(Editor’s Note: Welcome to our Reissue series! For the next several weeks, Basic Folk is digging back into the archives and reposting some of our favorite episodes alongside new introductions commenting on what it’s like to listen back. This episode featuring Cindy Howes interviewing Chris Thile was originally posted on September 9, 2021, after Chris released his solo album, Laysongs. Enjoy!)
Chris Thile has been making music nonstop since he was five years old. His musical parents found him a mandolin and he started taking lessons and jamming at nearby Southern California pizza shops. He met Sara and Sean Watkins when he was twelve, and they started Nickel Creek. In the meantime, Chris’ parents moved the family from California to Murray, Kentucky, and really started getting serious about evangelical Christianity. This would have a huge impact on Chris; his record Laysongs asks a lot of questions surrounding his experience with religion as a young kid. He talks about the transition from being a family with no religion in their routine to being enveloped so intensely in faith.
Another important aspect that comes along on the album is Chris’ striking love for classical music. His grandparents gave him some pieces by Bach and set him up for a lifetime of studying and playing classical. Elsewhere in our Basic Folk conversation he gets into what it was like to grow up alongside Sara and Sean as bandmates, friends, and fellow Christians. One of the themes of the new album is about community, namely, engaging in a community that you love. Chris recognized that he dissented from Christian community in his young adult life where everyone was thinking the same way – Chris felt excluded, so he left. Now, in music, he’s found a new community where everyone thinks the same, so still certain people are excluded. He talks about how the pandemic helped further shape those feelings about exclusionary community. We also get into a riveting conversation about Chris’ thoughts on writing simple pop music and one of his deepest passions: wine.
On the album cover for singer-songwriter Katie Gavin’s solo debut album, What A Relief, she sits half-dressed in the middle of her shiny, sage-green bedspread with various clothes and possessions strewn around her and the floor; even the cat stands awkwardly mid-sit or stand, it’s hard to tell. The immediacy of this messy in-between moment conveys the intimacy Gavin reaches to again and again on the album.
I want you to see me When you’re not looking I want you to fuck me When we’re not touching
The album’s opening track, “I Want It All,” exhumes a lust for connection so all-consuming she knows already, “I’m gonna lose my mind / I’m gonna lose…” But it’s also Gavin’s thirst for and attention to these acutely relatable moments of humanity that render the album enticing.
“I’m really hungry for connection. And I think that in putting out songs that express that, or putting out images that express that, and having it met with understanding gives me that experience of like ‘we’re all humans having a human experience,’” Gavin says. “I want to push myself in terms of what I allow other people to see.”
Much of Gavin’s career has been with pop band MUNA (who opened for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour earlier this year). Solo, Gavin sheds her dazzling pop-star persona and the trappings of MUNA’s spectacular auditory and stage presence, retaining their honesty and emotional precision. What A Relief, which was produced by Tony Berg, is a collection of 12 songs Gavin wrote on the side over the past seven years. With them, and a clarity born of self-assurance and yearning for connection, Gavin pulls up a chair to settle in for a heart-to-heart with her audience.
“Some days you do your best / Some days you do what gets you out of bed…” Gavin sings on “Casual Drug Use,” possessing an inscrutable ability to pinpoint reality neatly and poignantly. That realism remains throughout the album, which unfolds as a masterful look at the human condition through the micro view of Gavin’s relationships with the world, herself, and others. Many times, she sounds so thrillingly close to the microphone it’s as if she’s singing right into your ear.
As she winnows down her experiences to a few kernels of truth, Gavin deliberately and deftly seeks accessibility and relatability without catering to weirdness or discomfort simply to make a point. “I am pleased with the same chords, over and over, as long as there’s a story and someone is saying something compelling,” she explains.
Her lack of pretense serves as shorthand for her palpably raw portraits of life: “But I think this is as good as it gets, my love/ I think this is as good as it gets/ Pray to god that you think that it is enough…” she sings in “As Good As It Gets” – which features guest vocals by Mitski – about a relationship that is not always a fairy tale. It’s an acknowledgement that you can both love someone and be underwhelmed by them, at least some of the time.
