The Fire come to Carson City on Saturday, Jan. 19. The Fire are (from left): Adam Hendey, Rebecca Lomnicky and David Brewer.
Don’t let the cold January temps give you cabin fever, come warm up with The Fire at the Brewery Arts Center on Saturday, Jan. 19.
The high-energy Scottish band trio is excited to travel to Carson City as part of the Celtic Series for the second time. The Santa Cruz, Calif., band played the Celtic Series in January 2017.
The band certainly earns its name through the energy each member puts on stage. The excitement they bring can be seen on any live performance. The sounds of the fiddle and bagpipes complement each other and bring the sounds of Scotland to the audience.
“It’s the kind of music that makes you want to dance, even if you don’t know how,” said fiddler Rebecca Lomnicky. “That’s part of the joy of playing this music.”
Lomnicky said all the music they play was originally meant for dancing — Cèilidh dancing.
Also making up The Fire is David Brewer and Adam Hendey. Lomnicky and Brewer started as a duo about eight years ago, and Hendey joined as the third member for the past two to two-and-a-half years, Lomnicky said.
“As a group, we always like to have different instrument combos and play lots of different tunes,” she said. “Adding Adam allowed us to add more texture and to add another layer — to create a sound we couldn’t achieve with just two instrumentalists.”
Besides playing music well, Hendey is also a very good tune writer, Lomnicky said. The band released its latest album, “Radiance,” last August. The album was the first with the full trio. They play traditional Scottish music as well as contemporary tunes, with each member submitting their own writing on it. While many think of tradition being songs from long ago, Lomnicky presents it a different way.
“Our approach is that the tradition is an ongoing phenomena,” she said. “We add to the tradition by adding contemporary tunes.”
Lomnicky said the band likes to go back to the archival traditional music book and find tunes that haven’t been played for a long time. She’s traveled to Scotland several times and she loves finding older music in books at the national library.
“I worked hard to collect music that people don’t have,” she said. “We bring back to life some of this older music, and contrast that with newer compositions at our shows.”
The band touts a remarkable resume with many accomplishments. Brewer has toured with The Old Blind Dogs and Molly’s Revenge. He’s been a special guest of The Chieftains. He was a key musician for the sound track of the PBS documentary “Andrew Jackson, Good, Evil and the Presidency.”
Lomnicky won the 20th Annual Glenfiddich International Scottish Fiddle Championship in 2009. The event, held at Blair Castle in Scotland, is seen as the Grammys of the fiddling world.
“I’m definitely very proud of that,” she said.
Being her first time in Scotland and competing, she was very nervous, but everyone was warm and welcoming, she said. Among the eight competitors, she came out on top.
“I was lucky enough to win at the end of the day,” she said.
The performance will be at 7 p.m. in the BAC’s Maizie Harris Jesse Black Box Theater, 449 W. King St.
Tickets are $12 for BAC members, $15 in advance, and $20 at the door. Buy them through BreweryArts.org or by calling the BAC box office at 775-883-1976.