Moving to Olympia wa, any jams around?

[GuyIncognito]

I'm moving to Olympia next month, just curious how the mandolin scene is around there

[billhay4]

There is a Celtic jam in Olympia every week I think and a very nice slow jam in Winlock every month: http://wamamusic.com/slow-jam. The Winlock crowd will give you access to other jams in the area, too, as many of them are fine musicians and participate in faster paced stuff. If you are in the area now, don't miss Wintergrass this weekend in nearby Bellvue. A great festival with both great shows and myriad chances to jam with good players and make contacts.
Lots of stuff going on here.
Bill Hay

[Jess L.]

There is a Celtic jam in Olympia every week I think ...

Two Irish sessions still listed here.

We've been to both, although not recently, just as spectators in the audience (in my old age I don't play fast enough anymore to keep up at session speed).

Tugboat Annie's was several years ago, it was packed and had so much audience noise (people talking) that we couldn't even hear the musicians, and we didn't go back. I don't know if it's always that busy or not. The music was *probably* good, but not being able to hear it, hard to say.

The other one, O'Blarney's Pub in Olympia, we could hear the music great, audience was more well-behaved and not very noisy, they seemed to be more interested in listening to the music instead of talking. We went there probably a half dozen times altogether, again just to listen and not to play, some good musicians there, it was always good listening to them... *except* for one time when the whole group just sat there and drank beer all evening without ever playing any music at all... don't know what that was all about unless someone had showed up wanting to play bluegrass chop chords or something, who knows... kind of a bummer for us in the audience because we don't live in the Olympia area and we don't get to those parts very often (there are no jams or sessions nor seldom even any live music of *any* sort where we live, people play the radio and that's it). But anyway the next couple times we were there, probably 6 or 8 months later, mostly the same musicians but that time they were all playing some pretty-good music as normal.