“‘As Good As It Gets’ reflects this big question that I’ve had for a long time, and I still have about what is reasonable to expect from a romantic relationship. And how good is it supposed to feel?” she says.
Elsewhere on the album, in “Sanitized,” Gavin carefully takes a wet washcloth to the bottoms of her dirty feet, afraid to stain her lover’s clean bed (“I lie perfectly still so I don’t mess up my hair/ I’m a sanitized girl, I clean up for you my dear”); or promises not to stalk her ex online, except “once in a while I’ll wanna know if you’ve died,” as she muses in “Keep Walking.”
Growing up in Illinois, Gavin’s parents gave her free reign to explore music and she gravitated unsurprisingly to pop music, entertaining preteen love for the Spice Girls and Samantha Mumba, and teen obsessions with Riot Grrrl, Gravy Train, and the Weepies’ “Gotta Have You.” She also gravitated toward queer, explicit music (Gavin is queer, but was in the closet at the time). When she started writing her own music as a teenager, her mother introduced her to Imogen Heap and her father stoked her folkie music interests with Jackson Browne and Jim Croce.
Gavin’s broad musical tastes inform her writing of course. In the case of What A Relief, she draws particularly on her love for John Prine’s flawed, human characters, and perverse, weirdo songster Loudon Wainwright III whose Attempted Mustache remains one of Gavin’s favorite albums.
“It’s the same magic that’s in a lot of John Prine songs, where these people aren’t afraid to talk about what real people experience in their real lives, even if it’s really silly, and then really mixing that with the profound.”
Silly mixed with the profound is perhaps the best possible description of Gavin’s own music. In the middle of the album, Gavin drops the bluegrass-folk portrait “Inconsolable,” about generational baggage’s impact on our well-being. Wrapped around a divinely-gratifying fiddle melody (she brought in Nickel Creek’s Sara and Sean Watkins to add a little extra bluegrass cred to the track) the song is first and foremost a reflection on learning to be vulnerable while falling in love.
It’s an experience that feels every bit as familiar as Gavin’s messy bed, but in a way that seems to make sense for the very first time – the gift of a stellar songwriter. More than that though, “Inconsolable” is a study in the way tiny moments elevate Gavin’s songs through her allegiance to the balance between silly and unvarnished experiences. We’ve all curled up on the couch hesitant to show how we’re really feeling.
But I’ve seen baby lizards running in the river When they open their eyes Even though no one taught them how or why So maybe when you kiss me I can let you See me cry And if we keep going by the feeling We can get by
Mid-verse, Gavin pivots from the endearing image of baby lizards learning to swim to emotional vulnerability in a fledgling relationship with the blockbuster realization that salvation and connection again might just come from that blind leap of trust.
Gavin’s quest for an honest examination of emotional intelligence stems in part from time spent with her grandparents, two of whom she lost in the last few years. Soaking up their stories, she thought about how much they endured and how many times older generations weren’t afforded a chance to be heard, or to feel their feelings.
Elders teach both by omission and by passing the torch. In “The Baton,” What A Relief’s anthemic third track, dedicated to the lineage of socially and generationally inherited womanhood, Gavin outlines her understanding of resilience as it passes from mother to daughter. Imagining what she’d say to her own daughter, Gavin also reaches to the wisdom from generations before her:
I’d pass her the baton and I’d say you better run ‘Cause this thing has been going For many generations But there is so much healing That still needs to be done
Not for rebellious reasons, but rather to instill a deep love of self, by the end of the song, Gavin’s come out the other side as her own mother.
“It’s a sense of learning, a sense of ownership and agency and learning to really listen to myself and trust myself, like if I’m going into a situation that I’m nervous about,” she explains. That’s a transformation not unlike her experiences writing the album, which she started when she was 24 and concluded at the age of 31: “You’re kind of moving from this archetype of maiden to mother.”
