Sara Watkins Sara Watkins 180g 2LP + CD

Sara Watkins' self-titled debut, eagerly anticipated by the significant fan base she's built after nearly two decades as fiddle player and vocalist for Grammy Award-winning trio Nickel Creek, boasts an easygoing virtuosity. The youthful Watkins, who joined Nickel Creek when she was barely in her teens, displays formidable skill as a multi-instrumentalist, playing the guitar and ukulele as well as the fiddle, and is just as versatile, and breathtakingly mature, as a singer. Watkins incorporates folk, country, gospel, and pop into her 14-song set, produced by former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and recorded in Los Angeles and Nashville. She's joined by a wide range of old friends and longtime heroes, including alt-country duo Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench, and Elvis Costello's drummer Pete Thomas; colleagues from the bluegrass world like Tim O'Brien, Punch Brothers' Chris Eldridge, Ronnie McCoury, and Rayna Gellert: and Nickel Creek band-mates Christ Thile and Sean Watkins.

Watkins mixes eight of her own songs with tunes by such artists as John Hartford, Tom Waits, and David Garza. Her self-penned fiddle numbers are exuberant, foot-stomping instrumentals, while the songs for which she wrote both music and lyrics have a heart-meltingly lovelorn quality. Watkins knows how to channel in her own work the plaintive emotions of classic country and timeless pop. There's honesty and empathy on tracks like the sweetly soulful "My Friend", the brooding "Bygones", and rueful album closer, "Where Will You Be". She proves to be as astute as Emmylou Harris or Linda Rondstadt in her choice of covers, segueing gracefully from the aforementioned Waits, Garza and Hartford to the lighthearted country-and-western swing of Jimmie Rodgers' 'Any Old Time", to the world-weariness and spiritual yearning of Norma Blake's "Lord Won't You Help Me", to the romantic wistfulness of Jon Brion's "Same Mistakes".

"I didn't have a goal of making this a country record or a folk record," Watkins declares. "I didn't want to avoid anything - except faking it. This was a chance to make a record that doesn't represent anyone else but me."

Features:
• 180g Audiophile Quality Vinyl
• Double LP
• Gatefold Jacket
• Includes complete album on CD

Selections:
LP 1:
1. All This Time
2. Long Hot Summer Days
3. My Friend
4. Freiderick
5. Same Mistakes
6. Any Old Time
7. Pony
LP 2:
1.Lord Won't You Help Me
2. Jefferson
3. Give Me Jesus
4. Bygones
5. Too Much
6. Will We Go
7. Where Will You Be