Five cents' worth

A couple of days before we met, I got hold of their new album, their debut, two full years behind its American release, and when I mention to Sarah and Chris of Nickel Creek that I had played it six times in a row they are both somewhere on the south side of gobsmacked.

“Wow, thank you,” says Sarah, going on to say that they were really pleased with the reaction in Europe thus far, which looks like matching their Stateside success – Grammy Nominations, top five videos etc. Thus far they have the debut album, five solo albums, two from guitarist Sean Watkins, and three from mandolinist Chris Thile, and a second band album in the works. Not bad for a bunch of kids who met, listening to bluegrass in a local pizza parlour, before they reached their teens. None of them are yet over 22!

Mention of their youth led not only to a validation of old fogeys like yours truly, a quote from Chris that, “Age is the crown of wisdom. Most of my favourite musicians, and people that I really respect are all older than us. I’m anticipating those years when I’ve got all time behind me, that I’ve got all that time to draw from.”

Sarah echoes Chris’ remarks: “I don’t think that guys are really cool until they’re in their 30s.”

This theme of age, stumbled upon by accident, provides the focus for much of the rest of the interview, and I mention that to these ears, their sound is a confluence of old and new forms, electric music played on acoustic instruments, a theory that is utterly vindicated at their sold-out show in Whelan’s the following night. I suggest to Chris that for a young guy he has a sense of the old and archaic running through his lyrical constructs, particularly in the case of The Lighthouse’s Tale. Was such a tactic, I asked him, deliberate?

“Absolutely. I wanted to avoid being dishonest about my age and where I’m coming from when I write a song, but I also wanted to try to figure out what kinds of dialect the lighthouse would have used, because I wanted to write the song from that viewpoint. To me, a lighthouse would not be speaking in modern English.”

We go on to discuss linguistic structures, agreeing on the fact that Irish songs, whether in English or the vernacular, have given much to the Anglo-American folk tradition. Sarah is effusive when I ask about ‘Out Of The Woods’, a Sinéad Lohan song which is one of the most successful pieces on the record.

“Alison Krauss, who produced the album, brought us a couple of songs to listen to, and I heard this song which made me think of the whole album differently. I could open my mind to a lot of different possibilities with the harmonies, and also to the ways that we were going to explore the rest of the songs.”

On the album, in addition to those pieces already flagged, there are songs by Tim O’Brien – ‘When You Come Back Down’ – and an absolutely gorgeous melodic rewrite of Robert Burns’ ‘Flow Gently Sweet Afton’, but the one that knocked us all for six at Whelan’s (and on the album) was their version, along with guest Tim O’Brien, of Burl Ives’ ‘The Fox’. Stepping out from behind the mikes, they hushed the full house into complete silence with this song, leaving their hosts at Warners and ourselves beaming from ear to ear. Nickel Creek are something special, and no mistake.