One time I was singing in a place with PA. Great, I think, they can turn up the volume, and I'll drown out the chat.

So I'm going along fine, with the volume hiked up to drown the chatty pair on the front table. Then I pause for effect (or maybe I was trying to remember the next line), and I stop playing as part of the pause, and of course the chatty pair by this time are bellowing out to try to hear each other over the noise, and there they are bellowing out into the silence.

Now the punchline on that ought to be that they looked horribly embarassed, and were silent from then on. But they didn't even notice. And all my dramatic effect was totally buggered.

So the technical fix doesn't really work. Nor having a loud voice, which is nature's technical fix. Having a friend out there with a mean and vicious look to throw at people might be the best way. One thing I've noticed with sessions back in Ireland I've been to is that no matter how loud the noise, as soon as anyone with a small voice starts singing a song in Irish the whole place is bellowed into silence within seconds.