Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek fame talks about ending her solo tour at Anthology, then going on the road with Garrison Keillor.
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Via NBC San Diego
By George Varga, POP MUSIC CRITIC
Nickel Creek veteran Sara Watkins ?doesn’t attract rowdy, alcohol-fueled hecklers at her concerts very often. But when she does, this multiple Grammy Award-winning San Diego violinist, singer and songwriter knows exactly how to handle the situation.
“I yell out: ‘Who wants to hear a Johnny Cash song?’?” Watkins said with a laugh. “Generally speaking, if you yell out something about Johnny Cash, even people who are drunk will pay attention enough to cheer — for Johnny Cash.”
It’s unlikely Watkins will encounter any seriously inebriated louts when she performs Saturday at Anthology, where she’ll do an opening set for fellow troubadour Vienna Teng. She returns to San Diego for an Aug. 23 show at Humphrey’s Concerts by the Bay on Shelter Island, where she’ll be co-starring as part of Garrison Keillor’s “A Prarie Home Companion Summer Love Tour.”
But when Watkins was doing a solo tour a few years ago as the opening act for Donavon Frankenreiter, ?she found herself facing an especially inattentive and abrasive crowd one night in Florida.
The venue was Free Bird Live in Jacksonville. The audience was loudly engaged, but with drinking and carousing, not Watkins’ lilting blend of bluegrass, country, folk, swing and sophisticated pop. The fact she was armed only with a violin, an acoustic guitar, a ukulele and a microphone did not help matters.
“It was the hardest show I ever did,” she recalled. “People were staring at me and talking and screaming. I couldn’t hear myself and I actually stopped playing at one point and put my guitar to my ear. But I learned a lot that night — mainly, that I should have a Johnny Cash song ready to throw out at the crowd.
“I learned a Johnny Cash song the next day, ‘If the Good Lord’s Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise.’ And I discovered that if I can get people’s attention three times in one night, under those (distracting) circumstances, I’d consider it a success.”
Success has been a near-constant in Watkins’ career since she was a child.
Now 28, she made her first album with Nickel Creek in 1993, when she and the band’s virtuoso mandolinist and singer, Chris Thile, were both 11. Watkins’ brother, singer-guitarist Sean, the third member of the group, was 15. He will probably join her on stage Saturday at Anthology.
In 2007, Nickel Creek became the first band to ever perform back to back at both the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals in Indio (the former an alt-rock marathon, the latter a country-pop extravaganza). The trio had risen to national prominence soon after its third album, 2000’s self-titled Nickel Creek, the group’s first for a major record label. It was produced by bluegrass queen Alison Krauss, ?the singer and violinist who would go on to tour and record with former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant.
“A huge thing Alison taught us is that energy and drive are not the primary factors that make an album last longer for listeners,” Watkins said, speaking from the North County home she shares with her husband and their Saint Bernard, Buckley. “What’s important isn’t the speed or the licks you play, it’s playing a few notes that you really mean.”
By coincidence, Watkins’ superb solo album, last year’s self-titled “Sara Watkins,” was produced by another Led Zeppelin alum, bassist, keyboardist and sometime singer John Paul Jones. He and Watkins had toured together in 2004 as part of Mutual Admiration Society, an all-star band that teamed them with the now-dormant Nickel Creek’s two other members, along with Toad The Wet Sprocket ?main man Glen Phillips and longtime Elvis Costello drummer Pete Thomas.
When it came time to record her overdue solo debut, Jones was only too happy to oblige. He surrounded her with such diverse musical luminaries as Gillian Welch, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ keyboardist Benmont Tench and pedal steel guitar master Greg Leisz (whose past credits include Joni Mitchell, k.d. lang ?and Bill Frisell).
“I’m on a couple of songs on Sara’s album and it’s great,” Tench said from Los Angeles. “I’ve played a lot with her and her brother, Sean, at Largo in Los Angeles, and it’s always a treat.”
An artistic success and a commercial sleeper, “Sara Watkins” has fueled several solo tours over the past year by its namesake. But with the economy still down and the record industry reeling, she is now assuming more direct responsibility for various facets of her career.
“It was a bit of an adjustment to go solo after being in Nickel Creek, but I’ve been really fortunate to have had so many experiences to draw from,” Watkins said.
