IN CONCERT

Great Big Sea with Spirit of the West

When: Tonight, 8 p.m. (doors at 7)

Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre

Tickets: $59.50/$45.50 in person at the arena box office, by phone at 220-7777, or online at www.selectyourtickets.com

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The music industry can be tough on those who get caught in the blustery winds of a fad or trend. Here today could mean gone tomorrow. Or worse -- absent forever.

Great Big Sea, long considered one of Canada's finest Celtic bands, has been swept up in the tornado for 16 years. But the St. John's, Nfld. group's three members are keeping their feet firmly on the ground. Although the Celtic music fad that dominated Canadian music during the late 1990s is no longer of the same size or scale, the genre's top-tier groups continue to make a living at it.

"[Celtic music] is not page one of the magazines anymore, but we still have a page," said the band's charismatic frontman, Alan Doyle. "Signs are good, knock on wood."

Great Big Sea will compete this weekend at the Juno Awards for Group of the Year, its 10th career nomination at the annual awards show. A win would be fitting, given that the band is having its most successful tour to date.

Great Big Sea's current nine-date trek through Canadian hockey arenas, which wraps tonight in Victoria, is setting attendance records. For Doyle and bandmates Séan McCann and Bob Hallett, it's a sweet victory.

Clearly, the death of Celtic music has been greatly exaggerated. East Coast products the Barra MacNeils, the Rankin Family and Natalie McMaster are still going, while the West Coast's biggest Celtic act, Spirit of the West, is currently opening all of Great Big Sea's arena dates.

Playing to thousands of raucous fans each night is a treat for the Vancouver band, whose pace has slowed to roughly 30 dates a year. After 26 years together, the band earned some respite from the road. Drummer Vince Ditrich, who also manages the group, says a reduced road schedule enables Spirit of the West to maintain a high quality of performance, which has always been the trademark of him and his bandmates John Mann, Geoffrey Kelly, Hugh McMillan, and Tobin Frank.

"We wouldn't be able to get up for it if it was really serious and precious," Ditrich said from his home in Nanoose Bay. "We're too regular guy-ish to take ourselves that seriously. We have wives and families that would call us out instantly if we started getting precious about shit like that. In some ways, it relegates us to a lack of superstardom because we don't walk around asking people to touch the hem of our garments. We're real guys with tax bills and groceries and dogs."

Years ago, Great Big Sea opened shows for Spirit of the West. There's a huge amount of mutual respect between the two groups, made even stronger by the type of music both bands feel passionately about. Groups that continue to play Celtic music are indebted to each other, Doyle said.

"In the mid-'90s in Canada, the fad of the day was Atlantic Canadian bands -- fiddle music. It was great for us, because we got noticed at a time when we normally would not have been."

Canadian Celtic music that sprang from the kitchens of Newfoundland took nearly everyone who played it to the top of the charts and back down again. The fallout from the fad didn't stem from the music of Spirit of the West or Great Big Sea. Fad-chasers were the culprits, according to Doyle.

"Around that time, every punk band in Ontario or Alberta was adding a mandolin player or a fiddle player. I used to joke, when the fad ended, it was those same bands that then fired their mandolin player and hired dudes in suits and a horn section and became a swing band."

The passage of time is a big topic of discussion for both Ditrich and Doyle. There is more than 42 years of professional experience between the two groups, 15 Juno Award nominations and many more hits. One of the biggest from either band is Home For a Rest, which made Spirit of the West stars in the early '90s. Great Big Sea has covered the song in concert for years, but is respectfully omitting it from their current set so that Spirit of the West can get all the glory.

"It's a bloody juggernaut," Ditrich said of the drinking tune, which was voted one of the best Canadian songs of all-time by CBC Radio One listeners. "I just cannot believe that this song has such a life. People from everywhere on earth know this song."

Doyle heads to England next week to shoot scenes with Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett for director Ridley Scott's upcoming Robin Hood film. Brushing shoulders with three Oscar winners won't change Doyle. He has discovered the secret to success as a Celtic musician -- a feat hundreds of other musicians were unsuccessful at.

"We all went to school and have had jobs -- we know what the real world is like. This is a great job, man. So if there's a secret, that's it. 'Hold on boys, we've got a good thing on the go here, how do we keep this going?' "

mdevlin@tc.canwest.com