“Their instruments and voices alternately blend and shine…it’s a joy to have the gang back together.” — Paste

Nickel Creek is mandolinist Chris Thile, violinist Sara Watkins and guitarist Sean Watkins. Together a sum of more than their staggering parts, the trio revolutionized bluegrass and folk in the early 2000s and ushered in a new era of what we now recognize as Americana music. After a nine year absence, the Platinum-selling, Grammy Award-winning trio have returned with the highly-anticipated album, Celebrants — a bounty of 18 disparate but loosely connected songs written collectively during a creative retreat in Santa Barbara in early 2021. The result is perhaps the most audacious yet accessible release of the Grammy-winning trio’s 34-year career. The entire enterprise is, naturally, shot through with the trio’s virtuosic picking and shiver-inducing harmonies. The lyrics — addressing love, friendship, time, and the universal travails of travel — combine the poetic and plain-spoken, hitting a sweet spot of ethereal and relatable as bridges are built, crossed, burned, and rebuilt. In celebration of the release, the trio is returning to the road!
With special guest Monica Martin
Monica Martin is a Chicago-born singer-songwriter who grew up in rural Wisconsin, mostly waiting for Billie Holiday videos to load on back-country dial-up or making trips in a busted Geo Metro to watch punk shows in Milwaukee. Trained as a hairdresser, she didn’t have musical plans beyond joke singing harmonies over the radio. She fronted the acclaimed experimental-folk-pop sextet, PHOX, formed just outside Madison, Wisconsin. Eventually, Monica moved to LA. She found herself a little periwinkle casita and is feeling freer than ever in the city of misfits. She’s presently at work putting melodies to her lowkey pop songs with blue note whispers, some golden-era Hollywood dramatics, and psychedelic flickers courtesy of a theremin. Monica is still figuring out who she is, but quite happy to share her cautionary tales: “I made hundreds of mistakes so you don’t have to.”