From vineyard nights to bigger lights

Published 1:30 am Friday, May 8, 2026

Should a Seattle-based folk-rock band make it big, a Whidbey winery will have bragging rights.

Jessie Thoreson and the Crown Fire played to a sizable crowd at Dancing Fish Vineyards the evening of May 1 in Freeland, one of many opportunities to catch live music at the winery year-round. Owner Ross Egge strives to create a felicitous atmosphere at these intimate shows, and if the winery can promote promising talent in the process, all the better.

Ideally, Egge said, bands like Jessie Thoreson and the Crown Fire eventually “outgrow” the venue.

“We know there’s gonna be a day when we say, ‘Hey, we knew them when they played here,’” he added.

Thoreson and the Crown Fire embarked on tour to promote their new album, “Return to the Ground,” released on April 10. Since playing its first gig in 2019, the band has played at a myriad of venues in Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho, including prior stops at Dancing Fish.

That the band has now played multiple shows at the winery is a good sign. Dancing Fish seeks quality when it books musicians out of its local circuit, Egge explained.

“There’s a gravitational pull to the island and to this place, and as long as that’s there, we’ll keep leaning into it,” he said. “You were here, you heard it tonight. I don’t know how to put it into words, but this was it.”

Thoreson’s artistic sensibility is uniquely, scientifically informed.

Many of the lyrics on “Return to the Ground” are inspired by Thoreson’s work as a fire ecologist. Underneath a red spotlight, Thoreson — flanked by an upright bassist, drummer and electric guitarist — strummed an acoustic guitar while signing about death, destruction and rebirth.

Pacific Northwest native Thoreson is passionate about the great outdoors, and studied environmental education at Western Washington University. Encountering wildfire often in her line of work spurred her interest in it. Later, she worked as a fire effects monitor in the Cascade Mountains, and eventually returned to school to study fire ecology.

“I just became fascinated with fire as an environmental process — like a necessary process — but also kind of like the societal implications and impacts that fire has on our communities in the Pacific Northwest,” Thoreson explained.

Long days in the field became a source of inspiration,and she wrote several songs on “Return to the Ground” outdoors. Thoreson feels these creative and scientific interests strengthen each other.

“I don’t think I would be a good scientist without being able to capture some of the more ephemeral attributes and emotional aspects of the work I do,” Thoreson explained. “And I don’t think I would be a good songwriter if I didn’t have some grounded scientific backing in the things that I was writing.”

Songwriting is more of a collaborative process for the band now compared to early on. Thoreson provided “completely fleshed out” material in the band’s beginning, as she had been writing music by herself for a while.

Even still, songwriting can be personal — and at times, almost prophetic — for Thoreson. Metaphors often precede their “real-life application” when she composes lyrics, she explained. Writing about her life as it happens is something she finds difficult, often amounting to work she feels is “contrived or cliche.”

Instead, self-reflection happens inevitably when she focuses her songwriting efforts elsewhere.

“A couple months go by and I read my own lyrics and I’m like, ‘Whoa, that is like a journal entry of the thing that I was going through,” she explained, “that I couldn’t look head-on then but needed to process through this song.’”

Sharing that magic is part of what made the show special. Playing Dancing Fish is a “bright spot on tour,” Thoreson said, usually ensuring an engaged and attentive audience.

“It’s really refreshing to have a room where you know people are really listening,” she added.

Egge hopes to draw Thoreson and other artists back to the venue for future shows.

“We just wanna be a place where people can come and gather and enjoy the good things,” he said.

Weekly ticketed concerts occur on Fridays during the fall and winter, and on Thursdays during the spring and summer, at Dancing Fish, according to Egge. There are smaller, free shows every Monday, and beginning this summer, he added, the winery plans to hold more casual acoustic sets on Sundays.

Find links to stream “Return to the Ground” and more at jessiethoreson.com.