“I’m aware of a younger part of me that might be nervous and might have needs,” she says. “I often talk to her and say, ‘I got you, you’re coming home with me.’ And, ‘You don’t need to worry that I’m gonna forget about you or give you away to somebody else, or make you tap dance for somebody else.’”
Part of mothering yourself is finding your pitfalls and learning to prevent them. For Gavin, that includes thinking about addiction a lot, well beyond drug use.
“I can get addicted to a lot of different things; I can get addicted to different processes; I can get addicted to people; and I can get addicted to looking at furniture on Facebook marketplace,” she says. “I was thinking about this idea that when we as humans get stuck in the process of addiction, the things that make us feel good, and our actual relationship with the world gets smaller and smaller.”
That idea became the song “Sketches,” wherein Gavin distills addiction into a two-dimensional study of self reduction. In a simple acoustic guitar and cello-accompanied track, she imagines her character reduced to a sketch by an overbearing relationship: “That the deeper I’d go/ The smaller I’d get…” until she takes back control, painting herself back to size.
“The process of recovery has been really one of expansion, learning that I can feel intimacy and connection and pleasure and joy from so many different experiences in life and from so many different people,” Gavin says. “And there’s something that just feels very profound about that for me in this time.”
Even when it comes to writing about climate change, Gavin filters her stories through our relationships to one another. It feels more effective than shaming people for not recycling, she says. In “Sparrow,” she ruminates on the dangers of the quick fix, hoping in vain for the song of a sparrow in spring, only to discover that the tree it would perch on has died of a cure applied rashly and without thinking.
But perhaps Gavin’s most profound relationship moment on the album comes when she eulogizes her dog in “Sweet Abby Girl.”
“She’s taking up most of the mattress/ Can’t imagine being so un-self conscious/ She’s pushing her back up against my legs…” Abby becomes a foil for Gavin’s insecurities, as throughout the song she considers the vulnerability within unqualified love for another being.
Buried late in the album, “Keep Walking,” its penultimate track, reveals Gavin’s raison d’être: “What a relief / To know that some of this was my fault.” Superficially, it’s a breakup song. But it’s also a relief for Gavin’s to put these songs into the world, to share another side of herself, and forge new connections with listeners.
Fundamentally, we get through hard times by laughing with our friends, Gavin says. As she’s matured as a songwriter, she’s been drawn to including those moments of levity in her songs. Invariably, they feel like the best of conversations with friends and lend themselves well to What A Relief’s stripped-down, singer-songwriter format.
“There was just something funny about this idea of putting out this part of me that had up until this point been unexpressed; it does feel like a relief to just let it out,” Gavin says. “I like the sentiment in the song … ‘what a relief to know that some of this was my fault,’ which is just agency. I haven’t behaved perfectly, and that gives me some space to have compassion and forgiveness for you.”
“Real life” is such a tired phrase. Gavin’s version, though, feels scintillatingly, comfortingly relatable, and like her messy bedroom, gives the listener agency to let go and just be, too. What a relief.
As a duo rooted in both Celtic and American traditions, we find the intersection of these worlds to be a rich and endlessly inspiring place. From the rhythmic drive of Irish & Scottish reels to the melodic storytelling of ballads, we’ve always been captivated by how these two traditions speak to one another. They each carry a sense of community and history, and both offer the chance to push boundaries and explore something new.
Our latest album, Now, O Now, wants to embrace this duality. It’s a reflection of our love for these traditions, but also a hope to continually reinterpret them. This Mixtape is a collection of the kinds of tunes and songs that have shaped our journey – music that evokes both the wild energy of a late-night session and the quiet contemplation of a solo walk through the woods.
These tracks are selected from the voices of friends, mentors, and heroes who have inspired our original music along the way. We hope you enjoy the mix! – Rakish
“6 Then 5” – Seamus Egan
We love to put this track on at the beginning of a long drive. Seamus continues to be a master of bringing together composition, sound design, and groove.
