Tag: Chris Thile

Chris Thile Envisions Nickel Creek’s ‘Celebrants’ as One Epic LEGO Set

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Nickel Creek’s Celebrants is a richly textured, musically audacious, thematically knotty album, as ambitious as anything the trio have ever recorded together, but they still have time to make pleasantries. “It’s been too long, strangers,” they sing on their second song, “Strangers,” a racing roundelay of instrumental runs and overlapping vocals that plays off the old traditional “Hello Stranger” and possibly even a Who song. “Are you hanging in there? Are the kids alright?”

They’re checking in with each other, with you the listener, not out of idle curiosity or social ritual, but active concern. They want you to feel welcome in their album, invested in their comeback.

The three members of Nickel Creek—fiddler Sara Watkins, guitarist Sean Watkins, mandolinist Chris Thile, all singers and writers and co-producers as well—have not been idle during their not-quite-a-decade apart. Thile has released three albums with his other band Punch Brothers, as well as a handful of solo and collaborative albums, including one with jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, a series of Bach trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer and a reunion project with Goat Rodeo. He had also kept busy hosting the radio program Live From Here. But Nickel Creek remains an active and special outlet for the instrumentalist, precisely because it’s less a band than a friendship. He’s been playing with the Watkins siblings since he was eight years old. They’ve grown up together, but haven’t exactly grown up. They still play around when they play together, which is reflected in the dizzying and ingenious Celebrants.

In the third and final of our series of interviews with the band members, Thile talked to the Bluegrass Situation about hiding easter eggs throughout Celebrants, finding a wormhole in Central Park, and finding musical inspiration in Richard Powers’ doorstop novel The Overstory.

Editor’s Note: Read our BGS interviews with Sara Watkins and with Sean Watkins.

BGS: To start with the same question I asked them, how did you know it was time to get back together with them and make something?

Thile: There’s that annoying phenomenon that we all experience with our closest friends: As adults we don’t prioritize hanging out with them because we know they’re gonna be there. They’re not going anywhere. We’re not going anywhere. Then, the next thing you know, it’s been six months or a year since you talked with them, much less had a real heart-to-heart with your best friend. Because life! Then you finally do, because you’re starting to feel a kind of ache inside. You finally make time. You both do. And you realize what’s been missing in your life. You realize there’s been this gaping best-friend-size hole in your life.

It’s the same for us in Nickel Creek. We’ve been doing this since I was eight years old. Sean was 12. There was a period right after we made Why Should the Fire Die? when we thought we might not come back to the band. We were proud of that record, but we were just fried, you know. We needed to go off and become individuals. But we do keep coming back to Nickel Creek. And after A Dotted Line there was no real need for the space that we accidentally gave ourselves. We had a great time making that album and touring and even had some writing sessions scheduled shortly thereafter. But life, you know. They have their things that they do. I have the things that I do. Hosting Live From Here takes up a gargantuan amount of time. I’ve got Punch Brothers, too, which is still a very important project to me.

Did anything come out of those early songwriting sessions?

We got some starts, including the song that eventually became “Strangers.” But that can just kept getting kicked down the sidewalk. Then the pandemic was just horrific and traumatic for everyone, although we did end up asking ourselves some questions that needed to be asked, in terms of what we’re prioritizing in our lives. Are we making decisions that lead to the most happiness that we can muster? A lot of times the answer was no. It would set off a round of soul-searching. And I think that’s what led us back to each other.

It sounds like this band has become a project that you know is there, you can dip in and out as needed. You can go nine years without making a record and it might not seem unusual. It’s there when you need it.

Yes. But in a way, I think it made this record feel very urgent to us. When I listen back to it now, there’s an urgency that speaks to a buildup of ideas that we had collectively. It wasn’t a slow, steady stream. The dam just broke. That’s how it felt. And that’s fun. It wasn’t really hard work to make this record. Well, making records is always hard work, but this one… as much time as we gave it, it gave back tenfold. It never felt like we were having to mine for stuff. It just felt like we were harvesting it. That made it feel fresh. And by no means did we harvest everything that we could have. There’s room for another one in the next couple of years, for sure.

One thing that I’ve mentioned to the other two is the way the album opens. It takes as its subject that nine years between albums, and then explores what it means to come back together, to make music together, and perform it in front a crowd.

We took that as a jumping off point—our own reconnection—but I think we recognized that we were barreling toward a period where that was going to be a pretty universal experience. Everyone was going to finally be getting back together with the people they hold nearest and dearest. The more we thought about it, we thought that might encompass a lot of interactions between people right now. That’s not even necessarily a pandemic thing, though that did change how we interact with people. We barely have to interact at all anymore.

And when we do, we’re not even interacting as humans. We’re interacting as avatars online. It’s easy to make caricatures of other people when that’s how you relate to them. It’s easy to dehumanize them because they don’t seem as human that way. It’s this two-dimensional world that we’ve created. Gone are the days when you would sit at a barbershop and argue with someone about politics or sit down and have a beer and watch a game together, where you’re pulling for the same cause as someone who might not share any beliefs with you beyond the mutual affinity for the local sports team.

Those things are sacred, but we’ve lost them for the most part. The pandemic didn’t help, but it did bring up these questions that we were all asking ourselves. This record started with our reunion, but we quickly realized that that was by no means an isolated experience. It wasn’t unique to us. That realization opened up all these avenues of thought for what Celebrants could be.

The record has this novelistic quality, with all these themes and subplots running through it. It reminded me a little bit of House of Leaves in its self-referentiality.

I have that book in the bedroom right now. I haven’t tucked in yet, but I know enough that if the album in any way reminds you of that book, I deeply thank you. I think we were trying to make a record that felt like its own little world. It’s its own thing. The art that Sara and Sean and I all gravitate toward is art that engages you, art that makes you part of the creative process. As opposed to art that just shows you some cool thing somebody found. Instead of saying, “Hey, here’s some stuff we wanted to say. Hey, what can you do with all this stuff?” We find it all very stimulating to our minds and hearts and souls, and we’re curious if it’s stimulating to yours as well. It’s a record full of questions, and questions are just so much more engaging than answers. And more sincere. Answers strike me as being insincere. Or maybe just naïve.

How so?

Every time I think I’ve got something that’s like an answer and I write it down, the next day it just sounds so ridiculous. There’s more meaning in pondering it. There’s meaning in staying quizzical. Maybe that comes from hanging out with a seven-and-a-half-year-old, who seems so wise. That’s the state he’s in. On one hand, he’s growing up so fast and his awareness of the world is changing so fast, because he’s not approaching anything thinking that he has any answers. Rather, he’s approaching everything because it has something to show him. That’s a state I want to get back to. The best art lives in that childlike space.

So your son is younger than the last Nickel Creek album? Realizing that makes me realize how much happens in nine years that changes you as a person. Did you see that in yourself or in Sean and Sara?

