SAN DIEGO — The members of Nickel Creek have won Grammy Awards, sold millions of albums, toured the world, earned critical acclaim and collaborated with everyone from Yo-Yo Ma, Dolly Parton and The Killers to Lyle Lovett, Fiona Apple and Brad Mehldau. In 2007, the group became the first act in any genre to perform on back-to-back weekends in Indio at the stylistically disparate Coachella and Stagecoach festivals.
What this 34-year-old San Diego-bred trio has not done, at least so far, is scored a hit single. And while there seems to be clear hit potential for the ebullient "Where the Long Line Leads" — a standout song from "Celebrants," Nickel Creek's first new studio album in nine years — the group's members sound taken aback at even the notion one of their songs could earn major national radio airplay and zoom up the sales charts.
"I feel like I don't even know what 'hit' means in our world," said violinist and singer Sara Watkins, 41, who shares her bandmates' penchant for fusing bluegrass, folk, country, rock, neo-classical and various genres in between.
Sara's guarded response to the idea of a hit record prompted nods of agreement from her brother, Nickel Creek guitarist and singer Sean Watkins, 46, and mandolin wizard and singer Chris Thile, 42, during a recent Zoom interview with the Union-Tribune. Thile was in his home in Brooklyn. The Watkins siblings were about a 20-minute drive away from each other at their respective abodes in Los Angeles.
"It would be a joy if something of ours caught fire (commercially), because it's so much fun when something resonates with a large group of people," Thile said. "But I don't think any of us ever set out to write something like that."
What Nickel Creek did set out to do with "Celebrants" is make the most ambitious, expansive and adventurous album of the group's career. They succeeded — possibly even beyond the group's own expectations — with a major nod to a long-buried album by former head Beach Boys member Brian Wilson.
The result is a dazzling work that falls somewhere between a song-cycle and a suite, a concept album and a free-flowing aural adventure. "Celebrants" was released last week by the Nashville, Tennessee-based record label Thirty Tigers, whose roster includes everyone from Steve Winwood and Alanis Morissette to Lupe Fiasco and Asleep at the Wheel.
The lovingly crafted album features two instrumental pieces and 16 songs that were born two years ago, during the foreboding days of the pandemic shutdown. It benefits greatly from the superb contrabass playing of Mike Elizondo, whose impeccably sculpted lines enhance each song on which he performs.
Having not toured since 2014 — all three members have successful solo careers and play in other bands — Nickel Creek reconvened in early 2021. They did so in the Santa Barbara home of their famous longtime friend and periodic musical collaborator, Steve Martin, and his wife, Anne Stringfield.
"This album is about reconnection," said Sara Watkins. "It's about reconnecting with yourself and anyone you grew up with. You have to reengage with your fundamental self."
Prodigious musical youngsters
Like Thile, Sara Watkins was just 8 when Nickel Creek made its onstage debut in 1989 at Carlsbad's That Pizza Place. She and brother Sean had met and befriended Thile there at a weekly bluegrass jam session their parents took them to each Sunday.
"Nickel Creek was this thing that just happened and started by accident," Thile recalled in Nickel Creek's 2020 Union-Tribune interview. "We were offered (the opportunity) to be a 'kids band' at a bluegrass festival, and then we kept doing it. It wasn't: 'Let's be a band!' Because we already were a band, by accident."
The prodigious youngsters released their first album, "Little Cowpoke," in 1993. Nickel Creek won its first Grammy Award — for best contemporary folk album — in 2003.
Now, 20 years and three albums later, the group sounds more confident, daring and eager than ever to chart new artistic ground.
Expertly honed and calibrated to create a lasting emotional and musical arc, "Celebrants" makes as big an impact in its most hushed and subtle moments as in its more animated ones. The tone of the lyrics on the album conveys a sense of hope, caution and concern, a desire for renewal and clarity in the midst of an intensely stressful time that created a dizzying ball of confusion for many.
The songs were born at a time when life and the world as we know it had irrevocably changed. The was no clear indication of how things would pan out.
Accordingly, the lyrics to the stirring title track of "Celebrants" — which opens the album — express relief in one breath — My god, it's good to see you/ Right here in the flesh — while acknowledging the daunting challenges that await — The work that lies ahead/ As one beleaguered people.
In a subsequent verse, the lyrics take on an ironic tone that, using hindsight, touch on the stark realities of social distancing: That was me preaching communion/ Even as I prayed for space/ 'Til it was granted in such profusion/ That I've about lost my taste for it/ And saying what I'm doing/ While what I'm really doing/ Keeps me from doing what I say.
"There's always a lot of things at work in any given record we make. And, certainly, the pandemic asked some questions of a lot of us that we kind of needed to ask anyway," said Thile, a 2012 MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant recipient.
"I don't think we feel it is a pandemic record, per se. But there were a lot of things we wouldn't have thought to tackle if we had not begun the (songwriting) process during lockdown. For the whole world, COVID asked a bunch of questions, (although) it was a very traumatic way to be asked them."
Sean Watkins, Nickel Creek's oldest member, likewise regards "Celebrants" an inevitable reflection of the pervasive mood of uncertainty that inspired it.
"This record has its ups and downs, moments of despair and ecstasy," he said. "And, often, they could be a verse away from each other."
"One of the main discoveries we made lyrically speaking," Thile added, "was that our species is going through a time when it runs from friction. And that friction generates change. And that change is what we need right now to get out of all the messes we've created."
"It was," Sean concluded, "fertile territory for us, at least creatively."
