Singularly ME

Sara Watkins began her musical career at age eight, as a fiddle-playing whiz kid in Nickel Creek, with her big brother Sean and another child prodigy, Chris Thile. After that band’s 18 years of award-winning, genre-redefining progressive bluegrass, acoustic pop and folk rock, Watkins gained further acclaim as a supporting player in bands like The Decemberists and as an opening foil for legendary troubadours like John Prine and Jackson Browne.

In 2016, Watkins ascended to a new throne, that of a fierce, emotionally intense singer/songwriter. Her first two solo albums (released in 2009 and 2012 on Nonesuch Records) split the difference between covers and originals, but last year’s Young in All the Wrong Ways put Watkins’ voice front and center — without, for the first time in a 25-year career, shining a too-bright spotlight on her prodigious instrumental skills. “The fiddle is a very strong character,” Watkins tells Folio Weekly from her Southern California home. “And I didn’t feel that character should be the dominant defining sound. I wanted this album” — one she’s repeatedly called “a breakup album with myself” — “to be more about me — about the lyrics and the emotion.”
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Folio Weekly: Young in All the Wrong Ways seems to have been written at a specific time and place in your life. Does it still resonate with you today?
Sara Watkins: Songs definitely change over time, but this is the first album where I wrote all of them, so as a unit, they do still resonate with me. The album still feels singularly me. There are some narratives that people assumed were completely autobiographical, and that’s not true at all. The one common thread that runs through the album is the desire to not accidentally find myself in a rut, simply because I didn’t take action … An issue is not going to think about itself. You have to consider everything you’ve learned in your life and see how you feel — then reconsider that position. I don’t want to have the same thoughts in five years as I do now. We all go through changes — marriages, births, deaths — but will they alter your perspective on life and those around you? I hope to continue to make that effort, even though it can be disruptive to be the person that I am, rather than the person that I was. Or try to be the person that I can be.

You’ve learned a lot. How much of that is from performing with and opening for artists like John Prine, Jackson Browne, The Decemberists and others?
When you get to play with or open for someone more than once, you learn a lot about who they are offstage. That’s what I really take with me. How do they treat their crew? Does their crew respect them? When that happens, you’re doing a lot right — doing good business and good music. I remember being on tour with [Browne], and I’d watch every show listening to songs I’d heard every night. I’d still hear new levels of metaphor. His craftsmanship would sink in more and more with repeated listening.

Like the layers of emotion and insight on “Move Me” and “Tenderhearted” — and the ones with guest vocalists, like “One Last Time” (Jim James) and “Young in All the Wrong Ways” (Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan). Even though you wrote this material, you still like to collaborate.
Every project affects the other one — if you’re in one band, you should be in two. I went on tour with The Decemberists after coming off a year-and-a-half of touring my first album, when I was completely exhausted emotionally and physically. And I got to ride along with this really fun band that’s silly and theatrical and light-hearted. The emphasis was in different places than the culture that I grew up in, so I learned a lot. The album is more introspective, and it’s hard (and uncalled for) to be introspective with a side project. I also don’t want to sing my songs all the time. It’s fun to sing other people’s songs. That keeps me balanced in terms of variety and celebrating the history of songwriting. I am getting better at identifying what I want to do while being honest with myself about what I can do. The more I take on, the more I can handle. I like to be challenged and thrown into the deep end.

After the last album, you find it healthy — even necessary — to throw yourself in the deep end … then write about it.
That’s the only way for it to be positive: dealing with it. I want to take the future optimistically and find ways to adapt while maintaining what feels like the authentic me. I don’t want to be afraid of change — at all. I want to embrace the unknown, and that’s not something that comes naturally to me. It does take effort, and I’ve found that making that effort is incredibly satisfying. It’s made me feel really good about where I am in life right now. I really enjoy my age, I really enjoy my perspective … I feel like I’m good right now.