Pub session

A pub session (seisiún in Irish; seisean in Scottish Gaelic; seshoon in Manx Gaelic) is performing music in the setting of a local pub, in which the music-making is intermingled with the consumption of ale, stout, and beer and conversation.

[1] Performers sing and play traditional songs and tunes[1] from the Irish, English, Scottish, Cornish, and Manx traditions, using instruments such as the fiddle, accordion, concertina, flute, tin whistle, uilleann pipes, tenor banjo, guitar, and bodhrán.

In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Hal and Falstaff discuss drinking and playing the "tongs and the bones".

There are depictions of pub singing in paintings by Teniers (1610–1690), Brouwer (1605/6-1638) and Jan Steen (1625/5-1656).

The most famous was the Scottish Students' Song Book by John Stuart Blackie (1809–1895).

By 1908 Percy Grainger had begun to record folk singers, but not in their natural habitat—the pub.

Lloyd persuaded his employers at the BBC to record the singers in the Eel's Foot pub in Eastbridge, Suffolk.

At The Eel's Foot, 1939–47, the songs performed included: "False Hearted Knight", "The Dark-Eyed Sailor", "The Princess Royal", "The Foggy Dew", "Underneath Her Apron", "Pleasant and Delightful", "The Blackbird."

Guitars and dulcimers are frequently allowed in sessions without strict "'traditional' instruments only" rules.

Due to freeform nature of the session, there is always an element of serendipity and there is an atmosphere of anticipation and an expectation of tolerance from all present.

It could be interpreted as meaning that any performer would be obliged to give prior notification to police, fire brigade and environmental health.