For me, good music - a good session - is about communal involvement : it is about more than the sum of its individual parts. Playing in the Cobblestone from the beginning were musicians like Vincent Harrison, who had played with the great Lad O'Beirne in New York back in the 50's; Neil Mulligan, a piper whose tradition was rooted in Leitrim music and the playing of Seamus Ennis. Over the six or so years since that first night I wandered in there - back on a dark night, in the late autumn of '96 - I've heard good music on hundreds of occasions. Nights that flicker in the memory because of the prowess of some individual or the heights achieved through ensemble playing. The late Frank Bryson singing Barr na Sraide, Sean Garvey singing Sammy's Bar. The endless patience of Mary Begley with those who were learning to play. I remember the first night I heard Mick Kinsella's harmonica and Edel McWeeney's fiddle, the first time I saw Seosamh O'Neachtain take the brush from behind the bar as his dancing partner.  The arrival of a whole generation of younger fiddle players, the Michelle O'Briens and Steve Larkins.  The whole bar silenced when Peadar O Ceannabhain sang in Irish. Being transported back a generation or more, to London, when Ollie Farrelly, Mick O'Grady, Brian Rooney, Gregory Daly and John Carty sat down together. Many of those musicians aren't on this CD because that is the nature of the place.  It is also the nature of the music and - in its way- the nature of remembering that music.  Things change, musicians move on and other people remember other nights.  But the Cobblestone has always been about more than just the music played there. It's been about the nights and afternoons that music was talked about; about the unfailing good humour of Tom Mulligan, in particular - and all those stories that might well begin with a bubble car, three men over six foot and a trip to Leitrim. And - while that was happening - invariably in the small, black hours of the morning, somebody in the corner tuning up.  Going, Play that one ........... "What one?"  That one that sounds like that other one you played the last night......'  And the music starts again.

Peter Woods