Twofer: Nickel Creek Concert and Sarah Watkins Interview

On April 15th I had the privilege of seeing Nickel Creek in concert! Finally I had an opportunity to redeem myself after having passed up an $8 show in Missoula before they had gotten a big name. My wife and I forwent Donald Trump's Apprentice finale in favor of a night at the Big Easy in Spokane, WA.

If you're not familiar with Nickel Creek they're a newgrass band. Newgrass is the genre of new-style bluegrass. The band consists of Sara Watkins on fiddle, her brother Sean Watkins on guitar, and Chris Thile on mandolin. Sean pronounced his finger-pickin' friend's last name as Thee-Lay, so I expect that's how we should say it too. In the early days, Chris' father played the upright bass, but now they have another guy, who also has some clogging skills.

The Big Easy is a general admission only venue, so we didn't get any special seats. Actually, we didn't get seats at all, we were standing for the entire three hour show, including the opening act. It was an all-ages party as well, which meant when I bought a Fat Tire I had to stay behind a certain line with it, which was unfortunate because my party was on the wrong side of the line. They had some video projectors and really cheap home video cameras mounted on the walls with 12x digital zoom features. In other words the video was crap. Worse than crap. Big Easy needs to hire a video tech and spend some dough to upgrade their system. Or just turn off the video and stop pretending. Their audio setup was nice though, and not a note was lost, which is the important point in a concert like this.

We arrived at the packed house at show time, about 7:00 p.m. and made our way through the thick crowd of kids until we found some people we knew. Some gal named Mindy opened for Nickel Creek, and even though my friends and wife liked her style, I thought she was drunk and imprecise. Those are musical terms. In any case, Sara Watkins introduced Mindy and disappeared for an hour or so, and came back out with her crew.

From the two albums I own, the only ones that are still in print and the ones produced by Alison Krauss, I got the impression that Sara was sort of playing third fiddle (be aware of pun!). Also the fact that Sean and Chris both have their own solo albums out and Sara doesn't (yet?) gave me that impression. At the show this is not the case. She stole the show with her incredible fiddle action and stage performance. Chris was a close second and Sean just sort of played his guitar while no one was watching. Maybe he's shy.

Article Author: Russell Mann

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