Chasman
12-17-2005, 10:17 AM
'Newgrass'? Nickel Creek won't be constrained by any genre
Ben Wener
The Orange County Register
Dec. 17, 2005 12:00 AM
We've had to reschedule this interview more than once. The last time, in fact, she was stuck on a flight waiting to taxi to a terminal in Denver - and her cell phone was dying.
So it's not surprising to find Sara Watkins, one-third of the acclaimed but hard-to-define San Diego band Nickel Creek, distracted the next time I call. This time, she's busy shopping for antiques in Eugene, Ore., amid what sounds like an arts-and-crafts workshop.
Are we done? she asks an inaudible someone. Thanks so much. I really learned a lot. Pause. It's called Nickel Creek. Pause. Great, I'm so glad! We're playing tonight if you want to come. advertisement
Such sweetness has become a hallmark for the 24-year-old; anyone who speaks to her typically comes away charmed.
Along with her guitar-playing older brother Sean and lifelong friend, mandolinist, banjo player and chief vocalist Chris Thile - with whom she formed Nickel Creek 17 years ago - Watkins is grateful for, but unfazed by, the band's steadily increasing success.
No amount of awards and accolades seems to go to her head. If anything, the two Grammy nominations that Nickel Creek received the day before our chat left her humbled.
And laughing: Frickin' Alison is in country instrumental! she noted, jokingly, about a competition that pits Nickel Creek's roof-raiser Scotch and Chocolate against Alison Krauss & Union Station's Unionhouse Branch.
Krauss, darling of the bluegrass scene, already has 17 Grammys to her name, including a Best Contemporary Folk Album trophy she shared (as producer) with Nickel Creek. But that's the trio's only win so far, and Krauss is so beloved that she's often unbeatable.
So we got all (ticked) when we found out she was in it, Watkins says. Dude, you've got enough Grammys. C'mon!
What's heartening, though, is that Nickel Creek's progressive roots music - which can veer from CS&N terrain to starkly expressed ballads and rockers reminiscent of Toad the Wet Sprocket - hasn't landed the group in the bluegrass field, occupied instead by traditionalists like Rhonda Vincent and the Grascals.
The trio has nothing against bluegrass, of course; it's integral to their drum-free, finger-picked approach, inspired by weekly outings as children to a pizza parlor to see a local favorite called Bluegrass Etc. Indeed, members of that outfit would become crucial teachers once Thile and the Watkinses entered adolescence.
Yet bluegrass is merely one element in a stew that also draws upon folk, country, Celtic strains and plenty of rock 'n' roll. It is forward-thinking American music steeped in the traditions of the past.
So it makes more sense that Nickel Creek's quite personal third album, Why Should the Fire Die? - its darker tone partly due to Thile's recent divorce - should square off in a folk category against some heavy guns: Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, Rodney Crowell and Ry Cooder.
Ry Cooder! Watkins exclaims in disbelief of the company the band's keeping.
I almost feel like being nominated is the bigger deal, because usually the people who win are not always who you would want to win. Sometimes, when they pick the winner, it's like, 'Really? OK.'
So you have to take that into consideration when you win, too, 'cause I'm sure tons of people say that about you.
That's doubtful, even if the band does trump Cooder or the Boss in February. Nickel Creek has developed a way (primarily through its inventive, covers-filled live sets) of winning over even the most cynical listeners who might be foolishly convinced the group is nothing more than a trendy outgrowth of the bluegrass revival begun by 2001's O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The reality, however, is that the band had been at this routine for a decade before O Brother came along. It just came to prominence at the same time, that's all.
From 1990 on, they operated as a kids novelty act, with Thile's father Scott on bass. (He stayed on until the band issued its self-titled Sugar Hill Records debut in 2000.) By the mid-'90s, they had garnered a number of bluegrass-showdown prizes, while the Watkinses nabbed titles on their respective instruments.
Before they broke out in 2000, they recorded two hard-to-find albums, neither of which the band is particularly fond. They see 1997's Here and There as documenting growing pains, and in a recent No Depression magazine cover story, Thile describes their '91 album of cowboy music, Little Cowpoke, as creepy.
Even at, like, 12 years old, he says, we knew that it wasn't the artistic statement we wanted to make.