“The main difference this year is that I’ve been tour-managing myself, which means I’m handling a lot more of the details behind putting the show on. I’m advancing all my shows, so I have to talk to the promoters at each venue about back-line (musical equipment), the stage plot, the backstage hospitality area and tour merchandise. I also have to figure out the best hotel options and how far we’ll need to drive between shows. I book everything online.
“But, typically, it’s getting to the gig that’s the work. Once you’re on stage, it’s fun, because it’s what you love to do.”
As for her national tour in August with “A Prairie Home Companion” mastermind Keillor, Watkins is eager to explore new artistic terrain.
“I’m really excited because it’s going to be totally out of my comfort zone,” she said. “I’m going to get to be more of a singer rather than a fiddle player, and focus my energy in a very different way. I’m excited to to see how Garrison crafts his show every night. He’s even asked me to do a couple of my own songs as well.”
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By David Moye
It’s safe to say that Sara Watkins knows a lot about music.
This Grammy-nominated fiddle player has been fiddling around with music for most of her 28 years (29 on June 8th) – since she formed the progressive bluegrass trio Nickel Creek with her brother Sean Watkins and friend Chris Thile back in 1989.
But at the height of its ever-growing fame Nickel Creek went on an extended hiatus and during that period, Watkins stepped out on her own as a solo artist, releasing an acclaimed self-titled solo debut CD last year.
The album was all Sara’s, but was, in its own way, a homespun celebrity affair. Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones produced the album, which includes performances by Tom Petty keyboardist Benmont Tench, singer Gillian Welch and Elvis Costello drummer Pete Thomas.
Watkins is currently on tour with singer/ songwriter Vienna Teng and Alex Wong and will be at Anthology on May 22. She recently spent an afternoon in a Carlsbad park discussing her music while walking her Saint Bernard, Buckley.
Q. So are you one of those people who can compose while on tour?
A. No, I cannot actually. And lately, I’ve been tour managing myself the last year and a half, so that leaves for very little creative time. But I’m hoping to do some more this summer by going on tour with Garrison Keillor. And even the tour with Dar Williams, a lot of that tour managing is not even going to come on my plate at all, so instead of worrying about directions and hotels and load-in times and setting up merch, I can have time to, hopefully, be creative and try and write songs and learn how to play guitar better.
Q. So when you are writing songs, do you do lyrics first or music first?
A. I like them to come together. If I am just writing lyrics, they tend to be just boring shapes. Like, AABB will be the rhyming scheme and it will be very boring lengths of phrases. So if I have music, I am more likely to form them together, rather than adapt music for a silly limited rhyme scheme.
Q. So are you more likely to write on the fiddle? The guitar? The ukulele? Do you play the mandolin or do you let Sean handle it?
A. I generally let Sean handle play mandolin. I write a lot on the uke and some on the guitar. I have written vocals on the fiddle. But many times, I’ll be driving around in the car and get my phone out and start singing melodies. Then when I get my guitar, I can sort of use that as a starting point and, hopefully, get it into some musical shape.
Q. You work with a lot of different people, such as Benmont Tench and John Paul Jones…
A. He produced my album!
Q. Any of them ever given you songwriting tips or advice? Little things you never thought you might use?
A. Most things they tell me are very useful (giggles). I never thought of them as not useful.
Q. I mean things you wouldn’t expect. Tommy Boyce, who wrote a lot of songs for the Monkees used to say he got the best ideas for songs and titles by reading comic books.
A. Hmm.
Q. Yeah, certain phrases….
A. Most of the things I’ve learned from those guys are from example. I just see how they do things and how they communicate where they want to go or when they’re not satisfied with something. And what makes them satisfied. Observing them is just the best way, because I don’t think these guys want to communicate in a teacher-student way, they just want to do their thing. And that’s largely how musicians communicate.
Q. So is there anything musically inspirational that comes from being your own tour manager?
A. Yeah, it makes me appreciate tour managers a whole lot!
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WHAT: Vienna Teng & Alex Wong with Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek
WHEN: Saturday, May 22nd, 2010, 7:30pm
TICKETS: $12 - $36 BUY TICKETS
MORE INFO: Artists’ Profiles
Stranger than fiction
A few chance encounters turn into a home-grown band
By George Varga
Pop Music Critic
2:00 a.m. February 6, 2009
Nearly 1,000 bands have performed at Street Scene since its inception in 1984, but Fiction Family may be the only one whose very existence can be traced back (or, at the very least, backstage) to the annual music festival.
