guess appearances are deceiving – Bar Metro might be missing the aging barstools and shaded lamps, but its heart is definitely in the right place.

It was a good night of tunes, with guitar, accordian and myself on drum for a while before 2/3 of Amber Moon showed up to give us a richer instrumentation. The old men whooped and hollered from their seats at the bar (you can hear them in the background on that mp3 there) and, at one point, even got up to give us a jig.

As the night wound to a close, the door swung open to admit a few of my bedraggled coworkers floating down from the newsroom to treat themselves to a well-earned pint – fair play to ye, lads!