Late one Sunday night in October, a group of friends were swapping songs in a neighborhood bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts. On the chalkboard out front, someone had written “Session Americana.” “For 15 years, maybe more, we played around a table,” said band member Billy Beard.
“The original way it happened was, we were playing in this small club in a different band. There was supposed to be a band coming after us and they never showed up. “We were sitting at a table in front of the stage, and I got an idea, jumped up, pulled the microphones off the stands, duct taped them to the tabletop and we sat in a tight, little circle around this table and played.
It was transformative.” “We did that for a long time,” Beard said. “So the name fit what we were doing.
” This year, Session Americana is celebrating 20 years, and Barre Opera House Presents will host the band with Eleanor Buckland at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct.
26. That was 20 years, nine albums, and countless tours ago. It grew fast from there, but Beard said, “It really wasn’t intended to get to this point.
” Back then he had been touring with bands from Nashville, the last one Patty Griffin, and the other band members had settled into home life. “I was going to stay off the road, and we just started this as a Sunday-night-let’s-get-out-of-the-house kind of band. It just kept propelling us along,” he said.
That led to tours all over the world and collaborations with a wide community of musicians.