“Goodbye” – Sean Watkins & The Bee Eaters
This whole record is great; it combines Sean Watkins’ brilliance with the thoughtfulness of The Bee Eaters, who happen to be some of our favorite musicians in the world.
“765” – Rakish, Jamie Oshima
We composed these tunes and had the idea of having our good friend Jamie Oshima produce/remix the track. He’s an incredibly thoughtful and agile musician and brings such a unique aesthetic to new fiddle music. Thanks Jamie!
“Hidden Love/Sheila Coyles” – Four Men & A Dog
We listened to this album in the car recently and this track was so good that Conor had an epiphany about how it brought together all the elements of arranging music that inspire him: highly poetic language, mystery, and an excellent Irish tune.
“City In the North” – Maeve Gilchrist
Maeve is remarkable at seemingly everything she puts her hands to; this song highlights not only her virtuosity and inventive harmony, but also her narrative ability to weave melancholy and joy.
“Bull Frogs Croon (Suite)” – Aoife O’Donovan
This whole record is potent for so many reasons. Aoife’s setting of Peter Sears’ poems is a reminder of her singular gift for putting melody to text, and Jeremy Kittel’s string arrangements are some of the best we’ve ever heard!
“Jack Dolan” – John Doyle
Just of the grooviest versions of a ballad ever from the preeminent master of Irish guitar in the modern era.
“Imaginary People” – Viv & Riley
Viv & Riley are at the forefront of writing incredible original music inspired by their traditional music backgrounds. We’ve admired them for a long time and they always blow us away.
“6 O’Clock in the Morning” – Darrell Scott
Tristan Clarridge, who always has the best listening recommendations, turned us onto this album. This track stands out with its intense lyricism and amazing instrumental orchestration.
“Turn the Page Again” – Tim O’Brien
We’ve loved this song for so long. This whole album is incredible, but this track in particular has been a source of inspiration by bringing together Tim’s songwriting, John Doyle’s groove, and Casey Driessen’s improvisational style.
“We’ve Got Our Friends” – Maura Shawn Scanlin
Maura’s solo record impeccably brings together the many things she excels at (and some of the things this playlist hopes to demonstrate): instrumental acuity, lyrical thoughtfulness, and masterful arranging.
“Strange Vessels” – Caoimhin Ó Raghallaigh & Thomas Bartlett
Conor listens to this album all the time. It’s a source of inspiration and a reminder to make music that feels relaxed and to not use too many notes.
“Dear Starling” – Pumpkin Bread
This is a favorite tune from a band with some of our best friends we were a part of in our college days. Thanks for listening!
On March 29, Beyoncé rode sidesaddle onto the world stage and took us all by storm with the release of her eighth studio album, Cowboy Carter.
Cowboy Carter arrived as the second installment of a three-act project that commenced with Renaissance in 2022. Renaissance incorporated house, disco, hyperpop, R&B, and funk while reclaiming the Black queer roots of dance music. On Cowboy Carter, she similarly reclaims the Black roots of country, blending it with folk, rock, R&B, hip-hop, classical, house, and gospel throughout.
Prior to the release of Cowboy Carter, country has been a longstanding muse for Beyoncé. While her affiliation with the genre was popularized by Lemonade’s “Daddy Lessons,” her first country-leaning performance dates back to nearly a decade earlier when she performed “Irreplaceable” with Sugarland at the American Music Awards in 2007.
Potent and impeccably saturated, Cowboy Carter makes clear that country is inarguably a huge part of Beyoncé’s creative and cultural identity. However, her presence in the genre has not always been well-received; in an Instagram caption 10 days before the album’s release, Beyoncé revealed that CC was largely inspired by an experience where she “did not feel welcomed” into the country fold. Many speculate that this refers to her appearance at the 2016 CMA Awards. The network received racist backlash after she performed “Daddy Lessons” with the Chicks, prompting the erasure of the song’s video from the show’s website (though a representative from CMA later denied the correlation between those two events).