I’m sure they both told you how it all started, how we all shacked up in this big house in Santa Barbara with our families—our partners and our children and dogs. Getting to see them again in that little microcosm was so inspiring. I’ve known them since I was eight, which is a crazy thing. My little boy is maybe six months younger than we were when we started hanging out and playing together. And now our kids are hanging out. It’s very special. And getting to know Sara and Sean’s spouses, respectively, and them getting to hang out with my wife Claire, and all of us just having dinner together and talking about stuff and getting to see all the things that they’re going through. It’s just crazy. So many of these songs are in direct observation of the various interpersonal dynamics between us all.

We started thinking about the benefits of leaning into the friction of our respective domestic lives. When you commit to another human being and live in close quarters with them for a long period of time, you have to commit to embracing the friction between you. You’re not always going to be in lockstep. There’s a lot of friction, but the sparks from that friction can generate a lot of productivity. We see it in our own lives, and we watch it changing. We watch those sparks light fires. But we all have more than we can handle at home, so much so that we don’t have anything left for the rest of the world. But the world needs that friction as well. Otherwise, we’ll only sit here and agree with the people we agree with. We have to engage with people we might not agree with. We have to respect them, and we have to believe they might have something to show us. If we don’t, they’ll never be able to believe that we have something to show them. Find the commonalities between you and just hang out. It’s hard, but it’s the best work we can do.

Sean mentioned that you all had hidden easter eggs on the album, and Sara mentioned that every song has at least one reference to another song. It feels like you were all writing a full album rather than just a collection of songs.

I think it’s helpful to think of the album as a song and the songs as verses. They’re just part of the song that is the album. There are all these instrumental and lyrical themes that come back. There’s no song that isn’t connected to the whole in some very tangible way. We didn’t want to hit people over the head with it. You don’t want to build something that has to be experienced all at once or not at all. You don’t want people to feel like they have to listen to it in one go or it has nothing to offer them. We wanted it to be like some epic LEGO set, one that’s made out of ten different LEGO sets. You can put them all together to form this gigantic space station, or you can have fun playing with them by themselves. That’s the idea. But if you do play with them together, you get to know the record more and you start making all these connections. Oh, the bridge of this song is the verse of this other song!

Can you give an example?

One example would be in the instrumental song “Going Out…” when Sean is playing the melody, I play this sort of ping-pongy thing that is actually the verse of “New Blood.” There’s stuff like that all throughout the record. The instrumental melody of “Holding Pattern” is the chorus of “To the Airport.” There are so many of them. The rhythm of the accompaniment in the chorus of “Celebrants” is the same rhythm accompaniment in the chorus of “Strangers.” Point and counterpoint. But those are just the musical ones. There are lyrical and thematic ones as well. The line “Look at us trying to move” in “To the Airport” becomes “Listen to us trying to listen in” on “Water Under the Bridge Pt. 2.” “Failure Isn’t Forever” mentions both “Hollywood Ending” and “The Meadow.” Everything is inextricably linked.

One thing that was super inspiring to me in regards to this record is Richard Powers’ book The Overstory. It’s an incredible, incredible novel. It might be 200 pages before he starts connecting these various avenues of thought, but as soon as they start connecting, you’re like, “Oh my god!” We really wanted to try to tap into that. Those connections are there if you want them to be, but it was a huge concern not to think ourselves into oblivion. First and foremost it has to be listenable. But if you’re going to make an album in this day and age, there has to be a good reason for it, because that’s not how people consume music. It’s really us geeky people who still listen to records all the way through. We gotta give each other a reason to keep doing it.

Photo Credit: Josh Goleman

Sean Watkins Says ‘Celebrants’ Feels Like Nickel Creek’s Most Complete Album Yet

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It’s been nine years since Nickel Creek’s last album, and the band will remind you of that at the very start of their new one, Celebrants. “My God it’s good to see you, right here in the flesh,” they sing on the title track. Of course, they can’t actually see you through your turntable or car stereo, and you weren’t actually there in the flesh when the trio recorded the song, but that doesn’t decrease the joy and intimacy they bring to that hearty welcome. It’s a gambit both clever and joyful, not only ushering the listener back into their world but implying there is no Nickel Creek without an audience.

Or, perhaps, they’re singing those lines to each other. Maybe it has nothing to do with us and everything to do with these three remarkable musicians who’ve been playing together for nearly forty years and recording together for more than twenty. They’ve spent most of those decades apart, however, so maybe they’re just happy to be in the same room together again.

Such ambiguity is fascinating, lingering in your mind as they lay out the stakes and the mechanics of Celebrants: “We can turn the stuff we need to get off of our chests into something we can sing through.” This is a heady album, full of big ideas, strewn with easter eggs, erected with repeated lyrical and musical motifs. It’s rich, complex, self-referential, immersive — less like a short-story collection and more like one of those big postmodern novels/doorstops, like House of Leaves or Underworld. It’s the kind of the album you could map out on a large whiteboard and then alienate friends with your wild theories about who exactly they’re canonizing on “Goddamned Saint.” Or you could let all that slide right off you and just revel in the virtuoso playing, the intimate harmonies, the rousing choruses.

“Right up to the last minute,” says guitarist Sean Watkins, “we were still adding things and connecting dots and trying to have as much sharing as possible between the songs. That’s very different from the way we usually write.”

In the second of our Artist of the Month interview series with Nickel Creek, Sean talked to the Bluegrass Situation about loving The Smile Sessions and Kendrick Lamar, trusting his bandmates, and making an album like a video game. Look for our conversation with Chris Thile in the weeks ahead and enjoy our Q&A with Sara Watkins.

BGS: What sparked the desire to sort of rekindle Nickel Creek at this particular time?

Sean Watkins: It’s a few things. Our life schedules opened up, for one thing. But the instigating moment was in 2020, early in lockdown, when we were asked to do a group interview with NPR. They were putting out a story about the 20th anniversary of our first album. We hadn’t realized it had been so long. We got on this group call and waxed nostalgic. And it was really fun. Sara, Chris, and I are so close. Obviously Sara and I are siblings, but we all have one of those relationships where you tend to not prioritize the thing you assume will always happen, like us getting back together. And so you don’t really focus on communicating and talking all the time. But when we do get back together, it’s like no time has passed. It’s like we just saw each other last night. During that phone call, we realized how much chemistry is there, how much we all love each other.

At that time we all had a lot of free time because of Covid. We decided that when we could, we wanted to spend a lot of time writing and dreaming up the biggest, most ambitious project we could. We ended up getting together to write in February of 2021 at a friend’s vacation house in Santa Barbara. Chris drove cross-country with his family and dog. We were there for two weeks, then we were at Sara’s house for another two weeks. So we did a solid month of writing. We’ve never spent that much time writing. After that we’d do a week here, a week there, five days here, five days there, some in LA and some in New York. I think I counted up 75-80 days total that we were together. We were able to really hunker down with each other and figure out where we are musically and personally. And we were able to reconnect. That became one of the central themes of the album — reconnection.

