There's a particular kind of silence that happens in a pub.
You know the one. The fiddle's been put down for a pint. The bodhrán lad is off having a smoke. Somebody told a long story about their uncle and now the story's finished and nobody's playing and nobody's singing and there's just this... gap. And the gap gets bigger. And then — and this is the part that ruins men — somebody looks at YOU. Just glances over. Doesn't even say anything. And you understand, in that horrible moment, that you have been silently elected. You're starting the next one.
I have been in that exact spot more times than I can count, and I want to tell you it gets easier, but honestly it doesn't, you just get braver. Big difference. So here's everything I know about being the one who has to start the session, learned the hard way over about thirty years of pubs in Clare.
First thing. The most important thing. The thing nobody tells you. You do NOT need to be the best singer in the room. You need to be the one willing to go first. That's it. That's the whole job. The room is not judging your voice — the room is GRATEFUL to you for breaking the silence, because every single person there was dreading being elected themselves. When you open your mouth you are doing the whole pub a mercy. Remember that and the fear gets smaller.
Now. Which song.
This is where lads go wrong. They reach for the big emotional one, the Carrickfergus, the Parting Glass, some great mournful three-hankie ballad, because they think a session should OPEN with grandeur. No. God, no. You open with a Parting Glass and you've sucked all the air out of the room before anyone's even warmed up. A slow ballad to open is like serving the wedding cake before the soup. People aren't ready. Their voices aren't loose. They're still half in their own heads.
You open with something everyone can ride along on. Something forgiving. Something where, even if a fella only knows half the words, he can still come in on the chorus and feel like he's part of it.
Which is — and you knew I was going to say this — why I will recommend The Rattlin' Bog until the day I die.
Hear me out before you roll your eyes. The Rattlin' Bog is the single best session-opener in the entire tradition and the reason is structural, not sentimental (well, mostly not sentimental, I'm a hypocrite). It's a cumulative song. Each verse adds a thing and then climbs back DOWN through everything before it — the bog, the tree, the branch, the twig, the nest, the egg, the bird, the feather, and then, glory be, the FLEA. Nobody has to memorise anything. The song teaches itself as it goes. A man who walked in two minutes ago and knows nothing can be roaring "and the green grass grew all around, all around" by the second chorus. You've turned a room of strangers into a choir without anyone noticing it happened. That's the trick. That's the whole game of starting a session and the Bog does the work FOR you.
A few practical things now, from the front lines.
Eye contact. You'd think you'd want to stare at the floor, and that's the instinct, but no — find one friendly face. Just one. The auld lad nodding along, the woman who mouthed the first line with you. Sing AT that person, gently, and let the rest of the room gather behind you. A session is built one ally at a time. You don't conquer the whole pub at once, you find your first co-conspirator and grow.
Tempo. Start it SLOWER than you think you should. I'm serious. Adrenaline will run you off the road every time — your heart's going ninety so you take the song at ninety, and now it's a sprint and people can't keep up and the words come out as mush. Pull it back. Plant the first line down nice and solid, like you've got all the time in the world, because you do. The room will tell you when to lift the pace. Usually around the second chorus the whole thing leans forward on its own and you just go with it.
Reading the room. This is the unteachable bit but I'll try. If the pub's quiet and respectful, hold the line, give them a song with words to listen to. If it's loud and the drink's in and there's craic in the air, you go straight for the singalong and you don't apologise. Same pub, two different rooms, depending on the hour. Part of starting a session is feeling which room you're actually in tonight. You'll get it wrong sometimes. I once opened a rowdy Saturday with a quiet ballad and watched it die in front of forty people. Mortifying. Survived it. So will you.
And know how you'll finish before you start. Nothing worse than a song that just... stops, and the room doesn't know if it's meant to clap or wait. Land the last line firm. Let it ring. THEN look up. That little look up is the bow.
If you want a few reliable follow-ups for after you've broken the ice — songs the room will already half-know — there's a whole pile of them in the songbook, and the full Bog words live over on the lyrics page for when your nerve fails and your memory goes blank at the same moment, as it does.
You'll be grand. Go first. Be the mercy.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin the cat has his own method of starting things. He sits on the windowsill at about 6am and yowls one single note until the entire house is awake and participating whether we like it or not. No warm-up, no reading the room, just confidence. I'm taking notes off him, honestly.