Nickel Creek: Three-Part Harmony

Thile, you’ll find, employs similarly matter-of-fact language to describe the band’s genesis, reflecting, “I can’t remember making the choice to be in Nickel Creek – it just happened.” To a kid too young to drive, it might indeed have felt that way. He and the Watkins were carted by their parents to weekly bluegrass shows at a San Diego pizza parlor, to music lessons and, eventually, to bluegrass festivals, camps and contests. This went on for a full decade – during which time they also made a couple small-time recordings – before they released their polished, Alison Krauss-produced, self-titled national debut.

It’s worth revisiting the pastoral music video for “The Lighthouse’s Tale,” a fine-grained storytelling ballad Thile co-wrote for that album. Though already operating at an elite level of musicianship, he and Sara were still teenagers at the time, and Sean was barely into his twenties. Much of their material – that nautical tragedy included – conveyed an almost Victorian sense of romanticism and destiny, and there was a decorous elegance to their gauzy vocal delivery.

On This Side, released two years later, a puckish rendition of the Pavement tune “Spit On A Stranger” – from the acerbic, indie rock architects’ 1999 album – signaled Nickel Creek was also attracted to less inhibited artistry, something they held in common with not a few of their college-age peers. Sean chuckles, “We didn’t do that in order to be like, ‘Hey guys, you like this, right?’ It was what we liked, and it just happened to be what they liked.”

Thile went all-in on indie rock on his solo album Deceiver, which opened with “The Wrong Idea,” a song that suggested a public figure valiantly wrestling with his clean-cut, parent-pleasing image. Why Should The Fire Die?, the Nickel Creek album that followed a year later, boasted the production of pop-punk guru Eric Valentine, a nervier vocal attack and the unvarnished expression of songs like “Somebody More Like You” and “Best Of Luck.”

“It’s like being a teenager, you know?” says Sean of the band’s creative evolution. “You think you’re growing up and you’re happy with who you are, and then the next year you’re a different person. You might not be as proud of who you were …That’s kinda how early records are for a lot of bands, to a certain extent. I think that our first two records were a good representation of where we were at that point. But when we made Why Should The Fire Die?… it was kinda like we found what we’d been looking for for a while.”

That didn’t mean that they’d exhausted their potential. For one thing, Chris and Sean had supplied the band with original songs for years, but Sara had only just begun to dip a toe into songwriting.

“There were times in Nickel Creek that I didn’t feel a lot of ownership over some of the arrangements,” she shares. “I wasn’t as involved in the writing process back then. It all feels so healthy on this new record, all the contributions that we each came up with, and the way that we worked with each other and fed off each other’s input and ideas and perspectives.”

She’s convinced the trio’s seven-year hiatus made A Dotted Line possible. “We spent our lives together up until I was, let’s see,” she says, pausing for a quick calculation. “26? It was good to have some separation, just to live life as my own person, away from the influence of the people that I was touring with, Sean and Chris. Just to see how you react to things when you’re with different people, and see what you think about things, and become your own person.”

Sara’s stepped up as a front woman, all right. She now has a pair of solo albums under her belt, 2012’s Sun Midnight Sun in particular showcasing a singer and songwriter who’s closed the distance between her inner emotional landscape and its artful outward expression, and who moves with ease between trad folk and postmodern pop idioms alike.

Sean’s played an essential supporting role in his sister’s projects, plus the two of them have kept up their long-running Watkins Family Hour residency at the Los Angeles club Largo. With several show regulars – Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Glen Phillips included – Sean assembled the folk-rock collective Works Progress Administration. Then there’s Fiction Family, Sean’s Cali soft rock duo with Switchfoot leader Jon Foreman; they’ve taken a pen pal-like approach to recording albums. Sean’s also been preparing his first solo set in years. “It’s been really fun to kind of find my own voice musically, outside of Nickel Creel and all these other ways,” he says. “I’ve kind of discovered what I feel like is a good, honest voice for me, musically and lyrically.”