Nickel Creek

I've been a huge fan of the band Nickel Creek for around four years. Their blend of bluegrass, pop and instrumental music is essentially infectious. The band consists of Sara and Sean Watkins (brother and sister) and Chris Thile, a sort of mandolin protege. The three of them are from around San Diego way and seem to have been doing this forever, despite being in their early-mid 20's. I saw them 2 years ago at the same venue and this time I had much better seats and as this was the last show of their current tour, the band was a bit punchy and lot more relaxed than last time.

They had someone named Andrew Bird open for them - which was an excellent choice because his music was just as eclectic and varied as Nickel Creek's. Andrew Bird's music seemed to involve a lot of violin (both legato and pizzicato), electric guitar, a xylophone, and whistling. Yes, whistling, which is actually much cooler in actuality than it sounds. I've since become very obsessed with a few of his songs and have listened to them daily.

As for Nickel Creek, they just rocked pure and simple. How can a sorta bluegrass band with a mandolin, guitar and violin rock? Just trust me. Along with a great selection of their songs, they found ways to incorporate other artists' songs into their playset. The most amusing and best received cover was "Toxic" by Britney Spears. Yes, that Britney Spears. But my favorite cover was done in the middle of an instrumental piece called "The House of Tom Bombadill" (yes, the Tom Bombadill from The Lord of the Rings) - right in the middle of the piece, they segued and started playing Randy Newman's "Short People". This was terribly funny since Sean and Sara Watkins are both of fairly small stature and they're singing a song that says "short people got no reason to live". Priceless.

The whole venue was pretty much energized by their performance and they did 2 encores. Though they finally ended off with "Why Should the Fire Die?" a quieter number from their new eponymous album, their first encore was a raucous version of "The Fox" based on the old folksong. Mid-song, their base player got up and did a tap/jig to a standing ovation and was joined after a couple of minutes by Chris Thile, clearly the clown of the group.

Even though I went alone, there was that short-lived camaraderie with the rest of the audience at the Wiltern, and together we rejoiced in music that made us all quite simply happy.