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Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek
Emerging from the Waters of Nickel Creek
Apr-08-2001
©2001 iBluegrass.com. All rights reserved.
 The bluegrass community has always been eager to embrace its phenomenal young talent. One can often see contests and jam sessions populated with teenagers and young adults. It is not unusual to find top bluegrass acts with members in their teens and early twenties. What is rare, however, is to see the young lions step out on their own. Even more unique is when the proclaimed prodigies abandon the safety net of the standard repertoire to strike out into uncharted territory. Nickel Creek has done all of this and more for they have achieved unlikely notoriety even among the mainstream music media, all the while forging their own musical vision.
Chris Thile, Sara Watkins and brother Sean Watkins make up the nucleus of Nickel Creek. In addition, guitarist Sean Watkins has released his solo debut on Sugar Hill Reords, 'Let it Fall.' The project is all-instrumental, with the exception of the title track sung by guest Glen Phillips. 'Let it Fall' is a consistently satisfying treat throughout, achieving a continuity and sense of purpose often lacking in many debut efforts. Sean took time to talk with iBluegrass from his hotel room at the Hilton New York during their recent tour.
Michael Hello Sean. Thanks so much for taking time from your day to speak with iBluegrass Magazine. First off, let me congratulate Nickel Creek for your recent success. I've seen the band quite often on CMT lately and also caught your set on Austin City Limits.
Sean: Thanks!
Michael Many of our readers are probably not familiar with your background. Let's begin by talking about your introduction to music. I understand you started out not as a guitar player, but as a pianist.
Sean: I took piano lessons from age six to thirteen. My piano teacher's son played in a bluegrass band every Saturday night at this pizza place. So my family and I started going to hear his band, Bluegrass Etc. From listening to them, I started playing mandolin. I was nine years old. I was thirteen when I started playing guitar. At that point I sort of gave up piano. So I've been playing music since I was pretty young, but just on different instruments.
Michael I understand you and Chris Thile both took lessons from John Moore.
Sean: That's right.
Michael Who are some of the others that influenced you, particularly out on the West Coast, when you first started getting into the bluegrass scene?
Sean: Dennis Caplinger was a banjo and fiddle player that played in Bluegrass Etc. and he had a big influence on us. He was Sara's teacher. Byron Berline would often bring us up on stage to play if we were attending one of his shows.
Michael Who have been some of the other people, especially once you got into playing guitar, that have influenced you?
Sean: Outside of bluegrass, I've really been getting a lot from Pat Metheny. Also, there are jazz guitar players, such as Joe Pass that I really like. But there are also a lot of awesome guitar players in bluegrass and I feel fortunate that we've gotten to hang out with some of them. I've learned a lot from them.
Michael Most people are still thinking of Nickel Creek as somewhat of a new band, but you all have been together since 1990, correct.
Sean: Yes, it's going on twelve years now. We've grown up playing together. We've gone through different phases...it doesn't even seem like the same band.
Michael How has the group's sound and style changed over the years?
 Sean: We started out with more traditional sounding bluegrass, but we've gone through different phases. We went through a period where we were really into Celtic music. We all really like classical and jazz, as well. We try to take the best elements from different genres and fuse them together. Sometimes our music has been more heavily influenced by one more than the other. I think now we've found a mixture that we like. I think we've musically found ourselves. We're appreciative of so many different kinds of music that for awhile, we were having fun mixing them all together. But that sometimes made us sound different from one time to the next. It's been really fun, and definitely a learning experience.
Michael Have you been surprised by the acceptance Nickel Creek has started to receive outside of the bluegrass community?
Sean: I really have been. I've been surprised we've been received so well inside the bluegrass community, too. We get some resistance from the bluegrass traditionalists, but most everyone is really pleased and we're so honored by that. We've wanted to grow our audience outside of bluegrass as well. We've had the opportunity to do a little more of that lately and have been extremely happy being successful at gaining new fans.
Michael I see the group's videos being playing next to some of the more mainstream country videos...your sound is just so fresh and new in comparison. I think that is why so many are finding your music appealing.
Sean: Well, thank you! There's just a lot of canned, perfect, manipulated stuff out there. We really don't listen to country, but when we hear it, it is just so bland sounding. We're glad to put some non-perfection in there (laughter)!