Surf's up
"Celebrants" showcases some of the most thoughtful, intricate and daring music of Nickel Creek's career. Some of the songs feature lattice-like instrumental arrangements and the luminous, three-part vocal harmonies that are a group trademark. Other songs have a gauzy, almost dreamlike quality. Some blur the lines between both approaches to create a neo-psychedelic sonic tapestry.
The trio cites Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson as a key inspiration for "Celebrants." They point to his legendary — and never completed — 1966 and 1967 "Smile" album recording sessions, which the then-wildly experimental Wilson ended up shelving for four decades until the heady album was finally released in 2011.
Thankfully, unlike Wilson at the time, none of Nickel Creek's members experienced nervous breakdowns or ingested copious amounts of LSD.
"There is such freedom, such curiosity and wonder permeating every single track on 'Smile'," Thile said.
"Because he didn't ever finish 'Smile,' it's such a springboard to one's own musical imagination and possibilities. The greatest pieces of art are empowering in that way. They kind of rocket you into creativity. I think any number of brilliant pieces of art feel gloriously unfinished in that way.
"So, we sat up late at the beginning of the writing process for 'Celebrants' and used 'Smile' as a springboard. It's not that I feel like our record sounds like 'Smile' in any way. It's just that 'Smile' is an incredibly ambitious project. And we thought it would be fun to take a big swing and make this a record people can explore, poke at and have a real tactile relationship with — by having it feel like the unfinished 'Smile' sessions. That kicked off the scope of what we wanted to do."
Sean Watkins notes the paradox of Nickel Creek's "Celebrants" being inspired by the never-completed "Smile." Moreover, "Smile" represents a chilling signpost of the increasingly fragile Wilson's perilous emotional and psychological decline in the late 1960s.
"Who knows what it would have felt like if it was finished?" he mused. "I love the idea it is more impactful not being finished and that it engages people in different ways, like: 'Here's your album, here's your pot of gold'!"
A unique aspect of "Smile," for its time, is how it used classical music's rondo approach, revisiting and recasting musical themes and ideas throughout the album as a unifying musical tool.
"Brian was not afraid to borrow from himself and we do that with some of the themes (on 'Celebrants')," Sean Watkins said. "We used to think: 'Oh, we can't use that; we already did it.' With this record, we were like: 'Where can we use this? Where can this melody also be featured?' "
Sara Watkins describes this as a form of musical "piggybacking."
The resulting musical reinvention by Nickel Creek came at a time when the group was eager to experiment. It was not, however an attempt to copy "Smile," she said, so much as embracing aural adventure to move beyond more conventional songwriting.
"Piggybacking like that can be interpreted as if we were trying to repeat 'Smile' in our own way, and that's not at all true," she emphasized. "It's a starting point that sends you off in a (new) direction. It was one of the trampolines we decided to jump on and see where we went."
"That's so much more fun," Sean Watkins added, "than to make something that sounds like something else by someone else. To say: 'Here are the records we want to replicate, sonically' would be a lot more boring."
Nickel Creek's new album also contains another first for the group, whose members were all raised as devout Christians. It comes in the title of the song "Goddamned Saint," which is the only time in memory they have ever used the word "Goddamned" in any of their lyrics.
"I think that is the first," Thile agreed.
"It's a phrase," Sean Watkins interjected, "that gets said by us in praising someone. We say: 'Man, that guy is a Goddamned saint!' "
"I like the wordplay," Thile continued, "in that it can be taken colloquially or literally. It's telling the story of a person — a musician — who Sean, Sara and I interacted a lot with when our ideology at the time was, quite literally, (people being) damned to hell for all eternity.
"We respected this guy, even though our belief systems were drastically different. Spending time with him and being open to a conversation with someone we disagreed with, it changed all three of us, forever. The fact that guy had the patience to also openly come into those conversations with us further opened our hearts and minds.
"That dude opened my mind, forever, and instigated this 180-degree ideological about-face in my life. The irony is that, now, I don't know if I'd extend that old version of me with that grace, the way this mentor of ours did for us," Thile said.
"Goddamned Saint" is more than an ode to their wiser 10-year-older musician friend, who the members of Nickel Creek prefer not to identify. It is also a heartfelt plea for civility and being open-minded in an era of increasing disagreement and outright hostility between people with differing viewpoints.
"The last verse of the song say it all," Sean Watkins said.
Indeed, it does.
"My thoughts have ceased to sing/ 'Cause I won't even have a drink/ With anyone who disagrees/ Like I've forgotten/ That the well I'm drawing from/ Springs from disagreements/ With people who believe/ That we can only change someone as much/ As we're willing to be changed."
"That song reflects how well we've cultivated our social groups, so that we don't run into people with differing ideas very often," Sean Watkins continued. "Music performances draw a bunch of people, with different opinions, in one room. They may not be hashing out politics, but it's when ..."
"You recognize your similarities," Sara Watkins said, picking up her brother's thread. "The fact everyone at a concert knows the words to this or that chorus, or are drinking the same three beers available at that venue, or are dealing with parking issues, that kind of proximity is a big deal for us.
"I found that, a lot of times, I'll be listening to the news or a podcast telling me information that I didn't really know (to be accurate). But I'm taking it in as an immediate weapon, to use against somebody who doesn't agree with me, to throw in somebody's face. And I so don't want to do that.
"When I realized that, it made me give up on the idea of changing people. I know you can't change people. But realizing I was taking in information for that explicit, aggressive purpose helps me adjust my way of processing news, the kind of news I seek out — and to internalize it in my own way, rather than be a parrot.
"Now, I really don't care about changing anyone's mind and I'd rather have a discussion with most people. The guy who inspired this song is still in our lives and is very important to us. He demonstrated to us a long time ago that, sometimes, you only learn lessons years later."
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