Of Cowboy Carter Beyoncé writes, “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me.”
Beyoncé alchemizes a multitude of influences and collaborators across the gargantuan album in order to achieve the monumental musical feats of CC. With a credits list that sprawls for seemingly miles, Beyoncé enlists a number of guest artists, co-writers, producers, and musicians. Between them, they represent the Black roots of country, pay tribute to Black Americans’ impact on the genre, include legendary country artists and well-known side musicians and collaborators that assert the project’s roots in country, and represent the bright and diverse present and future of country by featuring several lesser-known Black country artists, many of which are also genre-bending in their own work.
In a list that is by no means comprehensive, here are just a few of the contributors that brought their musical magic to Cowboy Carter.
Rhiannon Giddens
“Texas Hold ‘Em” made history as the first hit single by a solo Black woman to top the Billboard’s Hot Country Songs Chart and 10 weeks later, as of this writing, it maintains its gilded perch. Fittingly, the song opens with the warmth and drive of the legendary Rhiannon Giddens strumming a standalone fretless, clawhammer gourd banjo. The talented multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer of many mediums, and roots scholar also sprinkles notes of viola throughout the track.
It is no coincidence that Giddens’ banjo playing, like much of her work, pays homage to the lineage of Black influence throughout roots music. Referred to by many as a “performing historian,” Giddens has spent her career shedding light upon the cross-cultural interweavings of the genre. Here, in an interview, she details the West African origins of the banjo, an instrument essential to American country music that was initially brought to the Americas by enslaved Black folks who used gourds and other accessible materials to recreate instruments of their homelands. By showcasing Giddens on the track, Beyoncé introduces a sonic representative of overlooked histories while uplifting one of the most celebrated Black musicians in modern day roots music.
Robert Randolph
Raised in a secluded religious community, Robert Randolph grew up without secular music. The renowned pedal steel guitarist heard only the music played within the House of God Church of Orange, New Jersey, for decades. He learned the instrument through Sacred Steel, a Black gospel tradition developed in the ’30s that highlighted the steel guitar during religious services.
During his early adulthood, Randolph became exposed to the world of music beyond; as he absorbed jazz, blues, funk, rock, and soul, he soon set out layering his gorgeous pedal steel tones upon a fusion of genres, particularly alongside his band, Robert Randolph and the Family Band. Across his musical arc, he epitomizes Beyoncé’s philosophy that music is transcendent; “All music is related,” he says. “Gospel is the same as blues. The only thing that changes is hardcore gospel people are singing about God and Jesus and in the blues people are singing about ‘my baby left me’ and whiskey.”
Justin Schipper
Like Robert Randolph, Justin Schipper is also credited for steel guitar on the track “16 Carriages.” A Nashville-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer, Schipper is a prominent figure in the current country landscape. His talents have landed him on tour with Josh Turner and Shania Twain (playing pedal steel and dobro), and he has gigged with the likes of Carrie Underwood, Chris Stapleton, Kris Kristofferson, Florida Georgia Line, and more.
Cam
Cam (given name Camaron Ochs) co-produced and co-wrote five songs on CC. An American country singer and songwriter, Cam began her career songwriting for musical giants in the industry such as Sam Smith and Miley Cyrus. Since then, she’s released three of her own studio albums with songs inspired by the songwriting styles of Patsy Cline, Ray Charles, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, and Joni Mitchell, amongst others. A prominent figure in the current country landscape, Cam lends crucial insights and layers with each of her contributions.
Sean & Sara Watkins
Renowned in the current bluegrass/newgrass scene, this sibling duo lends guitar (Sean) and fiddle (Sara) to the track “II Most Wanted.” Sean and Sara epitomize the familial quality so integral to bluegrass; their first band, Nickel Creek, was formed in 1989 alongside virtuoso Chris Thile when Sara and Chris were only 8 years old and Sean was 12. The siblings have been playing together ever since; Nickel Creek would go on to release seven albums, the latest of which, Celebrants, was released last year.
