SARA WATKINS
Nickel Creek frontwoman on the Americana trio’s first set in nine years
What film could your new album soundtrack?
It’s our third with Eric Valentine producing, and Mike Elizondo plays bass. The next Paul Thomas Anderson film.
Is there anything still unissued? Four Nickel Creek cassette tapes – three full ones, and one with six songs that we made in Chris Thile’s bedroom studio set-up, when he lived in Murray, Kentucky. And Little Cowpoke – cowboy songs.
Have you done anything that fans may not know about?
I played fiddle on a Verizon
TV ad, alongside my late teacher, Dennis Caplinger, plus
Hurt Peterson and John Moore, another mentor growing up.
Chris and I did radio ads when we were kids – Disney, and BP Express, a jingle about coming from grandma’s house.
When did you first hear one of your songs on vinyl? Maybe not the first, but I remember listening to Why Should The Fire Die at my brother’s house in Carlsbad. It was largely written there.
What was your favourite record shop when you started out?
Lou’s Records, Leucadia, California. Listening stations, and a lot of great finds based on the sleeves.
What was your first record?
John Hurford’s Aerial Plane.
What records had the biggest influence on you?
The Bodyguard soundtrack, then Emmylou Harris’ Roses In The Snow after Nickel Creek’s second record. I’d gotten tired, and I was trying to work out what I really loved about music. It reminded me, and it was like it was for me. Willie Nelson’s guitar solo on Green Pastures was a revelation.
Was anyone in your family a musician?
My great-grandpa was a fiddleplayer and used to sneak out of the house to play at poker games and barn dances.
Did you ever write songs
‘under the influence’?
Alcohol and caffeine. We wrote
Why Should The Fire Die around the night-time camp fire in front of my brother’s house in Carlsbad, California. We were drinking Laphroaig single malt Scottish whisky and talking about life, and the song came out of that. Have you kept any studio
“I USED WORDS THAT I THOUGHT SOUNDED FANCY AS A TEENAGER”
notebooks or the like?
I have scrapbooks from my teens, written like a diary with pictures. I used words that I thought sounded fancy. It feels formal, like I was writing a book.
Have you ever collected anyone? Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings.
If you had a listening party, what’d you play, and who’d you invite to discuss it?
Ray Charles Live. I’d sit in the dark on the couch and listen with my friends, Gabe Witcher and Sebastian Steinberg, and groove out.
Do you keep a diary?
Not anymore, but I often do journaling. The seeds of thought turn into songs.
Dying peacefully on your deathbed, what would you like to hear?
I’m in a serious, thoughtful, introspective mood now, so the song of nature, the birds and the bugs and the critters outside.
Nickel Creek Celebrants is on Thirty Tigers.