Fiddlin’ Jay Smith, with Zach Greenham

FARMINGTON — If you’ve never seen “Fiddlin’ Jay Smith” play — or if you have, and you’ve just got to hear him one more time — Saturday, Jan. 4, may be your last opportunity for a while. Smith is headed for Nashville, Tennessee in early January, hoping to find opportunities to reach a wider audience with his prodigious fiddle-playing talent.

Taking the stage at Nordica Auditorium, Merrill Hall, UMF, will be some of the impressively talented musicians that 22-year-old Smith has cut his musical teeth with over the past 12 years.

Brother Shane will join Jay as the Smith Brothers, a duet act that gained a lot of attention when the brothers started their professional careers at the tender ages of 10 and eight. Wilf Clark & the Misty Mountaineers, Maine’s oldest continuous Bluegrass band, hired Smith, then 15-years-old, to be their fiddler in 2003, and he’s been with them ever since.

Over the past three years, Smith has also played many concerts with the Sandy River Ramblers and the Maranacook String Band, and his fiddling is featured on the joint SRR/MSB CD, Cry of the Loon and other original songs about Maine.

Bandleader Stan Keach, of Rome, said, “Jay has more classic old-time Bluegrass licks at his disposal than any other fiddler in Maine.”

The Smith Brothers, Wilf Clark & the Misty Mountaineers, the Sandy River Ramblers, and the Maranacook String Band will all play sets with Smith at this concert.

While playing a busy concert schedule with the Smith Brothers, the Misty Mountaineers, the Sandy River Ramblers, and the Maranacook String Band, Smith somehow found time to complete his bacculaureate degree in music at USM, and play in the Southern Maine Symphony Orchestra in which he was concert master for several performances, and chamber groups. He also did a tour with Perley Curtis, a Maine native who has dug out a career for himself in Nashville. The Curtis connection will be a plus for Smith in Nashville.

Smith got his start in Rangely, moved to Industry when he was in the third grade, and played in the Franklin County Fiddlers for several years.

The Big Concert, being billed as the ‘Bon Voyage Fiddlin’ Jay Smith” Concert, starts at 7 p.m., and is being sponsored by the Farmington Emblem Club, who will sell refreshments at the brief intermission. Tickets are $12; students $8; children 10 and under free.

For more information, call 207-397-2241.

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