Nickel Creek have been pushing the boundaries of folk music for over thirty years. Their new album Celebrants takes them into newly personal territory and challenging arrangements, reimagining what's possible for an acoustic trio. Our afternoon host, Phil Jones got to speak to their fiddle player, Sara Watkins, before their show at the MGM Music Hall in Boston on Saturday April 22nd.
Phil Jones:
Hello! Hey, Sara, this is Phil at 'ERS. How are you?
Sara Watkins:
I'm doing really well. How are you?
Phil Jones:
I'm glad we connected! We're using the old landline hook up in one of our vocal booths.
Sara Watkins:
Oh, nice going back in time!
Phil Jones:
Yeah, it's very very old tech. But it works. Which is great. Where am I talking to you from?
Sara Watkins:
I'm in Concord, New Hampshire right now. It's a cute little town! Yeah. We were in New Haven yesterday. And we're getting ready to set up a show tonight. Then we go up to Portland, Maine. And then we'll be in Boston. I'm really enjoying Spring in New England.
Phil Jones:
It's a good time to be here. So, tell me a little bit about how Celebrants is going in a live setting. I was listening to it again this morning. To me, it's a really complicated album, but really rewarding to spend a lot of time with, there's all these little scenes and all these little characters. How's it been playing live?
Sara Watkins:
It's been so fun playing this record. And we're seeing people sing along already, which is thrilling. This whole there's a continuity throughout, as we bring the older material into the current show. We're playing music from all the records, as well as this new one. The stage looks amazing, and it feels amazing to be playing these songs in front of these really generous crowds that we've been seeing so far. It's really early on in the tour. So everything's got this kind of electricity to it. The setlist is changing every night, we're still figuring out our little corners, and it's very exciting.
Phil Jones:
Can I ask you to go a little bit deeper into some of the intricacies of the album itself? It's a not quite a concept album, but there's all these little scenes in it. Are there characters on Celebrants that we get to meet?
Sara Watkins:
No, there aren't any characters I don't think. But there are themes that continue. When we were writing Celebrants, we all kind of got together and lived in a house or for a couple of weeks, and then stayed in very close proximity, working for another two weeks in Los Angeles, and we were able to figure out what our goals for this album would be in a way that would build it from the ground up. I'm trying to map using all these gestures that you can't see right now! But basically, one of the things that we all came to accept … Sean had some starts, I had some starts, Chris had some starts. And we were finding the overlapping themes. Some of those were really about what happens in the middle of relationships. There's so many songs about the beginning of one. They're "I love you, you're perfect". And songs about the end: "I hate you go away", as Chris says. But there's not a lot in the middle, and that is where we live most of our lives, right? In long term friendships, family relationships, romantic relationships, there is this messy middle where you sort through the stuff that you're willing to deal with the stuff that you're not willing to deal with. And there's our relationships with ourselves. There are a couple songs on this album that sort through dealing with who you are. Me having to deal with who I am, and to become the person I actually think of myself as. You'll hear musical themes come back later in the album, maybe as an instrumental, or maybe as a chorus… other songs act as Easter eggs for people to discover. But I think the themes are gonna resonate with a lot of people. They certainly resonate with us at this point.
Phil Jones:
I was gonna ask you about that in terms of working on the relationship that you have with yourself, as an artist, as a person, as a woman. I mean, you've been playing in Nickel Creek, since you were a preteen! And you look at your career, the last 30 years or so…. is what's something you'd want to tell your middle school self to expect and be ready for? What's coming down the line for the younger Sara?
Sara Watkins:
I wonder if my message would be, instead of what's coming up… don't be scared to be seen. I think a lot of kids growing up in the time that I was growing up, I'm speaking as a girl, there was a lot of messaging around "don't stand out too much", or "stand out in just these ways", and "stand out in the ways that we want you to stand out, so we can enjoy that". Being a teenager, it's such a difficult age for anybody. Everybody's negotiating how they want to be seen. And we experienced adolescence as we were getting to know new jobs with new people around. But you're right, Sean, and Chris and I were kids. Chris and I were eight when we all started and Sean was twelve. And it was just kind of a little kid band that kept going. So in this band, a lot of the stuff that we're writing about is stuff that we're living out all the time, as we keep choosing to come together. As kids a lot of times you just sort of follow the momentum because we were lucky enough to have it. But we weren't always choosing things in those times. As we've grown older and become stronger individual people, we have more things to contribute to the band, to really exercise the potential of this particular three piece (though you'll see four of us on stage. Jeff Picker is joining us on bass and he's so great!) When we came to write as a trio, we're living a lot of the things that were that we're talking about on the album, and we're getting to know each other and these new eras in life. I had never really experienced Chris as a father and his and our kids are playing together at a slightly younger age than he and I were when we first knew each other. It's a very full circle kind of thing. My brother too, we're all in a family way now. It's a really interesting and beautiful time in our lives together as a band, as chosen family. Sean and I are real family, but you know. I'm really enjoying this stage of the band right now.
Phil Jones:
I'm really glad to know that there aren't characters per se on the album, that it's YOU, and that the band is in a place where you can write songs like "Thinnest Wall". Emotionally, lyrically, the tension in it is something that it feels so of the band at this moment. It's an awesome, awesome tune.
Sara Watkins:
Oh, I love that. Thank you so much! Yeah, I mean, there's, there are no characters per se but you know, as songwriting goes, especially in collaboration, there's a bit of all of us in each of the songs. That's cool that it stood out to you. That's really me.
Phil Jones:
So speaking of career pivots, you guys have really gotten to act as curators and ambassadors inthe radio space. Chris did his thing with Live From Here, you played on it regularly. And you had Watkins Family Hour for a while too. If there was a national music oriented program that you could pitch and it's on air tomorrow, what would you want to hear, based on what's out there right now?
Sara Watkins:
Oh, golly. Well, I think Live From Here and Prairie Home Companion are such great examples. I grew up listening to Prairie Home Companion and I was lucky enough to tour with Garrison and the company a lot, and play on the show a lot. And I really love what I learned from those things as a musician, knowing there's a requirement to adjust live, and that the audience knows everything's at stake. And I mean, I would love for there to be another radio show like that, where we hear performances, live performances of a wider variety of music played throughout. I'm hopeful that somebody will have the vision! Here's the thing about a radio show. You're right, my brother and I had a residency called Watkins Family Hour, but it was never really a radio show. We thought about pitching it! But it turns out that doing a weekly radio show is a lot of work, it's a full time job!
Phil Jones:
It is! Last thing I wanted to ask! What's the moment you're most excited for in the live show? What can't you wait for people to experience?
Sara Watkins:
I hope that they come away with a few different moments, like four or five moments where they're just "wow, I remember that!" And they remember that. Ultimately, my goal is not that there's this one moment that they reach, but that we're able to kind of be just present with each other during the show. From the opening song, it's the opening of this book. When I really get to be me, it kind of feels like there's this great hardcover book that's shut on the table. And when you open the cover, that goddess magic comes out. That's the feeling that I have of the opening of the show. We have a beautiful friend opening the show, Gabby Marina, who is a stunning musician, singer, and beautiful guitar player. She is just a force of nature. And she is not to be missed. So come early for her. And I think it's going to be a really, really fun night.
Nickel Creek are at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston on Saturday April 22nd