Why Should the Fire Die? perhaps comes the closest to realizing Nickel Creek's artistic ambition - at least for now.
As with the daring Chicago outfit Wilco, albeit minus avant-gardism, there's an evident determination to forge ahead, remaining rootsy while busting boundaries. When any of the Creekers talk influences, in fact, they're more apt to effuse about Wilco and Radiohead than prattle on about the Band or Flatt & Scruggs.
They refuse to be reined in by genre parameters and are eager to explore ways of adapting their instrumentation - whether for Ray LaMontagne's dusky soul sides (Sara played on his Trouble disc) or on Thile's solo foray December or any other collaborations, including bits with Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and several stops at Largo to sit in with Jon Brion.
What they don't want to be known as are torchbearers for a new wave of bluegrass - or newgrass, as it's dubbed.
I think that if there's anything we would like to be part of, encouraging and promoting, it would be learning how to play instruments, Watkins says. That's really simple, I know, but that's what we enjoy. That's always the goal, and it's something we get excited about - when people come up to us and say they started playing because of our music.
Watkins stays modest when the topic turns to their ambition going into making Fire.
We wanted to just have a natural live sound to it, a good energy about it, so that it didn't seem sterile, she says. But most of all, we wanted to be able to perform the songs accurately live. You don't want to stack too much on and not be able to pull it off.
Indeed, many fans believe it's when Nickel Creek performs that its greatness emerges, its malleability especially noticeable during covers tossed into sets (recently: Randy Newman's Short People, the Beatles' Cry Baby Cry, the Band's Up on Cripple Creek ).
There's such clamor for their concerts, in fact, that it makes me wonder if a live album isn't in the works.
That's tricky, Watkins says, because when you're in the studio, you're creating for a specific purpose, something that is only to be listened to. When you're doing a live show, there's so much else happening; everything is in the moment. That's a fleeting experience, and we as performers react to it differently every night - and probably not as well as we would on record.
At the same time, she points out that they want to avoid being redundant.
We just want to make sure the songs keep improving and that we advance as musicians, Watkins says. Because I do think it's true that when we stop growing - if this creative process plays out for some reason and this combination of people gets in a rut - then we'll just get bored and probably stop. The trick is to keep developing.
Ben Wener
The Orange County Register
Dec. 17, 2005 12:00 AM
We've had to reschedule this interview more than once. The last time, in fact, she was stuck on a flight waiting to taxi to a terminal in Denver - and her cell phone was dying.
So it's not surprising to find Sara Watkins, one-third of the acclaimed but hard-to-define San Diego band Nickel Creek, distracted the next time I call. This time, she's busy shopping for antiques in Eugene, Ore., amid what sounds like an arts-and-crafts workshop.
Are we done? she asks an inaudible someone. Thanks so much. I really learned a lot. Pause. It's called Nickel Creek. Pause. Great, I'm so glad! We're playing tonight if you want to come. advertisement
Such sweetness has become a hallmark for the 24-year-old; anyone who speaks to her typically comes away charmed.
Along with her guitar-playing older brother Sean and lifelong friend, mandolinist, banjo player and chief vocalist Chris Thile - with whom she formed Nickel Creek 17 years ago - Watkins is grateful for, but unfazed by, the band's steadily increasing success.
No amount of awards and accolades seems to go to her head. If anything, the two Grammy nominations that Nickel Creek received the day before our chat left her humbled.
And laughing: Frickin' Alison is in country instrumental! she noted, jokingly, about a competition that pits Nickel Creek's roof-raiser Scotch and Chocolate against Alison Krauss & Union Station's Unionhouse Branch.
Krauss, darling of the bluegrass scene, already has 17 Grammys to her name, including a Best Contemporary Folk Album trophy she shared (as producer) with Nickel Creek. But that's the trio's only win so far, and Krauss is so beloved that she's often unbeatable.
So we got all (ticked) when we found out she was in it, Watkins says. Dude, you've got enough Grammys. C'mon!
What's heartening, though, is that Nickel Creek's progressive roots music - which can veer from CS&N terrain to starkly expressed ballads and rockers reminiscent of Toad the Wet Sprocket - hasn't landed the group in the bluegrass field, occupied instead by traditionalists like Rhonda Vincent and the Grascals.
