Their music is old time, but the musicians are Olympia teenagers

The REDS are young, but they aren’t just fiddling around.

REDS Band — a Celtic-music-focused quartet made up of two sets of teenage brothers — will celebrate the release of its eponymous debut album with a free performance Friday at Traditions Café.

With a name formed from the first initials of River Scheuerell, 17; Eros Faulk, 14; Dante Faulk, 16; and Sage Scheuerell, 14, REDS played its first gig in 2015 at the Bellingham Folk Festival. They’ve since played at Northwest Folklife, Wintergrass and the Olympia Old Time Festival and studied with and opened for many masters of traditional music.

Their first album, produced by local fiddler and teacher Lisa Ornstein, includes Scottish, Irish, Canadian, Scandinavian and American tunes, with intricate arrangements they developed with Ornstein’s aid.

“It’s really satisfying to work on arrangements and keep trying things that don’t work and sound bad and then we finally find something that works perfectly and sounds good,” Eros, a sophomore at Olympia Regional Learning Academy, told The Olympian. “That’s a really satisfying feeling.”

The musicians — all ORLA students, though the older two also are seniors in Running Start at South Puget Sound Community College — have been playing traditional tunes together for at least a half-dozen years. Before that, they were just plain playing. They were, after all, just kids when they met in 2010.

“Our moms got to know each other, and they decided to have us come over and have a play date, and it’s sort of evolved since then,” said Sage, a freshman. “We started playing music together for fun and jamming.”

The foursome began with classical music before discovering a passion for Celtic and other traditional music. All had started on the violin by age 4, but Sage now focuses on guitar and Dante is a cellist.

Dante got interested in traditional music when he heard “Fire & Grace” by Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser and American cellist Natalie Haas.

“I realized you could use the cello to play other styles,” he said. “I was like, ‘I need to try this.’ I started listening to that album a lot.”

“Fire & Grace” captured River’s attention, too, along with “Some Melodious Sonnet” by fiddler Hanneke Cassel — both albums recommended by his first violin teacher.

“I listened to those so many times when I was 4 and 5 years old,” he said. “They were on repeat in the house all the time.”

One of the REDS Band’s most exciting shows to date was in 2016, when they opened for Fraser and Haas in Olympia. It’s a memory that makes them all smile.

They also smiled when asked how they came up with the name REDS.

“It’s a little bit of a rabbit hole,” Dante said.

“In our household, Dante thinks that he came up with it, I think that I came up with it, and our mom thinks that she came up with it,” Eros added.

“Probably most of us have realized for a long time that you could form that word out of our names,” River said diplomatically. “That was sort of the default band name.”