That’s grounded in the very first song, where you could be talking to the audience or to each other. It’s very poignant way to start your first album in nine years.

We were celebrating the reopening of… well, life. But it’s also a celebration of our reconvening as a band. It’s been so long. At that point it had been seven years since we’d toured together. And now it’s been nine! “Celebrants” was actually one of the first songs we worked. On the first day we had that lyric, “My god, it’s good to see you!” From the get-go, we wanted that to be the opening line on the opening song of the record.

It sounds like you weren’t writing songs so much as you were writing a whole album.

All of the songs we wrote point to other songs. They’re all related. They have counterparts. The first night we got together, it was my birthday, and Chris’s birthday is two days later. We always have a joint birthday party. So we convened at the house in Santa Barbara, and after the kids and significant others went to bed, the three of us stayed up with cocktails and just mused about what we want to do. We all wanted to take a big swing, but we needed a direction. One of the albums that we’ve always loved and been inspired by is The Smile Sessions, which would have been a Beach Boys album but Brian Wilson never finished it. We’ve all loved it for so long. It’s been part of our shared musical folklore.

How did that play into Celebrants?

One thing we love about it is its unfinishedness. It points to some great mystery about what it could have been. It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. He’s mixing up themes, and some songs are borrowing from other songs thematically and lyrically. That was something that we really wanted to try. All of these songs have some element of some other song.

Such as?

One example would be “Failure Isn’t Forever,” the last song on the album. There’s this ghostly vocal that’s kinda in the background. That’s the first song popping back up again. There’s a lot of that. We tried to do it as much as we could on this album.

I feel like you’d need a spreadsheet to track it all.

Ha. We did have a group note going, a shared note with all the lyrics. It still exists somewhere. We could be constantly working on it and updating it and talking about it. And at the top of it was a mission statement, which is printed on the album. I can’t recite it word for word, but it’s about embracing the friction inherent in any meaningful relationship. That idea was a thematic arrow pointing us to what we wanted to explore.

But it was definitely a lot to keep track of. Right up to the last minute we were still adding things and connecting dots and trying to have as much sharing as possible between the songs. That’s very different from the way we usually write. What you want to avoid when you’re making an album is copying yourself. Instead of avoiding that, we leaned into the idea. We leaned into repeating themes and melodies and lyrics. Once we decided to do that, it opened up a whole world of possibilities for us.

It makes for an interesting listening experience. You can’t really take it all in with one spin. You need to spend time with it and let it reveal itself over time.

That’s the dream. It’s going to hit everyone differently, but we really wanted there to be a lot of depth to it, a lot of easter eggs. We tried to create a video game where you have a whole world to explore. You can wander around and look under rocks and see what’s over that next hill. There’s always new things you can find and characters that relate to each other differently. I’m not a gamer, but that metaphor makes the most sense to me.

Were there any moments where the album revealed things to you that you didn’t intend or maybe didn’t catch the first time around?

There’s a moment on “Failure Isn’t Forever.” My wife had the album on in our house. This would have been a couple of months ago. That song played, and I’d forgotten that we’d added that line from the first song to the last song. There were just so many different ideas flying around. And there were so many different versions of these songs that we recorded. We did an early version of the song in front of one mike with Mike Elizondo, who played bass on the album. We were writing and recording, and the songs were very rough when we first put them in order to see if they would work. It was our proof of concept.

Then we came back again with our producer Eric Valentine a few months later, and we did another practice swing. We tried out some different ways of recording, with some different gear and microphones. Eric figured out that he wanted to make this album mostly on ribbon mikes, and he used his old RCA console that had a very particular sound that was really, really cool. So we made the album all the way through, ended up cutting one song, and replaced it with another instrumental. Then we had a framework, a blueprint. Then we went into RCA Studio A in Nashville and made the bulk of the album there. That was a year ago last April or May.

It sounds like this could have turned out very differently. This is just one iteration of a million different outcomes. I guess that’s true of any album, but it seems more dramatic in this case.

There’s a ton of moving parts. Usually the thing that holds us back from letting a project be what it wants to be is time. You don’t always have the time to keep whittling away at it, and at a certain point you just have to stop. Inevitably you’ll find some things you wish you’d done differently or hadn’t done at all. But because we had all that time and the ability to record these songs and hear how they came out of the speakers and how they sat in sequence, we were able get it as close as possible to what we wanted. No project is ever going to be perfect, but this is the closest we’ve ever come to putting out something that just feels complete.

Aside from playing different instruments, what is your working relationship with Sara and Chris? What’s the breakdown of labor?

There are no set roles. We all play different parts. It’s like a marriage. It’s like any relationship. Sometimes one person is directing traffic on a project, and the others take a more supportive or editing role. And sometimes you go back and forth, because no one person can do everything all the time. There are a few songs on Celebrants where one of us had a start. Like “Holding Pattern.” I had the two guitar parts and some lyrics that I wasn’t super proud of. I played it for Sara and Chris, who were throwing out ideas. And I remember this little song start that I had on a voice memo, and they both loved it as a chorus. Chris had an idea for a lyric, and he said he would love to sing it. It was great. It became one of the more obvious songs about Covid, where we’re all holding each other through this long slog. It was completely different from the original idea that I had. And it was so much better.

That’s the beauty of a band — especially a band you can trust. We all come from similar places, and there’s so much we have in common, but no one has the same musical experiences as the others. That’s always been a fun part about writing in this band. You can be surprised by new ideas that the other two will have. It’s very gratifying. It comes down to being around people you love and trust.

There’s such a wide variety of sounds on this record. Certain songs sound almost psychedelic, while others have something like a hip-hop vibe in the way the words and melodies are delivered.

I know what you mean. I hesitate to use the word “rap,” but there are interesting ways that people phrase lyrics. Kendrick Lamar really phrases his stuff in a particular way that’s really exciting. I will say that the ways these words were put together was very much a part of the writing process. It wasn’t like, “Oh, we’ll figure out how to phrase that later.” It was like, “Here’s how it’s going to work with the timing of this song and the timing of the lyric, with us singing harmony counter to the rhythm.”

As an instrumentalist, how do you keep challenging yourself without making chops the whole point of it?

When you first start out playing bluegrass, it’s all just about chops and flashiness and playing fast and clean. That’s great. But as you grow older, that becomes less interesting. What becomes more interesting is how the song makes you feel. You want to keep those abilities, but you realize that it can be a little surface-y. There’s a time and a place for raging, and I think the two instrumentals on the album have a fair amount of that. But sometimes you want more feeling and nuance, so you have to do different things. Sometimes that means playing very few notes, like in “Holding Pattern.” That mandola… it’s not even a solo. It’s just a melody that happens in the instrumental section of the song. It’s the melody from “To the Airport.” It’s very sparse, yet it’s got a modal quality that reminds me of an old English folk tune. That song required very, very few notes, and that’s what conveys the feeling.