Michael Let's talk about your first solo project, 'Let it Fall.' One of the things I found so cool about it is the fact that you've done so much songwriting yourself. When did you first begin to write songs?
Sean: From a real early age. When I was playing piano, I tried to write a lot but didn't really know how. Just recently, I've really started writing things I'm happy with. I've always loved to do it. It's just so much fun.
Michael I always enjoy it when relatively new performers come forward and introduce fresh, original material.
Sean: I've been wanting to do the CD for a long time, but the timing just wasn't right. We were so busy. I tried to pick through the songs I've written and find the ones that worked together in some kind of way. I'm happy to have something out there that's a little different than Nickel Creek.
Michael It's interesting you mentioned that you picked the songs that fit together because one of the things I noticed right away was the continuity of the CD. Often that can be lacking in a mostly instrumental project.
Sean: Exactly, and thank you. I had to take out a song here and there when we started mixing because I didn't think it was working. I tried to make the whole album have the same vibe, so to hear you say that is gratifying.
Michael Now, one exception to that could be the ghost track at the very end. It has a really neat, jazz-swing feel to it.
Sean: It is actually called the 'Swinging Friar.' I'm from San Diego and the mascot for the San Diego Padros baseball team is a swinging Friar. I got a couple local jazz guys to play on it and it was really fun. They humored me and I felt like I was in a jazz session when we were recording (laughter). Lots of the swing jazz pieces have real simple melodies and are usually short, under three minutes. This one has a simple melody and it's less than three minutes.
Michael The one track on 'Let it Fall' that included vocals is the title track. Glen Philips formerly of Toad the Wet Sprocket is singing the lead. How did that relationship come about?
Sean: We met through mutual friends. I've been a fan of Toad and particularly of Glen's for a long time. I like his songwriting a lot. I like the way the melodies fit with the different sounding chord voicing. I find it interesting, especially within the rock genre. It's a warm welcoming sound you didn't hear too often. It was just awesome when we met. We hit it off musically. Since then we've actually recorded a CD with Nickel Creek and Glen Philips. It'll be out in the fall on Sugar Hill.
Michael I'm sure your fans will be glad to hear about that new project coming out. What are some of the other things you're listening to these days that are influencing your music?
Sean: In general, I've been trying to write more formally. I've been working on some harmonic type stuff, like string quartet pieces. I've finished my first small string quartet. I've been listening to a lot of classical music, such as Beethoven's string quartets. Also, I've been getting in to Pat Metheny. I like the way he mixes folk and jazz. It's a bit more accessible to me since I'm not a jazzer. I can understand it a bit better. Some of his work is like James Taylor without words. So, I'm really liking that. There's a singer/songwriter out of L.A. named Eliot Smith I've been enjoying lately. There's always a huge random list of things I listen to.
Michael What do you see as the future of Nickel Creek?
Sean: We're just now trying to break into some new areas. It's a real exciting time for us. We're having a lot of fun and feel extremely blessed to have this kind of success at this point in our lives. We're hoping to take it as far as we can. One of our missions is to break people's ideas of what music is by giving them something that doesn't conform to what the norm is right now.
Michael For the guitar techies reading this, can you talk about the guitars you use.
 Sean: I use mostly Burgeois OMC, which is a small body cut away. I've been playing those guitars for a few years and I'm so totally into them. On my CD I play a Martin D-18 on one track, but mostly it's the Burgeois. It just feels great and fits me really well.
Michael What are your own personal goals and aspirations for your musical future?
Sean: As part of Nickel Creek, I would love to take this kind of music to people that has never listened to bluegrass before and expose them to a new kind of acoustic music...maybe a new music they didn't think they would like or had written off. I would love to turn them onto to all of the great acoustic musicians out there. I'd love to get people interested in music that is more organic and rootsy. Personally, I would like to focus on my songwriting and refine my playing. I just want to keep making CDs and write formally some day. I'm studying with a movie score composer now, in the hope I can be a formal composer at some point. I just want to keep busy making music.
Michael Great place to close. Thank you for your time and for you exciting new music
.
Sean: Thank you for your interest.
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