A Conversation with Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins – HuffPost 4.2.14

Mike Ragogna: I feel like your new album, A Dotted Line, is like Nickel Creek 3.0, skipping right by 2.0. What in the world happened here, Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek?

Sara Watkins: [laughs] I think nine years happened. You know what’s funny, whenever I think back on that time, I think of the last show that we did which was in November of 2007. For me, I think it’s only been seven years because a lot of things happened during the last two years of the band where we diversified a lot and relaxed a lot with knowing that we were going to put it on the shelf for a while and relax into who we were as a band a little bit and enjoy it in a new way. I think that was really good, to put it on the shelf when we did. Each of us have had these really great career adventures in the mean time and in so doing I think we’ve lived a lot of life. We have dug into a variety of projects in the time that have strengthened us. I can really only speak individually in detail but being invited to be a part of touring as a sideman for The Decemberists for about seven months between two of my solo records was great because I had time to work on songs and I also got to be on stage with this great band that has an amazing reputation with their audience and puts on a show in a way that felt completely different to Nickel Creek. It was so much fun.

Getting to be a part of Prairie Home Companion over the years and seeing how Garrison Keillor relates to his audience, it’s a very different show from Nickel Creek. What he does is so special and so unique and so personal and millions of people identify with it and love it and I think those are two examples of things that I’ve gotten to be a part of but there are so many more where you get to see people, you get to open for people or be on tour with people who do a show in a completely different way and bring these people together and develop this relationship with their audience. There are so many ways to do a show and to be a performer and so many ways to have a relationship with the audience, to see that diversity was really great, and then being able to use that diversity that I saw and was able to be a part of in my own shows to figure out what I want to do and how I want to do shows and the songs that I want to write and bring it to a point where I get to have this relationship with the audience was really great. Those are the kinds of things that happened over the seven years for me that have made me a stronger individual musician. Because of that, I feel like I’m a better teammate in whatever band I’m in. I can only imagine, those being my experiences, that the guys have gone through something similar. I think being stronger individuals has made us a stronger band.

MR: And also I would say beyond musical growth, because of different affiliations and different adventures that you were having on your solo projects I’m imagining that as people you all grew up, so you’re bringing more than just the music. You and your brother have gone through whatever you’ve gone through, Chris has gone through the Goat Rodeo and also his stuff, so that has probably also matured the band.

SW: Yeah, I think those things are very closely related. Who you are as a person and the things that you go through effect the way that you see the world, which then effects your output. Especially when you have the luxury of your job working through that output. I mean, everybody puts things into their world, but it comes through your soloing even, when you’re not even saying words who you are as a person and what’s going on in your life will come through your solo. Or it should come through in your soloing. And I think when you’re singing and writing words it’s even easier for that to be understood and interpreted through what you’re writing. Also, as a band, our personal relationship has always effected the music. There have been times over the years where we’d get in a fight before a show where one of us would be passive aggressive and be mad at the other person and then somewhere during the show there’s this whole apology and forgiveness that takes place on stage and the audience has no idea but we do. It affects how we play and it affects how we relate to each other on stage. We’ve never really faked relationships with each other, it’s always been a very straight thing. I know a lot of bands just don’t like each other and they function for a long time like that, but for us we always got along really well. I think respect for each other and appreciation of each other is a big thing that we enjoy sharing in the band and it makes playing music together a lot more fun.

MR: “Destination,” “Christmas Eve” and “21st Of May,” these are recordings that I never would’ve imagined Nickel Creek releasing the last time out. Yes, the band always innovated within bluegrass and within “folk-meets-country-meets-bluegrass,” but this time out, you’re adding even more elements.

SW: Yeah, I think that a lot of that is these individual traits that I feel like we’re bringing to the table, and that we couldn’t have done it on the last album because that was nine years ago and we were in our mid twenties at that point. There’s a big difference between mid-twenties and early thirties. I was, what, twenty-four when we made the last record and I’m thirty two now? That’s a big difference in life. I feel really good about it, I really enjoy the age that I am now and I enjoy music from this perspective. I feel very comfortable and really happy at this age. I think it suits the nature of the band as well. Our second record felt a little more adolescent in some ways, and on the third record, we were actually on a little bit more solid ground. I hope that with this record, we were able to make another firm step onto something worth stepping on.

MR: “Christmas Eve” is such an unusual, progressive song with all the key changes in presents. How does your creative process these days differ from the old days?

SW: It felt really balanced this time around. In the past, there were a lot of times when someone would bring a song in and have a pretty clear picture of what it would sound like. We would customize it a little bit, but there was a fairly fully-formed picture of what the song should sound like in the composer’s mind. This time around there were a couple of tunes where that happened, but there were more instances where we collaborated really well together and all that had to do with was communicating in a new way like adults and appreciating those things in each other that we had–after living in such tight quarters for so long, spending more time together than apart–forgotten to appreciate, even though they’re worth appreciating. I think that the distance had been nice for us to see each other in a new light and regain that excitement and appreciation for each other. I think it’s been really healthy for us. “Christmas Eve” was something that Sean wrote; he started it a while back and not finished it. He had the first verse and chorus and didn’t quite know what else to say about it and it hadn’t been finished, so he got it to the band and we worked on the bridge together and adapted it, maybe changed a chord here or there, but that first initiation was from Sean and then we finished it together. He wrote all the lyrics, but musically, it was a great collaboration on the parts that hadn’t been written yet. A lot of the songs were like that. We had a really good time working together on it, it wasn’t a struggle at all. The things that were a puzzle to be solved were a little challenging, but it wasn’t because of personal issues, it was just trying to find all the pieces to solve the puzzle.

