In this tribute to Irish traditional music, each chapter is given the title of a tune and, as in a session played by improvising musicians, each tune leads into another, melodies and variations weaving in and out in a haze of talk and memory. The book is an unsentimental evocation of music, but also polemic, autobiography and poetry, and aims to draw the reader into the atmosphere of the world in which the music is made - a player's music that is never the same twice.