In 2003, two of San Diego’s most nationally successful bands – the multimillion-selling Switchfoot, led by Jon Foreman, and the multi-Grammy-winning Nickel Creek, featuring Sean Watkins – were booked to play at what turned out to be the final Street Scene held in downtown’s then-rapidly expanding Gaslamp Quarter. 
In between performing with their respective bands and checking out the headlining gigs by Wilco and R.E.M., Watkins and Foreman met backstage.
“Living in the same town, we’d heard about each other,” guitarist-singer Watkins recalled, speaking from a recent Fiction Family tour stop in Atlanta. “So, my sister, (Nickel Creek violinist-singer) Sara, and I were like: ‘Let’s go introduce ourselves.’ And we did, and Jon and I exchanged e-mail addresses.”
“That’s correct,” said singer-guitarist Foreman, who – given the benefit of hindsight – now thinks the acknowledgments in the liner notes to Fiction Family’s impressive new debut album should be amended.
“We didn’t thank Street Scene. We should have, though,” he said. “That was such a great day of music. And it brought us together.”
Their brief encounter soon led to a chance meeting at the Encinitas Pannikin. It is about equidistant from the North County homes of Watkins and Foreman, who are both avid surfers.
Additional get-togethers at the Pannikin followed and the two began talking more seriously about collaborating on a musical project. Before long, they had co-written “Betrayal,” a lilting ballad from Fiction Family’s self-titled debut album. The duo, augmented by bassist-keyboardist Tyler Chester and drummer Aaron Redfield, performs here tonight at downtown’s plush, all-ages Anthology.
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Click here to read the rest of the article in the
Fiction Family, the project from Jon Foreman of Switchfoot and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek, are giving away a pair of tickets for their San Diego performance at Anthology on February 6. Click the widget to register for going.com and to enter the contest.
Via sddialedin.com
Duo features vocals of Jon Foreman, Switchfoot frontman and bluegrass stylings of Sean Watkins, Nickel Creek guitarist
SAN DIEGO, CALIF., Dec. 12 – Fiction Family, a collaboration between Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman and Nickel Creek guitarist Sean Watkins, will share their indie rock and acoustic sound with listeners during an intimate, one-of-a-kind live music experience at Anthology on Fri., Feb. 6.
Technically, Foreman and Watkins met 12 years ago, in the parking lot of the Off Shore Surf Shop in Carlsbad—both had emerged from the water, and a mutual friend introduced the two. But it wasn’t until much later, backstage at San Diego’s Street Scene music festival, where Switchfoot and Nickel Creek were performing one after the other, that the two hit it off and decided to record a song together.
What began as a pet project turned into something more once the two began playing together: an album whose organic, spontaneous genesis can be felt in its authentic, free-form songs. The resulting self-titled album will be released this month.
Fiction Family released their first single “When She’s Near” for free download on their website.
Website: www.fictionfamily.com.
Show details:
Fiction Family will perform on Feb. 6 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 and are available at the Anthology Box Office, by calling 619.595.0300 and at www.AnthologySD.com.
Anthology is located at 1337 India Street (between A and Ash Streets).
Recent note since release:
“The album has been well-received amongst many review publications Relevant Magazine calls the project “wildly inventive and spontaneous… the work stands in victorious defiance against a crumbling conventional music industry.” JFH praises the diversity of the record, saying “each song is meticulously crafted, and strikingly different from the eleven other songs on the record.”Stereo Soundwaves likened Foreman’s and Watkins’ efforts to what “put The Beatles and The Eagles on the map.” The album reached as high as No. 5 on iTunes’ top overall albums on its first day of release.” - Wikipedia -
Fiction Family is Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek and Jon Foreman of Switchfoot. From their MySpace page:
“The wait is nearly over. Fiction Family’s debut record is eponymous and upon us….. relatively, being that we’ve been threatening to release it for the last couple years.
Fiction Family is myself (Sean Watkins) and Jon Foreman (Switchfoot) and we’ve been working on a record together for the last three years. Unofficially we met maybe 12 years ago, in the parking lot of Off Shore Surf Shop in Carlsbad, CA. We both had just gotten out of the water and were introduced by a mutual friend who wanted us to meet cause we were musicians….we shook hands and gave each other a smile that said…”sure you’re in a band, aren’t we all?” But officially, we met backstage at a music festival in downtown San Diego called Street Scene. Nickel Creek and Switchfoot were playing one after another.”
Fiction Family will play at Anthology on February 6, 2009