Photo Credit: Josh Goleman

Sara Watkins Always Knew There Would Be More Nickel Creek Music to Make

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While they may be a foundational band in 21st-century roots music, the members of Nickel Creek have never saddled themselves with that genre’s conservatism. They dream big, viewing folk, bluegrass, and string band music as a launchpad to bigger ideas and heavier, weirder sounds, yet they’ve never been especially prolific as a trio. Since 2005 they’ve released only two albums, which makes Nickel Creek not quite an active band but not quite a side project either. Instead, the three players can return to the fold once a decade or so, whenever it feels right, whenever they need to get something off their chests together. As such, each new album becomes a point by which they can measure how much life has gone by, how they’ve changed as people and as players.

Since they released The Dotted Line back in 2014, fiddler Sara Watkins has been especially busy with an array of projects. She released two excellent solo albums, including 2021’s Under the Pepper Tree, inspired by her own children. She formed the supergroup I’m With Her alongside Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan. She has backed artists as varied as Phoebe Bridgers, Robert Earl Keen, Amy Ray, and the Killers. And she and brother Sean founded the Watkins Family Hour, less a band than a live revue featuring Jon Brion, Madison Cunningham, Fiona Apple, and actor John C. Reilly. She brings all of that to bear on Celebrants.

In the first of our series of individual interviews with the members of Nickel Creek, Sara talked to the Bluegrass Situation about getting the band back together, exploring the friction in their relationships, and singing psychedelic cowboy harmonies. Look for our Artist of the Month interviews with Chris Thile and Sean Watkins in the weeks ahead.

BGS: At what point did you realize that it was time to make a new album? Was there a moment when the idea clicked into place for everyone?

Watkins: We always had it in our heads that we were going to do something in the future. We knew there would be more Nickel Creek music that we wanted to make. But it really started when we were asked to get on the phone together to do an interview with NPR. They brought it to our attention that it had been twenty years since our first release on Sugar Hill. We didn’t realize that it had been that long. It was mind-blowing that so much time had passed. We got on the phone together and were reminiscing. It was fun and felt really good. That was the first summer of the pandemic, so it was especially heartwarming to connect with anybody at that point. That started a conversation: Maybe this is our moment to get together and figure out what we want to do and try our best to make it happen. That’s what we did. We spent several months figuring out a way just to be together.

What is your relationship with each other like during those down years between records?

We’re all friends. Of course, Sean and I are siblings. We’ll run into each other often at festivals or gigs or weddings or parties. That’s always lovely. The nature of making a living as a musician is staying busy and touring, and the nature of being a musician is inviting all kinds of different collaborations — different people to play with, different records to make. It’s a testament to the strength of Nickel Creek that we’re each able to do that and not break up because of it. It also adds to the strength of the band in that we become stronger individuals and better musicians because of what we learn from those projects.

As a fiddle player, if I’m only playing Nickel Creek songs, then I’m not going to have anything new to bring to the table after a while. But if I’m in the house band for some big concert or supporting someone on tour or doing solo projects, I can use all of that to say, “What do I want to do right now?” That’s true for Chris and Sean as well. When we do come together, we truly have new things to say to each other. So much life has happened, so let’s bring it in. Let’s work it up. Let’s develop those ideas together. Side projects are really important for this band. It’s a huge part of how we’re able to keep growing.

What can you tell us about the writing and recording sessions? It sounds like you were writing songs, but also writing them as a larger piece of work.

Going into it, we knew we wanted it to be the kind of record that related to itself. We didn’t want it to just be a batch of songs that we put together on an album. We wanted the music to relate to itself. We wanted the songs to transition thoughtfully into each other. We’re writing about seemingly simple things like how to have friends, how to keep them, how to remember to engage with this person that you really care about. These are all topics that can’t be resolved in one song. They often require multiple revisits.

That approach afforded us the opportunity to take a melodic theme from one song and make it the bridge in another song. Or vice versa. We found we could do a similar thing with lyrical themes. It would have been almost impossible if we hadn’t been afforded this big chunk of time to lay the foundation together. We were living in a house together. We were spending almost every minute of every waking hour of every day together — having breakfast, talking about life, discussing music, catching up on what was going on with so-and-so’s cousin that we used to know growing up. Having that kind of time together allowed us to make this kind of record. If we were emailing each other lyrics or even just touching base a couple of times a day, it would’ve been impossible.

How long were you all living together?

Chris’s family drove out from New York, and we all spent two weeks together in a friend’s house in Santa Barbara. Then we spent another two weeks in LA. We weren’t all sleeping under the same roof then, but we were spending all day together. Our kids were getting together, our spouses were meeting each other for the first time, our dogs were all playing together. It was a really lovely and immersive experience. We were living out a lot of the stuff that we were writing and singing about.

That comes through on the opener, “Celebrants,” which is about that kind of reunion and the spaces between people. It really ushers you into this world.

We were thinking about that a lot. We were imagining our first shows for this album. We were talking about how that would feel and how great it would be if the first song on the album represented the way we think we’ll feel in those shows. “God, it’s good to see you!” But I guess we’re also singing it to each other. This is an album about the relationships that we often take for granted. Zooming super far out, it’s about how we feel about ourselves. This is just the stuff life is made of. There’s celebration, but there all those topics that we hope people don’t bring up. There’s all the wonderful stuff, and then there’s the mess. There’s that middle part of relationships that we often skip through. It’s not as sexy as the beginning or as devastating as the end. But it’s the bulk of life. That’s what we wanted to capture.

It also sounds like a way to mark time for you. It’s been nine years since the last Nickel Creek album, and it sounds like making this new one became a way to take in all the life that’s happened since then.

All of that’s absolutely true. We will always remember what was going on in our lives as we were writing this record. We were writing about what we were living, what we were experiencing. And we’re not unique in what we were going through, except in the context of us as a band. I think everybody craves intimacy, but we’re terrified of looking someone we don’t know in the eye. We all have a desire for true connection, but we’re allergic to the idea of friction. That’s where the warmth comes from. Friction. All the things are that true in physics are true emotionally as well. We need each other and we need differing points of view to have any kind of strength, but what’s required is the willingness to sit with that, the willingness to say, “I don’t agree and I’m still here.”

What kinds of conversations were you having about the music? It sounds like such an ambitious record, with an almost psychedelic quality to it.

I’m intrigued by what sounds psychedelic to you. There are some vocal bends that we came up with in the first two weeks, and they really set the tone for a lot of the vocals that we have on the record. The house had some high ceilings, and it was really a dream to sing in those rooms. There’s that moment on “The Meadow” where we’re all singing three-part harmonies, which bend and morph and separate and come back together. We were imagining this moment where everything goes into double vision for a second, then snaps back into clarity. I guess that might come across as psychedelic, but we were patterning it off those Sons of the Pioneers cowboy harmonies that we grew up singing. It was almost nostalgic to us, but also kind of trippy.

