The bluegrass community’s cup runneth over: After a near decade-long drought, the notes are flowing from Nickel Creek once again. The Southern California group returned to their roots as a twangy trio earlier this year with Celebrants, Nickel Creek’s first studio album since 2014’s A Dotted Line. But even with a nine-year gap between their mandolin-plucking past and present, guitarist Sean Watkins says the group still offers a gushing wellspring of inspiration, both in the studio and on the road.
Ahead of Nickel Creek’s long-awaited return to Boston — scheduled for Saturday night (April 22) at MGM Music Hall —Vanyaland chatted with Sean Watkins about the band’s lifelong chemistry, a “seamless” reunion, and the recording session that connects Celebrants to Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”
Dive in below.
Victoria Wasylak: Celebrants is your first release in nine years, and this is your first tour together since 2014. Did you feel a bit rusty jumping back into the game? What did you do to shake it off?
Sean Watkins: Not one bit. Every time we come back together it’s like the morning after the last night we hung out, interpersonally and creatively, even if it’s been years. We realize that’s rare but it’s always been that way for us and it makes jumping back into the creative process pretty seamless. At the very beginning of the writing process for Celebrants, we all met at a friend’s vacation house in Santa Barbara [on] February 18, 2021. We arrived early evening, had dinner, and after our significant others and kids had gone to sleep, Sara, Chris and I stayed up musing about what the record could be. Dreaming as big as we could. The next morning we got up, made breakfast, drank some coffee and started the writing process pretty much from scratch. And we were off.
The music industry has changed so much in the past 10 years, with the building power of streaming and social media. How does it feel for Nickel Creek to be active again in this new landscape? What are you doing differently, if anything?
Not much. The process for us has always been to write and record the best music we can dream up, put it out in the world, and then to tour behind it as much as we can and makes sense. And that’s basically what we’re continuing to do. Our managers and the powers that be are dealing more with the technical side, which indeed has changed a lot, but it’s not our area of expertise by any means so we leave that stuff up to them. We post on our socials just like we do for our individual projects but we don’t have the time or bandwidth for much more than that. Speaking for myself at least.
What was it like to record at RCA Studio A, given its incredible history? Who’s your favorite artist to ever record there?
It was an unbelievable experience for which we we are eternally grateful. For the last number of years Dave Cobb has had that room locked down so unless you were working on a project with him, you didn’t have access to it. Our producer Eric Valentine is pals with Dave and so he very generously let us use it for about four weeks. It’s an incredibly large space which Eric Valentine utilized to the nth degree with mics everywhere, close and as far away as 30 to 40 feet behind us as we recorded. That enabled him to get a real depth of sound that you just can’t get in a smaller space.
Every morning when we walked into the studio to work, we’d get this intense feeling of reverence and inspiration because of all the incredible music that’s been made in the room over decades. I only know a small fraction of the people who recorded there, but that doesn’t matter, the vibe is oozing from the walls. One really cool factoid is that about two to three feet from where Chris’s station was is where Dolly recorded “Jolene.” So I’d have to say Dolly. We love Dolly.
You each have your own creative projects outside of Nickel Creek, such as Live from Here, Watkins Family Hour, and I’m With Her. What do you get from Nickel Creek — be it a feeling or experience — that you can’t get anywhere else?
Nickel Creek is completely unique from all our other projects because we’ve been doing it since we were kids. I was 12 and both Sara and Chris were 8 when we started as a band. We realize it’s crazy that we’ve been able to stay a band this long, especially considering we started that young but there’s something about that bond and family feel the three of us have that is at once comforting, but also equally challenging in the best possible way. I think that’s what keeps us coming back to it, the feeling of knowing that we’ve all got each other’s backs while also pushing each other to new places creatively every time we get together to work on new material.
Sure we talk about old times and reminisce, but by no means is that the driving force. The driving force is making something new that we’re all super excited about. What have we each learned while working on other projects away from Nickel Creek? Let’s try and incorporate those elements and make something new! We all just love it so much and I think the older we get the more we realize what it is we have and never want to take it for granted.
The band has commented that Celebrants is largely about the nuances of human and harmonious connection. With the Boston show coming up, this feels appropriate to ask: What do you do at your shows to make sure everyone feels that togetherness?
Well, I should clarify to say it’s an album which thematically leans heavily on the idea that there is beauty and hope in the act of embracing the friction inherent to any meaningful relationship. As humans, we tend to run away from/avoid interpersonal friction at all costs, and the downside of that is we end up tripping-up and in our own little information bubbles, which is not ideal by any means. And as far as how we try and translate that message live, it’s actually not something we have to try at all to do. It’s sort of inherent in the whole concept of doing a show. It’s bringing people together into one room and for a couple hours we’re all in the same boat.
We’re reminded of our commonalities and that the things that unite us are far greater and more powerful than the ones that divide us. And ideally, we all leave at the end of the night with our heart cups full and with a rejuvenated sense that dissonance is not something to be tossed aside, but rather something that works hand in hand with consonance. One needs the other and that’s such a beautiful idea.
NICKEL CREEK + GABY MORENO :: Saturday, April 22 at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, 2 Lansdowne St. in Boston, MA :: 7 p.m., all ages, $26.50 to $66.50 :: Event page :: Advance tickets