In 2002, the pair began The Watkins Family Hour as a monthly musical showcase featuring their friends and other collaborators in Los Angeles. Spanning over 20 years, the WFH has blossomed expansively. In fact, the pair released their third studio album, Vol. II, in 2022, a celebration of the project and the community surrounding it. Similarly to CC, the list of features for Vol. II is extensive, featuring the likes of Madison Cunningham, Willie Watson, Jackson Browne, and Fiona Apple, amongst others.
Stevie Wonder
A child prodigy who became blind shortly after birth, Stevie Wonder is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He makes his contribution to CC by layering tasteful harmonica atop the sonically rich layers of “Jolene,” a reimaginative cover in the shape of Dolly Parton’s 1973 classic. Much like Beyoncé herself, Wonder is a trailblazer who, as Beyoncé stated in her Innovator Award speech at the iHeartRadio Awards, “defied any label placed upon [him].” From jazz to soul to funk to R&B to gospel to pop and beyond, Stevie Wonder has influenced and inspired creators across infinite genres and blendings with his vibrant propensity for experimentation. In the same speech, Beyoncé poured out a fountain of gratitude towards the legend, who presented her award —“Thank you so much Stevie, I love you,” she said. “I love you and I honor you. I want to thank you for making a way for all of us. […] Whenever anyone asks me if there’s anyone I can listen to for the rest of my life, it’s always you. So thank you, God bless you.”
Brittney Spencer, Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts
These four women are responsible for the ethereal background and third verse vocals for “Blackbiird.” Additionally, Spencer, Roberts, and Kennedy also lend background vocals to “Tyrant,” while Adell’s voice is woven into the sweeping harmonies of “Ameriican Requiem.”
Initially released in 1968 on The Beatles’ self-titled album, (colloquially known as “The White Album”), Paul McCartney wrote “Blackbird” in response to witnessing on television the harassment and violence that Black students endured upon attending newly-integrated schools. In 2018, he told GQ that he was particularly influenced by the young women who constituted, in part, the Little Rock Nine in Alabama — a nickname for the first nine Black students to desegregate the formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
As McCartney explained to TODAY, “In England, a ‘bird’ is a girl, so I was thinking of a Black girl going through this; now is your time to arise; set yourself free; take these broken wings.”
Within her illustrious arrangement of the classic, Beyoncé pairs the initial guitar track recorded by McCartney with the vocals of herself and these four Black women whose careers are actively altering the historically whitewashed landscape of country. By including them, Beyoncé nods towards McCartney’s intended meaning of the song while actively uplifting these young women so that they may prosper in a genre that undervalues and mistreats the Black artists who continue to give it wings. Brittney Spencer, Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts each have burgeoning careers in the genre that are largely influenced by traditional country sounds and themes.
Willie Nelson & Dolly Parton
In addition to inviting in many Black artists and roots musicians, Beyoncé strategically inserts more commercially successful country greats whose values align with her own. As Willie Nelson tells his faux-radio station listeners in the track “Smoke Hour II,” “Sometimes you don’t know what you like until someone you trust turns you onto some real good shit. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m here.” This line candidly demonstrates an awareness of the unfortunate truth that a vast array of today’s country fans are white listeners unlikely to take this music seriously without ample accreditation from respected white artists.
Merely four days after the release of CC, likely due in part to the inclusion of Willie and Dolly, the number of first-time listeners of Beyoncé’s music had increased by 85% on Spotify.