And when we all went to Nashville to record, we did take advantage of the studio. That became a surreal element, because the record isn’t meant to sound like a live show. It’s meant to sound like a record. That’s something that Eric Valentine, our producer and engineer, presented to us back when we were making Why Should the Fire Die? almost 20 years ago. He said that the studio isn’t doing its best job if you only use it to get the best live performance. That’s all fine. We’ve done that before, and we can do it again. But there is an opportunity, particularly with someone like Eric, to use it in a different way. Live shows are live shows, but the studio is an opportunity to do something totally different. On a lot of songs you’re hearing string sections that we built up in the studio. Chris played mandolin and mandola. You’re hearing Sean play guitar and baritone guitar and maybe also a high-strung guitar all at once, like on “Goddamned Saint” and “Failure Isn’t Forever” at the end of the record. I think we all played every instrument we had on “Failure Is Forever.” It’s a real curtain call. We were using all the tools we had on hand.

Photo Credit: Josh Goleman

Artist of the Month: Nickel Creek

Posted on by Editor

At the heart of Nickel Creek, you have three innovative acoustic musicians who are like family — the kind of family that can effortlessly pick up a conversation where they left off years ago. With Celebrants, their first new album together in nine years, the trio of Chris Thile and Sara and Sean Watkins brought their own families to a house in Santa Barbara, California, for a session of songwriting, singing, and simply catching up. A few years earlier, in 2020, they’d done an interview about the 20th anniversary of their debut album and soon realized that they needed to look forward as well. They recorded Celebrants in Nashville’s RCA Studio A in 2021 with producer Eric Valentine and bassist Mike Elizondo.

“There’s no substitute for time spent together, you know?” Thile says. “Take these old instruments we all play. Mine was built in 1924, so sound has been vibrating through it for almost 100 years. You can make a mandolin or violin or guitar now with the same care and skill and materials, but there’s no substitute for what age and use does to the wood. That’s what Sara, Sean, and I have together. We started this band in 1989, and at this point, music just vibrates through us in a different way than I’ve experienced in any other collaboration.”

Sara Watkins continues, “It’s cheesy to say, but it feels like coming home when we are together. But what is so valuable to me in my life about this band is it’s never about recreating something that happened when we were kids. Nickel Creek continues to be the most challenging musical experience that I’m engaged in. It is invaluable to have the comfort and the history and the deep appreciation for the life we’ve shared so far, and to be making music that feels unique and challenges me in new ways to be a better musician. You can’t have growth without a little resistance.”

“We have this crazy connection that’s lasted so many years and we’ve seen each other through so many different phases of life and been able to stay relevant in an honest way,” Sean Watkins adds. “We’re not trying to keep this alive. It honestly is just alive. We nurture it, but it’s just there. I think the older I get and see how many bands are dysfunctional, I appreciate what we have. And then on top of that, musically, it’s 100% fulfilling. As we’ve matured as a band, we’ve leaned on our strengths more. It’s just so fun. For me, singing three-part harmony with Sara and Chris is the best feeling. When we’re really doing it right, it doesn’t get better than that.”

Celebrants follows acclaimed albums such as the self-titled project in 2000 (produced by Alison Krauss), This Side in 2002 (which won a Grammy), Why Should the Fire Die? in 2005, and A Dotted Line in 2014. As other collaborative collections have appeared, all three members have been gracious with their time. (For example, we’ve interviewed Chris Thile about his newest solo album, his intriguing work with Goat Rodeo, and of course the always impressive Punch Brothers. Sara and Sean have chatted with us too, about Watkins Family Hour, the power trio I’m With Her, and Sara’s delightfully dreamy children’s album.) We’re pleased to say that we’ve conducted individual interviews with all three members of Nickel Creek for our Artist of the Month series, with those Q&As rolling out in the weeks ahead.

Until then, look for the band on tour. This month alone, they’ll deliver a kick-off show in Cincinnati, continue with a run of dates in New England, play three sold-out nights at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and close out the MerleFest lineup on Sunday, April 30. The family reunion doesn’t stop there, as shows are scheduled through October with a couple of European dates for good measure. Until then, enjoy our new BGS Essentials playlist for Nickel Creek.

Photo Credit: Josh Goleman

WATCH: Nickel Creek, “Strangers”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Nickel Creek
Song: “Strangers”
Album: Celebrants
Release Date: March 24, 2023
Label: Thirty Tigers

Editor’s Note: Recorded at Nashville’s RCA Studio A, Celebrants was produced by longtime collaborator Eric Valentine and features Mike Elizondo on bass. It’s the band’s first album of new material in nine years. Nickel Creek will perform three sold-out shows at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on April 27, 28, and 29.

In Their Words: “This song is an exploration of the ostensibly rewarding but often awkward, even excruciating act of catching up with an old friend. Can the connection be reforged? Should it be?” — Chris Thile

“This is a record about embracing the friction inherent in real human connection. We begin the record yearning for and pursuing harmonious connection. We end the record having realized that truly harmonious connection can only be achieved through the dissonance that we’ve spent our entire adult lives trying to avoid.” — Nickel Creek

Photo Credit: Josh Goleman

Top 10 Sitch Sessions of the Past 10 Years

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Since the beginning, BGS has sought to showcase roots music at every level and to preserve the moments throughout its ever-developing history that make this music so special. One of the simplest ways we’ve been able to do just that has been through our Sitch Sessions — working with new and old friends, up-and-coming artists, and legendary performers, filming musical moments in small, intimate spaces, among expansive, breathtaking landscapes, and just about everywhere in between. But always aiming to capture the communion of these shared moments.

In honor of our 10th year, we’ve gathered 10 of our best sessions — viral videos and fan favorites — from the past decade. We hope you’ll enjoy this trip down memory lane!

Greensky Bluegrass – “Burn Them”

Our most popular video of all time, this Telluride, Colorado session with Greensky Bluegrass is an undeniable favorite, and we just had to include it first.

Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris – “The Traveling Kind”

What more could you ask for than two old friends and legends of country music reminiscing on travels and songs passed and yet to come, in an intimate space like this? “We’re members of an elite group because we’re still around, we’re still traveling,” Emmylou Harris jokes. To which Rodney Crowell adds with a laugh, “We traveled so far, it became a song.” The flowers were even specifically chosen and arranged “to represent a celestial great-beyond and provide a welcoming otherworldly quality … a resting place for the traveling kind.” Another heartwarming touch for an unforgettable moment.

Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan – “Some Tyrant” 

In the summer of 2014, during the Telluride Bluegrass Festival we had the distinct pleasure of capturing Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan’s perfectly bucolic version of “Some Tyrant” among the aspens. While out on this jaunt into the woods, we also caught a performance of the loveliest ode to summertime from Kristin Andreassen, joined by Aoife and Sarah.

Rhiannon Giddens – “Mal Hombre”

Rhiannon Giddens once again proves that she can sing just about anything she wants to — and really well — with this gorgeously painful and moving version of “Mal Hombre.”

