Marty Bostick and the Irish Fiddle Sessions at Oh Sherri Irish Pub in Moody, Alabama

Some hobbies don’t stay put. They don’t live neatly on a shelf at home, waiting for the right weekend. For Marty Bostick, the Irish fiddle has always been the kind of companion that wants to be within reach—because you never know when a door will open, a circle will form, and a tune will be the simplest way to say, “Mind if I join you?”

That instinct has been there since 1999, back when Marty Bostick was building the habit that would quietly shape the next decades: learning traditional Irish music the way it’s meant to be learned—by ear, tune after tune, until the melodies start feeling like a second language you can speak anywhere.

"My favorite hobby as a musician is playing Irish Fiddle at the Oh Sherri Irish Pub in Moody Alabama. I have been playing since the late 90's and take my fiddle with me most places if I am travelling. You never know when there will be an open session to sit in and play. With traditional Irish tunes, they are commonly played in most session circles, so I always have a way to break the ice at local pubs when I sit in and play. I'm up to about 600 tunes in my repertoire by ear now, so there's bound to be some tunes to be played. I sit in a local session and play with friends about once a month now. That's about all I have time for with my schedule."

Oh Sherri Irish Pub in Moody, Alabama isn’t just a place Marty Bostick goes—it’s the spot where the whole idea feels real again. A pub session has its own kind of light: not stage-bright, not performative, but warm and human. The tunes don’t need an introduction. They just arrive, recognized by the first few notes, and suddenly you’re not a stranger with an instrument case—you’re part of the set.

What Marty Bostick carries from the late 90s into now isn’t only persistence—it’s a particular confidence that comes from traditional Irish music being shared currency. When you’ve got a repertoire living in your hands and ears, you can travel with less fear of awkwardness. You can walk into a local pub, feel that quick moment of “Do I belong here?”, and answer it the old way: with a tune that everyone already knows, or at least feels like they do.

And “about 600 tunes” isn’t a bragging number in Marty Bostick’s story—it’s more like a map of time. Six hundred small commitments to listening closely. Six hundred times choosing to repeat a phrase until it settles into muscle memory. It’s proof that the music wasn’t a phase or a costume; it became a lifelong inventory of melodies Marty Bostick can reach for when a session needs a bridge between players.

These days, the calendar doesn’t leave as much room as it used to, and Marty Bostick doesn’t pretend otherwise. Once a month is what fits. But there’s something quietly moving about that: the fact that even with a full schedule, the session still makes the cut. Not because it’s convenient—because it’s necessary. Because there’s a particular kind of relief that comes from sitting in with friends, letting the night become a set of familiar turns, and remembering you’re still the same musician who started in 1999 and kept going.

Maybe that’s the real shape of the hobby now—less frequent, but more distilled. One monthly session that holds everything: the travel habit of keeping the fiddle close, the ice-breaking ease of shared tunes, and the steady satisfaction of being able to say, without overexplaining it, “I can play.”

Photos from the Memory