Metro Pulse/Music/Nickel Creek

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Who:
Nickel Creek with Robinella and the CC String Band and Tennessee Schmaltz

When:
Thursday, April 26

Where:
Market Square, downtown

How Much:
free

Nickel Creek combines bluegrass and pop—and good looks—to storm the acoustic music world

by Matthew T. Everett

It's just past 10 a.m. in Nashville, and Sara Watkins, the 19-year-old fiddle player and vocalist for Nickel Creek, apologizes for her raspy voice. "I just got out of bed 30 minutes ago," she says.

But there's really nothing to be sorry about. Even this early, Sara's voice sounds as angelic as it is on Nickel Creek's self-titled debut CD on Sugar Hill Records, where it shimmers gently above a sparkling clean blend of bluegrass, Celtic folk music, and soft country pop that has generated an unprecedented buzz in acoustic music circles. "It's really crazy," Sara says. "It's just been growing and growing, and we're all happy with it."

Since Nickel Creek, produced by Alison Krauss, hit the shelves last year, the band has attracted critical acclaim and an enormous swell of fan support. Their videos for the singles "Reasons Why" and "When You Come Back Down" have been in heavy rotation on the country music network CMT; guitarist Sean Watkins, Sara's 24-year-old brother, just released a solo album, and Chris Thile—at 21, already regarded as one of the best mandolin players in the country—has one in the can, set for a summer release. The band appeared on Austin City Limits earlier this month, and they just finished recording with Glen Phillips, the former lead singer for alternative popsters Toad the Wet Sprocket.

It's easy to credit Nickel Creek's sudden success with the band's fresh-faced Southern California good looks. There's little doubt that that's played some part, especially in getting their videos such widespread circulation. Sugar Hill, after all, has already changed the cover of their album, putting a group shot of the three remarkably photogenic youngsters on the front to take advantage of their clean-cut sex appeal.

But it's not so easy to dismiss their music. All of them started playing early—Sara picked up the fiddle at 6, Sean's been playing guitar since he was 8, and Chris began on mandolin when he was just 5. And the band itself, with a name taken from a song by Texas fiddler Byron Bernstein, has been together for 10 years, honing their chops at bluegrass festivals across the country as teenagers and learning tricks from newgrass pioneers like Edgar Meyer, Mark O'Connor, Bela Fleck, and Sam Bush.

"It was an awesome way to grow up," says Sean, who trades off on lead vocals with his sister and Thile. Nickel Creek reflects that apprenticeship, with the crisp production and streamlined virtuosity of the newgrass movement. But it's also added a great deal of pop charm, with easy melodies and restrained, understated outbursts of technical proficiency. Even though they all have sufficient chops for all-out jam sessions, the band keeps everything under control and in complete service to the songs.

During the early years, the band had plenty of notoriety as a group of talented kids. They're all glad to be breaking out of that novelty routine.

"When we were younger, everybody always said, 'You guys are really good, for kids,'" Sean says. "We were kids who could kind of play, but we always wanted to be legitimate and out on our own. The young thing, people still apply that to us, but it's less focused on the fact that we're young."

The band members' willingness to pursue projects outside Nickel Creek may also save them from the collapse that comes after overnight stardom. Besides the solo records, and Sean and Sara both play in several local bands back home in San Diego.

"We thrive on doing outside projects," Sean says. "We're growing together as a band because of the separate things we do. It keeps the band kind of fresh and fun, because we're all creative on our own, and that helps when we all come together."

Sara hopes the outside influences will eventually coalesce into a definitive Nickel Creek sound, a combination of all the kinds of music they love that gets a special treatment once it's in their hands. "I've started listening to more Celtic, jazz, some of the better pop stuff, and I think that comes through," she says. "I like all of that a lot, but I hope it's not schizophrenic, that it becomes a little bit of who we are. We're still working on synthesizing it a bit so that it all becomes the Nickel Creek sound."

Whether it's a luxury or burden to do that with a national audience, they're glad to be where they are. "All we can say is, our basic goal is to bring what we do to a larger and larger group of people," Sean says. "And it seems to get bigger every day."