Will Nickle Creek Ever Play Again
Fed by Three Streams, a Creek Rises
Sara Watkins is grinning, her fiddle tucked nether an arm. "Sean and Chris and I grew up playing in a ring called Nickel Creek together," she says, indicating the guitarist Sean Watkins and the mandolinist Chris Thile, on either side of her. A small-scale just hearty oversupply — packed into the kids' tent at the 2012 Newport Folk Festival and startled to observe itself in the correct place at the right time — lets out a whooping cheer.
What comes next in this genial deadfall of a reunion, which tin can be viewed on YouTube, is telling. Mr. Thile and the Watkins siblings tuck into "The Play tricks," a bluegrass standard that the ring terminal played at its farewell show in 2007. And in no time, the fluent ease amongst the three musicians seems to take on a life of its own. "Thanks, everybody!" Ms. Watkins calls out afterward. "We're Nickel Creek!" Maybe it's partly force of habit, but over the course of a brisk 5 minutes, she'due south fabricated the shift from by to present tense.
That brief only glimmering moment — from one of a handful of unannounced get-togethers since Nickel Creek went on indefinite hiatus — lends perspective on the band's official reunion, which is about to bring both an impressively hale new album and a highly predictable tour. Over the last seven years, each member of the group has stretched out, plant new partners and solidified a rare stature in American roots music.
In that fourth dimension, their deep and specific rapport as a trio has sabbatum untroubled on the shelf, ready to be uncorked at any fourth dimension. That it'due south happening now, somewhere along the arc of some other folk boom, means that the new Nickel Creek could encounter an even warmer reception, though the reception the first time around was plenty warm enough.
Formed in Southern California in 1989, the group adult its earliest following on the bluegrass festival excursion, well before whatever of its members had entered their teens. It's no wonder that precocity and panache became its calling cards, particularly in an idiom jump by proficiency within a hallowed tradition. The first proper Nickel Creek album, self-titled and produced past the bluegrass doyenne Alison Krauss, caused an eager stir when information technology was released in 2000; co-ordinate to Nielsen SoundScan, it has sold more than a meg copies. Two subsequent albums each cracked the Top 20 on the pop album chart.
The nigh recent of those, "Why Should the Fire Die?" (Carbohydrate Hill), produced by Eric Valentine, showed some signs of the restlessness that would propel Nickel Creek toward its seven-year divide. Vocally, a high proportion of the songs were solo features; stylistically, the group was bending a bluegrass palette toward the mood and attitude of emo. In dissever interviews, all three musicians noted that a lot of personal and musical growth followed the breakup — and that the new album, "A Dotted Line," also produced by Mr. Valentine and due on Nonesuch on Tuesday, had turned out stronger as a result.
"I definitely had my misgivings near the whole state of affairs, and whether information technology would feel regressive," Mr. Thile (pronounced THEE-lee) said, speaking from Oberlin Conservatory, where he was in the midst of a residency with Punch Brothers, his chamber-bluegrass ring. "I didn't know, um, how musically fruitful it could be. Just the second we got in the room and started working, it was credible that at that place are musical things that we can't get whatsoever other way."
Mr. Thile, 33, has certainly tried a lot of other ways. His most recent solo album is a virtuoso accommodation of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for violin. In improver to several acclaimed albums with Punch Brothers, he has released ane spirited duo album apiece with the bassist Edgar Meyer and the guitarist Michael Daves; toured in some other duo, with the jazz pianist Brad Mehldau; composed and performed a classical mandolin concerto; and teamed with Mr. Meyer, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the fiddler Stuart Duncan for "The Caprine animal Rodeo Sessions" (Sony Masterworks), which won the Grammy for all-time folk album last year. Mr. Thile is also a 2012 MacArthur fellow, and possibly the first mandolinist ever seriously in the running for that award.
