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Nickel Creek's Sean Watkins goes from bluegrass to blue water

By David Moye

March 13, 2006

San Diego--The musical trio Nickel Creek has earned rave reviews for its take on traditional folk music, but the band’s guitarist Sean Watkins is about to release an album that’s more reminiscent of blue water than bluegrass.

Watkins releases a new solo album, “No Blinders,” on March 14 and he freely admits that the songs were more inspired by his experiences surfing off the coast of Carlsbad than on a farm in Kentucky.

“I get a lot of lyrical ideas while in the water,” he says. “I just go out in the ocean and float and come up with lyrics like ‘the salt water sting of it.’ And I try to remember it when I get out of the water.”

Watkins goes solo with "No Blinders"

The new CD evokes the mythical California of Brian Wilson and Watkins admits he took the former Beach Boys composer’s classic “Pet Sounds” as musical inspiration. “Every songwriter consciously tries to evoke their favorite songwriters and while I didn’t try to evoke the arrangements of ‘Pet Sounds,’ I did have it in the back of my head because I think it’s great how the songs all relate to each other.”

“No Blinders” isn’t Watkins’ first album but he does consider it a coming-of-age album because “there’s more of a range of emotions. I feel more round and balanced and able to explain what each song means.”

That newfound maturity didn’t come easy. “No Blinders” has a lot of vulnerability pouring out of songs like “Summer’s Coming” and he credits a few sour relationships with sweetening up his musical chops.

“A lot of good songs come from bad relationships or at least bad endings to good relationships.”

But the main inspiration to Watkins for his new CD wasn’t a woman, wasn’t a record. It was the ocean.

“I moved to Carlsbad last year and I surf a lot. I love the feeling of freedom and openness I get from my lifestyles and tried to get that feeling in my music.”

In fact, Watkins says the perfect place to listen to “No Blinders” is “in a car going south on 101 towards the Carlsbad campground.”

But reproducing the beachy feeling wasn’t easy and it took a lot of experimentation. Watkins keeps his garage stocked full of instruments and often tries to make new sounds from them without worrying about the result. And, sometimes, a song comes out of it, such as “Happy New Year,” which he says came while jamming around on guitar first and then finding the right rhythmic accompaniment afterwards.

Watkins is hoping there’s a good response to “No Blinders” and jokes that he plans to visit record stores on the release date to see if it’s in. However, he has no illusions of going solo full time.

“[Making solo records] is what we do on our time off. It’s healthy. [Mandolin player] Chris Thile released his first solo album when he was 13. But we make sure to save the best stuff for Nickel Creek.”

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