Tim O’Brien – “You Were on My Mind”

Is this our favorite Sitch Session of all time? Probably. Do we dream of having the good fortune of running into Tim O’Brien playing the banjo on a dusty road outside of Telluride like the truck driver in this video? Definitely.

Enjoy one of our most popular Sitch Sessions of all time, featuring O’Brien’s pure, unfiltered magic in a solo performance of an original, modern classic.

Gregory Alan Isakov – “Saint Valentine”

Being lucky in love is great work, if you can find it. But, for the rest of us, it’s a hard row to hoe. For this 2017 Sitch Session at the York Manor in our home base of Los Angeles, Gregory Alan Isakov teamed up with the Ghost Orchestra to perform “Saint Valentine.”

The Earls of Leicester – “The Train That Carried My Girl From Town”

In this rollicking session, the Earls of Leicester gather round some Ear Trumpet Labs mics to bring their traditional flair to a modern audience, and they all seem to be having a helluva time!

Sara and Sean Watkins – “You and Me”

For this Telluride session, Sara and Sean Watkins toted their fiddle and guitar up the mountain to give us a performance of “You and Me” from a gondola flying high above the canyon.

Punch Brothers – “My Oh My / Boll Weevil”

The Punch Brothers — along with Dawes, The Lone Bellow, and Gregory Alan Isakov — headlined the 2015 LA Bluegrass Situation festival at the Greek Theatre (a party all on its own), and in anticipation, the group shared a performance of “My Oh My” into “Boll Weevil” from on top of the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood.

Caitlin Canty feat. Noam Pikelny – “I Want To Be With You Always”

We’ll send you off with this delicate moment. Released on Valentine’s Day, Caitlin Canty and Noam Pikelny offered their tender acoustic rendition of Lefty Frizzell’s 1951 country classic love song, “I Want to Be With You Always.”

Dive into 8 of our favorite underrated Sitch Sessions here.

Basic Folk – Brittany Haas

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Fiddler Brittany Haas has an impressive resume: she started touring at 14 with Darol Anger, recorded her debut album at 17, started performing with Crooked Still before she finished college, has played on Chris Thile’s radio program Live From Here and done stints in David Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s David Rawlings Machine. Currently, she’s teaching workshops and classes in between working with her band Hawktail along with Paul Kowert, Jordan Tice and Dominick Leslie. Their latest album, Place of Growth, is a song cycle in appreciation to the natural elements, which have always intrigued Brittany.

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She’s a trailblazer in fiddling and also has an acute awareness of burnout. The past few years have seen her pursuing and obtaining a masters in social work and teaching classes at East Tennessee State University as their artist-in-residence. Our conversation includes a discussion of balance and awareness when it comes to keeping her music joyful. And then there’s science: she has a degree in Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Also, Hawktail’s latest album is a journey through the natural world. We talk about the band giving each other the space to be themselves on the record. Brittany is chill, brilliant and generous. Enjoy and then go listen to Hawktail’s new record all in one sitting.

Editor’s Note: Basic Folk is currently running their annual fall fundraiser! Visit basicfolk.com/donate for a message from hosts Cindy Howes and Lizzie No, and to support this listener-funded podcast.

Photo Credit: Dylan Ladds

Seeking Bluegrass in LA, Ed Helms & Amy Reitnouer Jacobs Made a Scene With BGS

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To commemorate the 10th birthday of the Bluegrass Situation, co-founders Ed Helms and Amy Reitnouer Jacobs are taking it all the way back to the beginning. In the first installment of an ongoing interview series, the enthusiastic bluegrass fans reveal how they first met, their shared vision for a modern aesthetic, and the meaning behind the unexpected (yet appropriate) name.

Amy: As we’re looking back on 10 years of The Bluegrass Situation, it occurred to me that you and I have never really reflected on how all of this started and how this thing kind of built up. So I wanted to get our own take on it and… reminisce, stroll down memory lane a bit, and think about it.

Ed: We need a little oral history for the archives! [laughs] And for our own… ’cause it’s exciting to reminisce a little bit.

Amy: I’ll kick it off and ask, what was your intro to bluegrass? Why do you care about this music to begin with and what drew you into it?

Ed: The earliest I can trace back would be growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. My mom’s from Nashville, so we would take road trips from Atlanta to Nashville all the time. In addition to that, I spent many, many summers at a summer camp in the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. That’s another road trip that’s about a three or four-hour drive from Atlanta.

So, on those drives, we’re always pulling off at truck stops and whatever, and we would pick up cassette tapes at the checkout counter. And my dad, who grew up in Alabama, was always a big fan of opera and classical music. He would grab these string band tapes for some reason. And I started listening to these very generic, early string band tapes when I was 8 years old in the car. They didn’t resonate with me as artists, but the music connected with me somehow. And I associated it with those places — Nashville and the North Carolina mountains.

Then as I got older, I was one of those kids that kind of thought everybody was fake, you know, like Holden Caulfield. Just distressed by all the artificiality of our world and of the people around me and like, “Oh, everyone at school, everything is so performative. Like, who’s real? Who’s the real deal?” And that kind of drew me, musically, into older and older music. I got obsessed with authenticity and where are the roots of things. … I think it scratched some itch that I had for authenticity-seeking, and probably allowed me to feel superior to all my classmates in junior high.

Then when I could actually get to a record store, I remember the very first bluegrass album that I bought was the Bluegrass Album Band. I didn’t know who J.D. Crowe and Vassar Clements and Jerry Douglas were, but all I knew was that on the cover of this CD at Turtle’s Records & Tapes in Atlanta was guys holding banjos and guitars and mandolins. So I bought that album and to this day it’s one of my favorite albums. I’ve never asked Jerry Douglas about this, I should, but it felt like the intention of those albums was to kind of just be the ultimate catalog of, you know…

Amy: I mean, it’s called the Bluegrass Album Band.

Ed: Right. They just called themselves the most generic name. And it’s almost like they were just trying to create a library of excellent bluegrass artists playing the canon or something. Or maybe they were really ahead of their time with like meta irony and they were just like, “We’re going to call ourselves the Bluegrass Album Band, ’cause it’s hilarious.”

And of course Tony Rice’s guitar playing on that – I was very much into guitar at the time, I later picked up a banjo – Tony’s guitar playing was so magical to me. I could not understand how human hands could play what he was doing. I would just pour over these solos. I remember the solo to “Your Love Is Like a Flower,” it just was like, how the hell is that being played? I could not wrap my head around it. And I listened to it a million times, and I didn’t have the technology to slow it down, so I couldn’t do that.

Amy: That album and that band really represent a generational shift. It’s not newgrass. It’s playing the canon, but with this mix of the new guard and some folks with some real cred from the second generation.

