The Grammy-winning acoustic trio Nickel Creek is not bound by its bluegrass roots and makes music that draws on pop and rock influences.
By PHILIP BOOTH
Published May 11, 2003
Call Nickel Creek acoustic, or folk, or country, or pop, even. Just don't apply the bluegrass label to this California group of virtuoso instrumentalists and sweet vocal harmonizers whose This Side won a Grammy this year for best contemporary folk album.
"We don't want to tick anybody off, so we shouldn't even call ourselves bluegrass at all," guitarist Sean Watkins told CMT.com last year. "Every time we do, people get mad."
His sister, fiddle player Sara Watkins, echoed that theme in a recent interview from the band's tour bus in New Orleans. The band's itinerary brings it to St. Petersburg's Jannus Landing on Tuesday.
Nickel Creek has little in common with that high, lonesome sound, and doesn't want to give potential listeners the wrong idea, she said.
"People who are into bluegrass already know about us," she said. "A lot of times they like it, sometimes they don't."
Over the past two years, Nickel Creek's sound - whatever you care to call it - has won plenty of fans. The three, who began playing together nearly 14 years ago in a San Diego pizza parlor, watched their self-titled 2000 debut disc go gold. Two of the three video clips from the album, When You Come Back Down and The Lighthouse's Tale, became CMT favorites.
The success of that CD, produced by Alison Krauss, led to performances and several Country Music Association Awards nominations. The past few years have also seen high-profile performances at festivals, a gig playing music for a Dr Pepper commercial, and the release of solo albums by Sean Watkins and mandolin wizard Chris Thile, already an established solo artist.
Thile, whose new collaboration with mandolin player Mike Marshall, Into the Cauldron, will be released on May 13, also appeared on the Dixie Chicks' Grammy-winning instrumental Lil' Jack Slade. Sara Watkins was seen in a national TV ad for a cell phone company.
"Those three years, that whole thing, was one big surprise," Watkins said. "People were willing to participate in something different. We hope that people listen to our band because it's fresh and inspiring and positive, something original. Everybody wants to be original. It was really nice to be able to have that huge surprise of encouragement from all those people without being pushed down their throats or massive ads. Most of it was word of mouth."
The Watkins siblings and Thile, all in their early 20s, made a point of stretching away from their bluegrass influences with This Side, also produced by Krauss. The disc features only one instrumental; their debut had five. And the group augmented their appealing originals with unexpected covers of Pavement's Spit on a Stranger, and Carrie Newcomer's I Should've Known Better.
"I think the benefit of having outside songwriting is just to set things up differently, and mix things up a little bit," Watkins said. "What you add to it is, hopefully, the glue that makes it work with the rest of the album. You want to Nickel Creekize it."
Lately, jam-band fans have been taking to Nickel Creek, a segment certain to expand with the group's appearance in June at the Bonnaroo Festival in rural Tennessee. Yonder Mountain String Band, Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris are among the other country-flavored acts on the bill.
"I think that we're sort of comparable to some of those bands (Yonder Mountain and other acoustic jammers)," Watkins said. "But we don't try to emphasize that or try to build on that or play certain songs with extra-long solos just to make a throw-out to the audiences."
PREVIEW: Nickel Creek, 8 p.m. Tuesday at Jannus Landing, 16 Second St. N, St. Petersburg. $17 advance, $20 day of show. (727) 896-2276.