Willie Nelson, who celebrates his 91st birthday this year, is renowned for his left-leaning activism (especially advocating for the legalization of marijuana — hence the nomenclature of his feature tracks “Smoke Hour” and “Smoke Hour II”) and his role in pioneering the Outlaw Country movement. Outlaw Country began in the ’60s as a subgenre to rebel against the conservative suppressions, sonic and otherwise, of the country industry at the time. Willie and his like-minded contemporaries strove to achieve creative freedom beyond the political and sonic standards that dominated Nashville.
Similarly, Dolly Parton has used her platform, influence, and capital to enact social change. In addition to being an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University in 2020 to go towards vaccine research amidst the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of 2024, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton are widely regarded as two of the most successful American country artists of all time. Nelson holds 12 Grammys from 57 nominations, and continues to tour (in fact, he is actively on the road again right now). Dolly has accrued a total of 11 Grammys from 50 nominations over the course of her career and recently gave a dazzling performance at the 2023 NFL Thanksgiving Halftime Show. The amount of esteem and respect each has garnered throughout their careers grants Cowboy Carter a certain amount of credibility within the wider country circuit.
However, it is clear that Beyoncé doesn’t just merely use these two for their name recognition. She is, indubitably, a seasoned scholar in the history of American country music and respects the discography of both artists immensely. While both give narrative voice-overs, Dolly also lends background vocals to “Tyrant” and, of course, shares songwriting credits for the innovative cover of her song “Jolene” that appears on the album.
Willie Jones & Shaboozey
Willie Jones joins Beyoncé on CC to lend his resonant, smoky vocals on the duet track, “Just for Fun,” and to “Jolene.” Having gotten his start as a contestant on the X Factor in 2012, Jones is currently making a name for himself as contemporary Black country artist that Grammy.com refers to as a “country-rap iconoclast.” As proves to be a crucial theme throughout Cowboy Carter, Jones galvanizes cross-genre musings to make a sound that is entirely his own.
Similarly, Shaboozey is a rapping Black country artist who represents the future of the genre. Combining hip-hop, rock, country, and Americana, Shaboozey further embodies the blending spirit behind CC. His contributions to the album include rapping verses on both “Spaghettii” and “Sweet Honey Buckiin.”
Linda Martell
Beyoncé ingeniously laced together Cowboy Carter to demonstrate the past, present, and future of Black musicians who have influenced the American roots music; and Linda Martell stands as a crowned example of the past. Martell, now 82, was the first commercially successful Black woman in country. In 1969, she made history as the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry, and she held the status of highest peaking single by a Black woman on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles Chart for her song “Color Him Father” until Beyoncé’s very own “Texas Hold ‘Em” took its place.
However, Martell’s success was short-lived; she left Nashville and country music altogether in 1974 after receiving racist backlash following the release of her first album. Nearly every live show was corroded by racial slurs from belligerent audiences, and her label eventually shelved her music when her single, “Bad Case of the Blues,” failed to do the numbers they were expecting. As Martell postulates on the CC track “Spaghettii,” “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.”
While Martell’s career arc fell victim to the confines of hegemonic racism within Nashville (and the country at large), her appearance on Cowboy Carter pays tribute to her historical strides for Black artists nevertheless. The track “The Linda Martell Show” (wherein Martell poses as the host of her own radio show) acts as a foil to Willie Nelson’s “Smoke Hour” — Beyoncé here reimagines the career of Martell, granting her the accreditation to host her own show, something history previously never afforded her.
Miley Cyrus & Post Malone
Beyoncé’s respect for innovation rings loud and clear in her inclusion of Miley Cyrus and Post Malone on CC. Each share a vocal duet with Beyoncé on the album — Miley sings “II Most Wanted” and Post Malone contributes to the track “Levii’s Jeans.”
Though both are primarily known as pop artists, each has a career largely informed by their capacity to genrebend. Miley, daughter of country icon Billy Ray Cyrus and God-daugher of Dolly Parton, adds additional credibility to Beyoncé’s country venture. Throughout her career, Miley has traversed country, rock, pop, and R&B.
Similarly, Post Malone has woven together pop, alternative R&B, hip-hop, and indie throughout his career, and many speculate that he will soon release a country album.
