Friction and dissonance are not exactly the words that come to mind when you think of Nickel Creek. 

Siblings Sean Watkins (bass) and Sara Watkins (fiddle) along with longtime friend Chris Thile (mandolin) made their musical mark crafting a canon of expertly wrought progressive bluegrass dating back to the their origins as teen prodigies who eventually caught the eye and ear of Alison Krauss. 

Their 2023 release Celebrants is an 18-song effort steeped in what they describe in the liner notes as “a record about embracing the friction inherent in real human connection.” 

They’ll be performing songs from that album as well as some from their older material at The Clyde Theatre on Friday, Feb. 16.

Coming full circle

The seeds for Celebrants were planted when the trio and their families decamped to Santa Monica, California, for a month of writing in the spring of 2021. 

“It was really incredible,” Sara Watkins said. “We were able to bring our families together and it was special symbolically for us because Chris has a son that’s almost as old as Chris and I when our band started. It was this wonderful full-circle moment on a personal level of reconnecting our families in this new stage of life. 

“Meanwhile, we still feel like the kids we always were, and to be able to reconnect, which ended up being what a lot of this album was about, not even specific to the pandemic, but specific to this time in our lives where we find ourselves choosing things and deciding what relationships we really want to dig into.”

Helping hand

Reconnecting with producer Eric Valentine, Nickel Creek also invited longtime friend Mike Elizondo to join in the fun. 

Elizondo is a producer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist who has worked with everyone from Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, and Eminem to Cassandra Wilson, Sheryl Crow, and Keith Urban.

“He’s a musical monster, absolute sweetheart, and a ridiculous super-successful producer,” Sara Watkins said. “We knew that we wanted to work with Eric Valentine as our producer, but we hoped that Mike would be OK contributing to the writing, the arrangements and playing bass on the record. He was super into it. 

“He and Eric Valentine had never worked together, but they were both mutual fans of each other. It just felt like we were loaded for bear on this project. We were able to meet up with Mike after that first month of writing and get his fingerprints on the album pretty early on. He had a tremendous effect on the album.”

Ambition runs amuck from the roller coaster ride of the instrumental “Going Out…” which finds Thile’s finger-picking parrying and jousting with Sara Watkins’ fiddle runs, to the world-weariness of “From the Beach” and its rich abundance of high lonesome harmonizing. 

Elsewhere, “Stone’s Throw” uses major dynamic shifts to add drama to the questions of separation and unification within the day-to-day of a relationship. Best of all is the raucous and rambunctious “Where the Long Line Leads,” which finds the song steeped in the sentiment of “We only have a short time/But we’re making it a big one,” while Sara Watkins’ singing is often as fiery as her fiddle playing. 

The sparkling interplay on Celebrants is a major part of the group’s live shows, Sara Watkins said. 

“We’re really looking forward to the live show and are really excited about the look and feel of the show in a way that we haven’t emphasized before,” she said. “We’re going to be trying to play what everyone wants to hear. The set lists will obviously vary. We’re shooting to have our live shows be cohesive with this new record and show the cohesiveness that exists with the material that spans from whenever our first album came out and now.”

Building a following

The ’90s saw these up-and-comers build a fan base via a combination of stellar live shows and a pair of independent releases — 1993’s Little Cowpoke and 1997’s Here to There. 

They dropped their self-titled Sugar Hill Records debut in 2000, converting Krauss’ interest in the band into her agreeing to produce that 12-song effort. 

Over the next two decades, Nickel Creek released another three records, separating to pursue other projects between activities with the group. When asked whether time away from each other helped stoke the fires for all this creative risk-taking, Sara Watkins admits each member’s ability to work on side projects is musical fertilizer.

“Interpersonally, I think the breaks are important,” she said. “In solo projects, we each get to take the reins and lead it 100 percent from our individual perspective. When we are in different bands, we play different roles and there are new challenges in each band. From each of those projects, we take new skills and lessons learned. 

“Then we come back together and have new things to show each other, new skills and new fun toys in terms of musical and human perspective.”

With the band back together, Sara Watkins is grateful to be able to reconnect with her bandmates and their fans. 

“I will say that when we were thinking about what we wanted to say to our audience when we come back on tour is that sentiment that people hear at the beginning of the record in the song ‘Celebrants’: ‘My God, it’s good to see you,’ ” she said. “That’s what we want to convey.”