Session players are suprisingly good at reading each other's signals.

While true, this reminded me of an occasion where disaster was only narrowly avoided.

Tony Suttor (now in Darwin and a 'catter), Mike Jackson (not to be confused with the late Michael Jackson) and I were part of Higgins Municipal Bush Band (yes, there is a story behind the name) performing at the Festival of Sydney in 1979 or '80. The three of us were the only ones available for a stint in the Domain.

We organised our material, and decided to conclude with a bracket of what bush bands in Oz regard as reels; many are Irish polkas, some are Scottish reels and some are US reels but they have been part of the Oz repertoire since before Federation. Everything went swimmingly until the last bracket; unfortunately I cannot now remember the particular tunes.

Those who have played with Mike in sessions will know that he could get a fair head of steam up and when this happened, everyone else just "coped" as well as they could. In the last bracket of our performance that day, Tony (on ADG button accordion) and I (on Anglo) could tell that Mike (also on ADG button accordion) was well on the way to winding up, and not in the "preparing to finish" sense. Half way through the last B part we were starting to panic, as a polished performance was our aim and a ragged finish wouldn't help at all.

At the last bar of the last B part we looked a Mike and he yelled out "D!"

Now, just try to recall how many tunes you know that are in the key of D and that fit the aforementioned set of time signatures; between us we knew several hundred and it could have been any one of them that we hadn't already played in the set. Consternation! What do we do?

Someone high up must have smiled on us because, in perfect unison, we all started into "Soldiers' Joy"; this tune wound us up perfectly. But I don't think either of us ever forgave Mike.

Cheers, Rowan