Ms. Watkins, 32, has made her ain strides, starting with a cocky-titled 2009 solo debut anthology produced by John Paul Jones, formerly of Led Zeppelin. "Sunday Midnight Sun" (Nonesuch), her surer second outing from 2012, found smart use for both fuzztone electric guitar and a guest turn by her friend Fiona Apple. Ms. Watkins too toured with the Decemberists and Jackson Browne, and filled in for Garrison Keillor on "A Prairie Home Companion," the venerable radio variety testify. (She fabricated history of a sort equally its get-go guest host.) And with her brother, she has made the Watkins Family Hour a marquee musician magnet at Largo, the artsy Los Angeles music and comedy cabaret.
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Likewise that outlet, Mr. Watkins, 37, has had a driving hand in two indie-rock bands, Fiction Family and, with his sister, Works Progress Administration. He has also been a prolific supporting player. At the South past Southwest music festival this month, he played six shows in 48 hours, bankroll friends like the Haden Triplets.
"Getting out into the globe and working with lots of other kinds of musicians," he said, "you learn how to communicate better, and y'all learn about picking battles."
Similar any family unit, Nickel Creek has had its share of minor squabbles. But past all accounts, when the ring members gathered in Mr. Thile's New York apartment last June — spurred on by the approach of the group's 25th anniversary — they fell into an easy collaborative rhythm. Trading "starts," their autograph for partly formed songs, they quickly upgraded their tentative plans from an EP to a full album.
"We concluded up contributing a lot to each other's songs, well-nigh all of them," Ms. Watkins said. I instance was "Destination," the album'south indignant, hard-charging lead single, which she brought in as a beginning and fleshed out with the band. Another case would be "Love of Mine," a wistful melody that began, Mr. Thile explained, with the concept of an idealized love: "That we dearest ourselves in love, and the other person is like a conduit."
The about striking characteristic near "A Dotted Line" is the sheer forcefulness of the singing, and the frequency with which it takes flight in iii-role harmony. "We all wanted to focus on harmony, and making the most of it," Mr. Watkins said. "That was i affair we can exercise that we're proud of as a band." The signature Nickel Creek blend — partly a sibling affair, but besides the production of countless hours of micro-adjustments in timbre and tone, not all of them consciously fabricated — comes across loud and clear.
There'south also a high level of songcraft on the album, though information technology's scrupulously subtle, in the realm of elegant melodic contour and deft harmonic movement. (Encounter, for example, "Christmas Eve," a heartbroken lament that originated with Mr. Watkins.) Immediacy and simplicity, however deceptive, bear witness to be the dominion.
"When Punch Brothers was starting up," Mr. Thile said by way of explanation, "I had a very clear calendar. Part of what I wanted to do was make complicated music. I've really backed off of that since. On this tape, 1 of the things I'm proudest of is that you lot frequently tin can't see the seams. Information technology'due south just the way the song is built." And then while in that location are flashes of musical prowess, including a jaunty instrumental with Mr. Meyer as a featured guest, the songs typically hold the center of the frame.
Which would seem to bode well for the album's entreatment to a new class of fans, like those behind the success of, say, Mumford & Sons. "There'southward a lot of bands playing large audio-visual choruses these days, with lots of harmonies," Ms. Watkins said. "I call up that reflects largely on the public desire for esprit. In that location's a generation of people who have never gone to church, and didn't grow up singing together. I recollect people are now finding that fellowship in concerts."
There'll be enough of opportunities to test that theory as Nickel Creek embarks on its tour in mid-April. (Many shows, including the ane at the Beacon Theater on April 29, are already sold out.) Ane of the bigger stages on the itinerary will be at the Newport Folk Festival, within a directly sightline of the kids' tent.
Jay Sweet, the festival'south producer, said he had booked Nickel Creek the moment he was informed of the reunion plans. "They left when they were kind of a lonely voice," he said. "They're coming dorsum at the meridian of their abilities."
The minireunion in 2012 had been possible, he noted, because Punch Brothers and Ms. Watkins were playing their own respective sets. "To our audience, this is a supergroup," he said of Nickel Creek. "Considering the fans know these artists from their individual things, not every bit a band."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/arts/music/after-solo-projects-nickel-creek-reunites.html
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