individual togEthRness
DANNY McELHINNEY INTERVIEW
Individually, Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan are successful artists within the broad church of American roots music. Now, they’ve come together under the name I’m With Her. The three had met each other many times at the impromptu jam sessions to which the folk, country and bluegrass genres particularly lend themselves. However, after playing together at Colorado’s Telluride Festival in 2014, the idea began to germinate that, great though they were individually, the sum of their parts could add up to something special.
‘Telluride was the first time we sat down together and tried to arrange a song or two specifically for the three of us alone,’ Sara Watkins tells me. ‘It was only a short time after, that we thought of playing together as a unit.’
You may know Sara and her brother Sean from the platinumselling band Nickel Creek. They also formed W.P.A. together with members of The Attractions and The Heartbreakers among other bands. They were dubbed a ‘supergroup’ but that’s not a term she would apply to I’m With Her.
‘The reason we don’t like the term “supergroup” is that it seems to be about the individuals coming together, yes, but for each to sing their own songs. We, on the other hand, have formed a real band with each of us contributing to a body of songs that are ours as a group,’ she says.
‘We live together and try to do as much together as we can. In doing that, you develop a huge camaraderie and that can maybe fast-track you artistically into becoming a great band.’
Both she and Irish-American performer Aoife O’Donovan have the experience of working within a group dynamic, although Sarah Jarosz , or just ‘Jarosz’, as Watkins calls her, doesn’t seem to be suffering for the lack of it.
‘I don’t think it’s a huge stretch for her because the culture we’ve all come from is very collaborative,’ she says. ‘Although, we’ve all been our own team leader in the past, it’s a joyful release to be able to lean on each other and rest in each other’s strengths.’
The trio’s stock rose with the release in March of their debut album See You Around. Listeners and critics praised the heavenly harmonies and that obvious chemistry, which was first evident in the live shows and has been consolidated on the recording.
‘We collaborate on all the arrangements, melodies and lyrics. I sometimes feel even more attached to lyrics I didn’t write.
‘We wrote the album in a fairly intense and short space of time. I don’t sit listening, thinking which of us wrote each lyric. I have a hard time remembering where each ingredient came from. We all feel that way.’
Frequent visitors to our shores in their various guises, Ireland was one of the first places the trio visited as a bona fide group.
‘I’ve found a way to get over [to Ireland] one way or another with most of the albums I’ve done. I love it in Ireland, we all do.’
Since recording See you Around, they have all worked on their own solo projects and then at the album’s release I’m With Her became the priority again.
‘Sure, of course we’re always busy. I managed to make it to Ireland, since I was here last with Jarosz and Aoife,’ she says.
‘Now that the album is out, we are promoting it by going around the world playing it to people who want to hear it. You have to be careful to make time for everything you need to do.’
I’m With Her play Belfast Cathedral Quarter Festival on May 11 and Whelan’s Dublin on May 12. I’m With Her – See You Around is out on Concord Music
‘We collaborate on everything. I sometimes feel even more attached to lyrics I didn’t write’