The trio has nothing against bluegrass, of course; it's integral to their drum-free, finger-picked approach, inspired by weekly outings as children to a pizza parlor to see a local favorite called Bluegrass Etc. Indeed, members of that outfit would become crucial teachers once Thile and the Watkinses entered adolescence.
Yet bluegrass is merely one element in a stew that also draws upon folk, country, Celtic strains and plenty of rock 'n' roll. It is forward-thinking American music steeped in the traditions of the past.
So it makes more sense that Nickel Creek's quite personal third album, Why Should the Fire Die? - its darker tone partly due to Thile's recent divorce - should square off in a folk category against some heavy guns: Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, Rodney Crowell and Ry Cooder.
Ry Cooder! Watkins exclaims in disbelief of the company the band's keeping.
I almost feel like being nominated is the bigger deal, because usually the people who win are not always who you would want to win. Sometimes, when they pick the winner, it's like, 'Really? OK.'
So you have to take that into consideration when you win, too, 'cause I'm sure tons of people say that about you.
That's doubtful, even if the band does trump Cooder or the Boss in February. Nickel Creek has developed a way (primarily through its inventive, covers-filled live sets) of winning over even the most cynical listeners who might be foolishly convinced the group is nothing more than a trendy outgrowth of the bluegrass revival begun by 2001's O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The reality, however, is that the band had been at this routine for a decade before O Brother came along. It just came to prominence at the same time, that's all.
From 1990 on, they operated as a kids novelty act, with Thile's father Scott on bass. (He stayed on until the band issued its self-titled Sugar Hill Records debut in 2000.) By the mid-'90s, they had garnered a number of bluegrass-showdown prizes, while the Watkinses nabbed titles on their respective instruments.
Before they broke out in 2000, they recorded two hard-to-find albums, neither of which the band is particularly fond. They see 1997's Here and There as documenting growing pains, and in a recent No Depression magazine cover story, Thile describes their '91 album of cowboy music, Little Cowpoke, as creepy.
Even at, like, 12 years old, he says, we knew that it wasn't the artistic statement we wanted to make.
Why Should the Fire Die? perhaps comes the closest to realizing Nickel Creek's artistic ambition - at least for now.
As with the daring Chicago outfit Wilco, albeit minus avant-gardism, there's an evident determination to forge ahead, remaining rootsy while busting boundaries. When any of the Creekers talk influences, in fact, they're more apt to effuse about Wilco and Radiohead than prattle on about the Band or Flatt & Scruggs.
They refuse to be reined in by genre parameters and are eager to explore ways of adapting their instrumentation - whether for Ray LaMontagne's dusky soul sides (Sara played on his Trouble disc) or on Thile's solo foray December or any other collaborations, including bits with Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and several stops at Largo to sit in with Jon Brion.
What they don't want to be known as are torchbearers for a new wave of bluegrass - or newgrass, as it's dubbed.
I think that if there's anything we would like to be part of, encouraging and promoting, it would be learning how to play instruments, Watkins says. That's really simple, I know, but that's what we enjoy. That's always the goal, and it's something we get excited about - when people come up to us and say they started playing because of our music.
Watkins stays modest when the topic turns to their ambition going into making Fire.
We wanted to just have a natural live sound to it, a good energy about it, so that it didn't seem sterile, she says. But most of all, we wanted to be able to perform the songs accurately live. You don't want to stack too much on and not be able to pull it off.
Indeed, many fans believe it's when Nickel Creek performs that its greatness emerges, its malleability especially noticeable during covers tossed into sets (recently: Randy Newman's Short People, the Beatles' Cry Baby Cry, the Band's Up on Cripple Creek ).
There's such clamor for their concerts, in fact, that it makes me wonder if a live album isn't in the works.
That's tricky, Watkins says, because when you're in the studio, you're creating for a specific purpose, something that is only to be listened to. When you're doing a live show, there's so much else happening; everything is in the moment. That's a fleeting experience, and we as performers react to it differently every night - and probably not as well as we would on record.
At the same time, she points out that they want to avoid being redundant.
We just want to make sure the songs keep improving and that we advance as musicians, Watkins says. Because I do think it's true that when we stop growing - if this creative process plays out for some reason and this combination of people gets in a rut - then we'll just get bored and probably stop. The trick is to keep developing.