Nickel Creek - Biography
By J Poet
Nickel Creek’s first album Nickel Creek (2000 Sugar Hill), produced by Alison Krauss, gained recognition for the young trio’s instrumental prowess and the new blood they brought to the bluegrass stage. It had the good fortune to come out the year before the Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack (2001 Lost highway) sparked a new interest in acoustic music. Slow and steady sales earned them a platinum album for their effort. Nickel Creek was a solid newgrass outing, but there were hints that they were going to push beyond the boundaries of the genre even then. “Reasons Why” was clearly a pop song in folk clothing and their follow up, This Side (2002 Sugar Hill), won the Best Contemporary Folk Album Grammy in 2003 despite a Beatlesque makeover of Pavement’s “Spit On A Stranger.” It went gold. Their third set, Why Should The Fire Die? (2005 Sugar Hill) was acoustic music with a rock’n’roll attitude, produced by mainstream heavies Eric Valentine (Smashmouth, Queens of the Stone Age) and Tony Berg (Aimee Mann, Public Image). The use of a full drum kit bothered some purists, but the band was clearly attracting a new, young audience to bluegrass and acoustic music.
Nickel Creek got together in San Diego, CA in 1989, all still teenagers, but already with a lifetime of music making behind them. Chris Thile picked up the mandolin when he was five and at 12 won the Grand Prix for mandolin players, the Walnut Valley Mandolin Championship. He was the youngest player to ever take the prize. He’d already been playing in Nickel Creek for four years. His parents used to drive the band around from folk club to pizza house while they honed their chops. Sugar Hill signed Thile as a solo act, releasing Leading Off (1994 Sugar Hill) when he was 12. His second solo album Stealing Second (1997 Sugar Hill) came out when he was 14. Sean Watkins took classical piano from six to 12, but when he discovered bluegrass the piano lessons stopped. At 16 he placed in the finals of the National Flatpicking Championship in Winfield KS. He started playing as a duo with Thile, but Sara soon joined in. Sara Watkins was another prodigy; by 12 she was amazing people with her fiddling skills. She took lessons from Byron Berline, but had a natural affinity for the instrument. At first, Scott Thile, Chris’s father, played stand up bass with the band, but as they grew in confidence he dropped out. By the mid 90s, Nickel Creek was creating a buzz on the bluegrass circuit and released several albums including Little Cowpoke (1993 Choo Choo) and Here to There on their own label. The band ran through many names including the Seldom Clean, a poke at another newgrass outfit the Seldom Scene, before settling on Nickel Creek after playing a festival at the Nickel Creek Ranch in Texas.
Thile kept bringing demo tapes of the band to Sugar Hill, and they finally signed them in 1999. Thile once said “I think they were waiting for our voices to change before taking a chance on us.” After becoming one of the top acts on the bluegrass circuit and crossing over strongly to pop and rock audiences, the band went on an extended hiatus in 2005. Reasons Why: The Very Best (2006 Sugar Hill) celebrated what they’d accomplished and like This Side and presciently named Why Should the Fire Die? it went to #1 on the bluegrass charts.