Ed: You’re right. It isn’t an old sound, what they’re doing. It’s a new sound at that time, because no one was doing Tony Rice licks before Tony Rice. But the harmonies are timeless and the structure of the songs is very traditional. That album means so much to me and I listen to it to this day and I’m still blown away! I actually can play that solo from “Love Is Like a Flower” now, but only at about half speed. And it’s one of the proudest things, when I finally found – someone had transcribed it in tablature, and I was like, “This is string theory explained. This is like if you had Carl Sagan sit you down and explain the mysteries of the universe.” I was like, “Holy shit, I got it! The holy grail!”

Amy: Yeah. To me, it’s still magic. ‘Cause I am not someone who can play an instrument, at least very well, so when I first heard bluegrass, I was just like, “How does that happen? How do you even get the notes from your brain to your fingers and do it so well, and in a way that I’ve just never heard before?” It still kind of blows me away.

Ed: Can I ask you the same question? Where did you first connect to bluegrass music?

Amy: I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and there was a lot of country and bluegrass around there. Admittedly, I didn’t like it because to me it represented… I mean, I was really busy listening to showtunes and learning Sondheim lyrics and stuff. I was that kid. And I just thought country and roots music was inherently uncool and representative of this place that I felt like I was stuck in.

It wasn’t until I went to college in North Carolina… It was probably the first few weeks of school, one of my housemates who is still a very dear friend of mine invited me to a show, and it was Nickel Creek. I had never heard of them. I had no idea what I was going in to and Erin said, “I just think you’re going to like this. Just come with me to the show. I’ll drive. We’ll go.” And I can honestly say, that show changed my life. I can still remember the whole show so clearly.

Ed: What year are we talkin’?

Amy: 2005? Somewhere around there. I was kind of reeling from it, because it had been a really long time since I felt like I had been challenged by music that was being played by young people, that I really connected with, but also was just kind of flummoxed by. From there it became a deep dive. I was really fortunate going to school where I did, that there was great bluegrass around. I mean, there was this bar about 30 minutes away called The Cave in Chapel Hill, and we used to go see the Steep Canyon Rangers play there every month. And I mean, this is a tiny underground basement bar, maybe holds 50 people, and they would just have bluegrass jams.

Ed: How close were you to Asheville?

Amy: It was about three hours from Asheville. Asheville is where we went for, like, fall break and our little weekend trips and stuff. We would go to Boone and Asheville, and even Mount Airy had a bluegrass fest that we went to. So that’s when I really started getting into it. And I could say, I think my first significant album purchase was pretty soon after that first concert. It was Why Should the Fire Die? by Nickel Creek. I played that into oblivion and had it in my car for like, 10 years, back when we kept stacks of CDs in our cars.

From there it kind of fell into the background, because I was studying film and I moved to New York. I was working all the time and didn’t really make space in my life for music. By the time I moved out to LA, I was working for a producer and I had one or two friends out here that I knew. Again, working a lot, not making any money and trying to find my place in the city, and not really connecting with a lot of the other assistants that I was meeting at the agencies. And I remember going to see the Get Down Boys at some bar on the west side of LA and having this thing reignited in me that I had felt back in college and was like, “OK, I think these are my people.” There was this momentum happening in LA at that particular time. And that’s how I started getting to know the scene out here and had the idea for the BGLA blog.

Ed: Tell us about BGLA.

Amy: I admittedly was a little bored at work. I was working at the Academy of Motion Pictures at this point, which was exciting, especially for three months of the year around the Awards, but the rest of the time was kind of slow. So I started this Blogspot and wrote about what was happening on the scene in Los Angeles. And then people started pitching me, cause I don’t think anybody was really covering it out here. So suddenly I was getting inquiries to interview these people… I mean, I started going really deep in the music and the history and background and getting to know the scene out here. But I remember getting connected to Sean Watkins (of Nickel Creek), and it was this beautiful, full-circle moment. It was the first time I met Sean and got to talk to him, and we became friends and kind of opened a whole other door to the roots music scene and what it could be. And then I think I met you pretty soon after that.

Ed: So when did we meet? I cannot remember.

Amy: Well, I remember when we first met, but I doubt you remember when we first met. I remember this because it was probably the most nervous I’ve been in my whole life. I saw you at a Sarah Jarosz show at Hotel Cafe. And I walked up to you and gave you one of my business cards for Bluegrass LA. And I was like, “I think you’ll like my blog.” That was it! And I don’t imagine you remember that, but that is technically the first time I met you.

Ed: At some point we had a cup of coffee to talk about possibilities.

Amy: Yes, that’s true.

Ed: But then maybe we bumped into each other… I assumed it was Largo, but I have the vaguest memory of getting a business card from you. So yeah, that part tracks.

Amy: Why don’t you talk about the LA Bluegrass Situation, because that predates me.

Ed: You weren’t even a part of the first LA Bluegrass Situation?

Amy: No. I was there. I went one night. But we didn’t know each other at that point. I just went as a fan.

Ed: The first time I ever went to Largo was when John Krasinski took me to see Aimee Mann playing at the Fairfax Largo. We went in through the back and I just was like, “Whoa, what is this incredible vibe?” This whole place is just so, so cool. And eventually Flanny (the owner of Largo) invited me to do stand-up on some people’s shows, and one night he said, “Why don’t you do a show?” And I thought, “OK, cool. It’d be fun to mix music and comedy.” So I think the first show that I did at Largo was called “Hams and Jams.” [Laughs] The idea was like, “Oh, it’s hams, like comedy people, and jams, music people!” And I just mixed up some comedians and musicians with a terrible name that Flanny was so gracious about rolling with.

We really loved that combination, but I was really struggling to wrap my head around the LA bluegrass scene. It just was so disparate, but somehow we managed to get excited about trying to cultivate the scene and coalesce things a little bit more. And I think that was the idea… that was the sort of original inertia behind the first LA Bluegrass Situation. The name literally just came from Flanny talking about it before we named it. He just kept talking about it as the bluegrass situation that we were dealing with. So then when it came time to be like, “What are we going to call it?” I was like, “Well, you’ve been saying this awesome thing because there’s something a little cheeky about a ‘situation.'” Like, it feels like, you know, “We got ourselves a situation, here!” Like it just kind of has some irreverence built into it.

So that’s what we named it, and Flanny and I both pulled as many strings as we could with whatever relationships we had at the time and put a totally magical lineup together. Like I still can’t wrap my head around it. I mean, it was Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch and Steve Martin and Steep Canyon Rangers and Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers and the Infamous Stringdusters… Oh, and of course the Lonesome Trio, my crew, with my friends Ian and Jake. We were sort of the hosts.

Amy: I remember I got an email from you not long after that, which was pretty shocking. What was the impetus of that, do you remember?

Ed: Yeah, I think that I was feeling pretty heady after that first LA Bluegrass Situation and probably getting over my skis a little bit and being like, “We can create the ultimate hub of bluegrass for Los Angeles and it will be this Tower of Babel that everyone will flock to!” I had so many ideas. There were so many things that I found lacking in Los Angeles that I had taken for granted in New York. There are just so many website resources. “You want a banjo teacher? Look here, there’s tons in New York City. You want to see what shows are happening? Look here!” You could just find stuff in New York City and you couldn’t find stuff in Los Angeles.

