Nickel Creek
This Side
Sugar Hill Records

by Carter Monroe

I've cheated here and I'm willing to confess. After all, I make no claims to be a journalist and quite frankly I don't know how I wound up in the midst of people who can. Therefore, I feel no shame about the fact that I read a couple of reviews of the new Nickel Creek record, This Side, prior to putting my thoughts on paper. What I found was more funny than interesting. Reviewers/critics? Christ! What are you afraid of? Tell me something without hedging. So it ain't bluegrass. So what? You want hot bluegrass picking? Get Chris Thile's record, Leading Off. It burns with the best and was made when he was so young that he probably had a case of nerves when showering after gym class.

I well remember the first time I heard that album. I had made my semi-annual trek to the Research Triangle seeking to purchase enough music and books to keep me satisfied for the next six months. As had become my habit when Mz. Dancer was in tow, I went to the music section in Barnes & Noble and listened to every CD they had on sale. Lots of good things came my way in these searches. Wayne Hancock, Guy Davis, Eric Bibb, and Chris Thile all gained permanent residence in the House of the New Lost Blues as a result. There is much to be said for living in the Provinces. However, when it comes to the availability of non-Top Forty art, you can forget it. About the best one can do is to tape Austin City Limits and hope. Thank God for the Internet.

As I listened to the splendid work of this wunderkind, I couldn't help but recall a similar album I had purchased some 15 years earlier. It was Pickin' in the Wind by Mark O'Connor. Now, bear in mind, I didn't have the advantage of listening to the O'Connor effort beforehand, but even in 1978 the names Sam Bush, Norman Blake, and John Hartford meant something. Back in those days, what I called a stereo was some one-piece monstrosity that sat on something like a coffee table and was still 8-track friendly. I should also enter here that I procured the first David Grisman Quintet offering on that same day. Irony? Thy name is Carter Monroe or maybe, just maybe, Nickel Creek.

It ain't bluegrass? Well, Grisman sure as hell wasn't, even though he had enough bona fidees in his resume to claim whatever he wished. O'Connor was a shirt tail boy whose mom had escorted him as he flat picked his way across the country and garnered trophies with his juiced up version of Benny Thomasson fiddle tunes. Grisman had seen it and done it, even if there was an aside to Django, and O'Connor was watching and absorbing. The first culmination in the Markology catalogue was an ambitious effort titled False Dawn. Up to that point in his career, I knew he was good, but there was still Norman Blake and Tony Rice, not to even mention Ol' Vassar. However, when this "vision" of music reached my ears, I realized that not only had I left Kansas, I couldn't go back.

Of course, nobody got it. The record's been out of print for so long that me and Mark and God are probably the only ones who remember it. O'Connor played all of the instruments and this was the first indication that he was headed in a direction that would find no peer. I saw him in concert at the Arts Center in Carrboro, NC back in the early '90s. He played alone and it was damned near like a documentary on the history of music. There were medleys that lasted almost half an hour. We might start with Sally Goodwin and end with Beethoven's 9th, but the hypnosis was so astounding that someone had to pinch you at the end to let you know your beer can was empty.

As I walked to the parking lot after the show, someone remarked, "I wish he'd had someone playing with him."

I simply glared and said, "Who the fuck could?"

Go forward a handful of years and the new prodigy surfaces with more talent than a string section, and with two wonderful partners to boot. I must confess here that I never heard the initial Nickel Creek effort except for a number or two that showed up in videos while I channel surfed. However, said lack of experience not withstanding, I was blown away from the first song to the last on This Side. The opening track gave me my acoustic ensemble fix and the second song, "Spit on a Stranger," made me mutter, "Been sneaking into mom and dad's Beatle collection, hunh."

By the time I got to the third song, "Speak," I was damned near a junky. When you reach the downside of fifty, art that touches you generates a kind of inner journey, possibly even a fantasy if you will. While such things tend to bind one in reminiscence, it doesn't mean that they are not new and original. Well after the fact, I read an online bio of the group and noticed that many of their listed influences had swirled about my consciousness as I listened to their music. When I mailed it to a friend, I referred to This Side as "Strength in Numbers with killer vocals." Christ! I had to finish off that first afternoon of listening with Blind Faith and "Can't Find My Way Home."

Sara Watkins' haunting Suzanne Vega-like vocals are brilliant and brother Sean's guitar work is superb throughout. In addition to being outstanding musicians, these kids seem to have a real vision, and whether the record buying public gets it or not, that is what art should be about. Let's face it. If the studios weren't totally into selling records, and mostly to the lowest common denominator, we likely wouldn't have a genre known as Americana. Sugar Hill is to be lauded for not succumbing to its own success, for not trying to cash in as it were. The same can be said for these three brilliant musicians who thankfully are willing to indulge the muse in order to see where it leads. This Side gets my vote for record of the year, but more importantly (at least from where I sit) everyone involved with the project gets my respect.

From the Provinces,

Carter Monroe


Contact Carter Monroe at: cm-at-rockzilla.net

 
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