MR: Does it feel like now, more than in the past, there is a contentment and trust within the band, where when somebody brings something in creatively, it very easily becomes a group property that everybody works to make the best song or recording possible?

SW: Well, there are fundamental issues that are totally resolved for us. That is clear. Another understanding that we have always had as a band is that whoever’s singing the song needs to be comfortable and feel good about the lyrics that we are singing. What we did on the album is whoever was singing the song wrote the lyrics and then once they were at a pretty final stage, we’d go through them and if there were tiny things that could have been changed, we’d talk to them. But the bulk of the lyrics are written by whoever’s singing them. There were lots of discussions beforehand trying to figure out what they should be, how to describe what they’re about and the metaphors to use and making sure of continuity and tense, but we have a fundamental agreement on the starting place for things. I think any band that’s been together for a number of years develops a certain way of communicating and just this common language of what they expect from a song, where they should go with something or important ways to treat a song, balancing it out, making sure there are surprises, things like that. It’s not so comfortable that any one of us could create a Nickel Creek song without the others. I think input has always been important and actual collaboration is important, but there are certain fundamental values to songs that I think we agree on and when we work on a song together it comes out in a way that it just becomes a Nickel Creek song. Sean and I could work together and it wouldn’t be a Nickel Creek song. We have a lot of the same values when we work together that we do with the band but there’s ust something very special–it’s the same thing with Chris and I, we’ve done some things together but the way Sean plays and the way he sings and what he adds is very specific. It’s been really fun getting to experience our individuality in a new way. Having stepped away for a long time we’re stronger individuals and yet there’s still this great familiarity from all the years we’ve played together.

MR: Do you have any pet songs on this project?

SW: “Destination” is a pet song for me just because I have such a long history with it, I’ve been wanting to write it for a long time and I just couldn’t figure out the right lyrics and I struggled with the lyrics a lot on this , just to find the right way to say what I wanted to say. So there’s a little bit of satisfaction just knowing that I finally did it and made it and played it into existence, and then there are songs like “Christmas Eve” and “Love Of Mine,” that one took a particular journey when we were writing it, it was fun discovering where that song would end up. That one I feel very close to. The covers are really fun and interesting as well, it’s nice to sing songs from another person’s perspective sometimes. “Where Is Love Now” is a song that I’ve been singing for a while. We even did it at a few Nickel Creek shows back in the day, but we never recorded it. I considered recording it on a solo project but I hadn’t really found the right place for it, and I’m glad because it was a really nice contribution to this album. And “Hayloft,” which Chris brought in, is so fun. That’s going to be great live.

MR: It seems like Sam Phillips is everybody’s best kept secret. I don’t understand why.

SW: Yeah! She’s definitely a songwriters’ favorite. She’s great, and I don’t know why she’s not better known. I really love her stuff for songwriting and she did a performance at Largo in LA that was such a great show, it was really well put together, really thoughtfully done and had tones of vibe and a killer band. It was really good. She doesn’t perform much, but when she does it’s worth seeing.

MR: How are you doing these day on a personal level?

SW: I’m great, I’m doing really well. I moved to Los Angeles in the last few months, my husband and I got a place on the east side and we love it, we’re having a great time and feel very much at home here after about ten years of commuting. I’m doing really well. I’m just starting to gather songs for my next solo record and figuring out the shape of that and what sort of direction I want to go in terms of its location and people and all that. It’s good. It feels like things are moving in the right direction.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

SW: Ah. See a bunch of shows. Go to as many shows as you can and try to invest yourself in a community of players who are lifers and who you can just be with and share life with and play with. It’s important to go to shows but it’s also important to learn other people’s songs. There’s a lot of songwriters who only know their own songs. A lot of my favorite songwriters are also great song collectors and they learn songs they love and there’s this great appreciation. Music is not like a painting where it just exists and that’s it and everyone has to look at that painting to appreciate it. You can learn other peoples’ songs and enjoy it within yourself. Some of my favorite songwriters, Jackson Browne being one of them, Gillian Welch, Willie Nelson, Fiona Apple, all of these people who are very active in music and have been their whole lives are huge song collectors and know a boatload of songs. They know what they love about them and they love them so much that they learn them because they just want to be able to sing them all the time. In learning them you find new ways to appreciate them and you kind of figure out, “Oh, that’s why I love that second part so much,” because it ties in with this other thing that was happening or it sends you in a direction thinking about something that will pay off in the third verse, or the rhyme scheme doesn’t make sense at all but for some reason it just feels so good. I think that is a very important thing for young artists.

MR: Twenty-five years…who would’ve thought it, huh?

SW: I know. It’s funny, it just feels normal to me. I grew up in this band. So it feels very, very normal. It’ll definitely be a celebration, to be on stage together, but it’ll also feel like the most normal thing in the world.

Transcribed By Galen Hawthorne