Amy: I look at the branding of that initial site and that first logo — I think DKNG did our first logo in Santa Monica — and I remember being really proud of the fact that we didn’t look stereotypical of the era.

Ed: You’re so right. And I give you so much credit for that because the very first LA Bluegrass Situation, Hatch Show Print did a bunch of posters for us. And they were so cool. I still have a bunch and I’m really proud of that, but it was also leaning really hard into a very conventional, stereotypical bluegrass aesthetic. It was a funny wake-up call for me – that plus your input. It helped me realize that what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go as fans and supporters of this idiom was not retro, like it was…

Amy: Forward-thinking.

Ed: Forward. And that artists like Chris Thile were doing that musically, right? But there was a little bit of a reckoning of “What’s our brand going to feel like? What do we want it to evoke? And who do we want to connect with? Do we want to connect with young people who are finding this stuff for the first time and finding it really fresh and exciting?”

Amy: That was always the crux of it for me. To a large extent, that aesthetic is still very alive and well within the roots music community. I had an inkling that there was an audience that had different tastes, but still could love this music and that it didn’t all have to look the same way. I could have never predicted where it went and what we’ve worked on since, but I think at the beginning we were very “of the moment.” It was the same time that Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers were on the top of the charts, and there was this kind of “authenticity” movement taking place.

Ed: I remember going to business meetings with Hollywood producers and one guy had a banjo in his office. And I was like, “You play the banjo?” And he’s like, “No, no, but I want to learn!” But you’re right. It was a moment. I’ve felt like an old fuddy duddy since I was 12 years old, but I was like, “Was I ahead of the curve here?”

Amy: Yeah, similarly, I’ve kind of always felt like an old soul; I never really felt like I truly fit in to my time, so I think there was something that really drew me in to that zeitgeist, but what amazed me was that once we really got into it, it was so much more complex and modern and exciting than I ever expected.

Editor’s Note: Look for the next part of this conversation with Ed Helms and Amy Reitnouer Jacobs in the weeks ahead.

BGS10: For Our Birthday Month, Here Are 10 of Our Most Memorable Videos… So Far

Posted on by Editor

As we celebrate a decade of the Bluegrass Situation, we’ve combed through our archive to reminisce and enjoy some of our favorite moments from the world of roots music. In lieu of our usual Artist of the Month feature, we’ve decided to shine the spotlight on our own musical history. Here are 10 picks that capture the road of how far we’ve come over the last decade…

 

Do You Play the Banjo w/ Della Mae @ MerleFest (2013)

Kimber and Celia of Della Mae wandered the grounds of MerleFest to ask the ever-important question: “Do You Play Banjo?” (Don’t miss a true BGS highlight at 2:30)

Back Porch of America series (2013)

Our first series premiere, The Back Porch of America was like stepping back into history as host Matt Kinman visits with Mark Newberry, a fifth generation chair maker on Jennings Creek, near Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee.

Imogene & Willie Listening Room – Langhorne Slim (2013)

See Langhorne Slim and friends Kristin Weber, Shelby Means, and Kai Welch perform “Countryside Shuffle” at the original Imogene & Willie store in Nashville for The Bluegrass Situation during our first ever AmericanaFest.

Soundcheck – Noam Pikelny (2014)

Soundcheck was a series that sat down with artists before they hit the stage.  In this episode, Noam Pikelny, recipient of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize and founding member of Punch Brothers, hung out with BGS ahead of his Nashville show in support of his 2013 release, Noam Pikelny Plays Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe.

Bonnaroo Superjam Finale – Lake Street Dive, Dierks Bentley, The Avett Brothers, Ed Helms, and More (2014)

The Bluegrass Situation held court for five years on That Stage at Bonnaroo, curating and hosting a lineup of our favorite musicians that culminated in an epic annual Superjam. we’ll always have a fondness for this particular night, when BGS co-founder Ed Helms lead the final number “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” (yes, the one from Dirty Dancing) alongside Rachel Price from Lake Street Dive, The Lone Bellow, Dierks Bentley, Sarah Jarosz, The Avett Brothers, and many many more of our favorite folks.

Live at Telluride – Chris Thile & Edgar Meyer (2014)

Check out that view! BGS & Mason Jar Music scoured the town of Telluride, Colorado to find this perfect beautiful spot for Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile to play “Why Only One?” during Telluride Bluegrass 2014, one of several jaw droopingly gorgeous videos from the series.

Live from Old Settlers Music Festival – The Earls of Leicester  (2016)

It doesn’t get much more legit than The Earls of Leicester, the bluegrass supergroup organized by dobro-master Jerry Douglas. Here, the guys gather round some Ear Trumpet Mics to bring their traditional flair to a modern audience.  One thing is for sure: those bow ties have never been cooler.

AmericanaFest UK – Birds of Chicago (feat. Allison Russell) (2019)

Folk duo Birds of Chicago (aka Allison Rusell and JT Nero) perform “Try a Little Harder” for BGS-UK’s first video series. This heartfelt performance was filmed at Paper Moon Vintage in Hackney, London, during AmericanaFest UK’s 2019 conference by Wonderscope Cinema.

Shout & Shine Online – Lizzie No (2020)

Harpist, songwriter, and Basic Folk co-host Lizzie No recorded the first of our Shout & Shine Online series, which comprises short-form, intimate video performances by underrepresented artists in Americana, folk, blues, and bluegrass.

Whiskey Sour Happy Hour – “The Weight” (Superjam, feat. Ed Helms) (2020)

Presented by our co-founder Ed Helms and the Bluegrass Situation, the superjam finale of the Whiskey Sour Happy Hour series features an all-star cast performing in their homes for a great cause. Thanks to the Americana Music Association, TX Whiskey, and Allbirds for their support in helping us raise over $75,000 towards pandemic relief

BGS Top 50 Moments: The LA Bluegrass Situation at Largo

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

It was 2010 when the true origins of “The Sitch” first materialized.  For five days in May, BGS founder Ed Helms congregated a lauded lineup of roots artists at the storied Largo at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles.  That first annual LA Bluegrass Situation festival included the likes of Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, The Watkins Family Hour, Gillian Welch, Will Ferrell, Jackson Browne, The Infamous Stringdusters, and Ed’s Whiskey Sour Radio Hour variety showcase.

In the festivals that followed, LABS brought in the likes of Nickel Creek, John C. Reilly, the Punch Brothers, Willie Watson, and many others before broadening to bigger venues across Los Angeles.  The online iteration of “The Bluegrass Sitch” wouldn’t come to fruition for another two years, but the heart of it was all there, on stage at Largo, from the very start.

Photo Credit: Lincoln Andrew Defour