I am loving this thread and hoping that others will share some of their experiences or feelings. Here is one that sticks in my mind.

I met a friend who I had not played with for about 5 years in a local folk club. She normaly played with her boyfriend but he wasn't there and she asked me if I would play a couple of tunes with her and I agreed.

I normally hate playing in front of people "on stage" (I am very much a session person these days. What I tend to do if I go to a local folk club is play if they are short of floor singers but otherwise pass - unless I can get a bit of a jam going at some point) and tend to be very tense as I don't do it very often.

When it came to our turn, the first set we played was the Lark In The Morning with some other jig that I can't remember. We started off very shakily but things quickly improved and we developed that kind of understanding that I mentioned in my previous post.

By the time we did our second set, Farewell To Ireland, to me it felt like the audience simply wasn't there. There was just Annie and myself. We had trust in each others playing (felt like one would rescue the other if a bum note was played), I was going for ornaments that I would not have normaly attempted (and ones that I'd never thought of before) and she was doing the same on her concertina.

It is only a small club - say about 100 people but the applause was amazing when we had finished - people standing up shouting for more etc. but we just looked at one another, smiled and walked off - we both knew the eperience we had shared and didn't want to spoil it.

Jon