It should be noted that both Miley Cyrus and Post Malone have been able to immerse themselves in genres that are historically Black throughout their respective careers. That both have moved between country and R&B without controversy is telling; their capacity to do so seamlessly and successfully demonstrates how white artists are able to express themselves fluidly without systemic repercussions. It is this very ease that Beyoncé wishes to cultivate for artists of every race; in her Instagram post about the release of the album, she writes, “My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist’s race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant.”
Raphael Saddiq
Referred to by music critic Robert Chrisgau as the “preeminent R&B artist of the ’90s,” Raphael Saddiq made mark as an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist. He rose to fame in the ’90s with his R&B/soul group, Tony! Toni! Toné!, and went on to have a successful solo career. Additionally, he has produced songs for musical giants such as Erykah Badu, Stevie Wonder, TLC, D’Angelo, Solange Knowles (Beyoncé’s sister), John Legend, and more.
He is credited 18 times over the course of Cowboy Carter for his producing, writing, and instrumental contributions to the tracklist.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At the Bluegrass Situation, we are fond of the fiddle! Sometimes its nuance will get overshadowed by the acoustic guitar or the banjo, but in our hearts, the fiddle always holds its own. Can it rouse a crowd of country fans in a dancehall in Texas? Yes. Can it make you weep when you hear it on an Alison Krauss record? Every time. Will we ever get tired of hearing “Orange Blossom Special”? Can’t even imagine that.
Throughout the month of February, we’re shining a light on some of our favorite fiddle content, like this excerpt from Mark O’Connor’s upcoming memoir, this Mixtape from Turnpike Troubadours’ Kyle Nix, or this interview with Becky Buller. It also seems like the right time for a (double) stop by our BGS archive. Here are five of our favorite clips along with a brand new BGS playlist at the end.
Jason Carter, “King of the Hill”
One of our newest videos finds Jason Carter and friends jamming in the Station Inn dressing room, just before an album release party at Americanafest. Joining him on this Bruce Hornsby song are Cody Kilby (guitar), Ashby Frank (mandolin), Cory Walker (banjo), and Alan Bartram (bass). Carter told BGS, “This song is for anyone who’s ever had a dead-end job or had a boss like a prison warden.”
Che Apalache, “Red Rocking Chair”
Joe Troop of Che Apalache brings an international flair to the fiddle, balancing his North Carolina upbringing with a South American history lesson. How does he bridge the gap? Find out in our BGS interview from 2018.
Watchhouse, “Hey Adam”
On their very first trip to Los Angeles in 2014, Watchhouse (then Mandolin Orange) shared a special performance of “Hey Adam.” The poignant narrative of the song, written by Andrew Marlin, is beautifully underscored by the elegant harmony and gentle fiddle of Emily Frantz. In 2019, we caught up with the duo for this BGS Cover Story.
Punch Brothers, “My Oh My / Boll Weevil”
You can count on Punch Brothers to consistently deliver something cool, even if you can never predict what they’re going to do next. Back in 2015, BGS filmed the guys outside of the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, California. A few years later, in 2018, we interviewed all five members individually for our Artist of the Month series. During our visit, fiddle player Gabe Witcher shared his childhood memories of meeting a very young Chris Thile at Follows Camp Bluegrass Festival and even playing with Bill Monroe at Strawberry Bluegrass Festival.
Sara and Sean Watkins, “You and Me”
The Bluegrass Situation emerged from the West Coast acoustic scene, so we have to give props here to California natives Sara Watkins and Sean Watkins. They’ve been friends of BGS from the beginning and we’re always delighted to follow along on their creative journeys. That includes the time we ushered them into a tiny gondola in Colorado, resulting in this wonderful 2014 live video of “You and Me.” We’re thrilled about the new Nickel Creek record coming in April, which follows Watkins Family Hour’s terrific collection (and conversation) last fall.
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
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