Last Friday we shared news about a Nickel Creek DVD which was to have been shot during the last two shows on their Farewell (For Now) tour at The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.

The folks at Sugar Hill were delighted when it seemed that the DVD would be released on their label next year, but it now appears that the plans for the video shoot at the end of November have been scrapped.

Last night Nickel Creek played here in Roanoke, Virginia, as one of the stops on their Farewell (For Now) Tour. It was a late addition to the tour and tickets sold out quickly. The concert took place in a nice theater environment at the Jefferson Center, where Chris, Sara and Sean, joined by Mark Schatz on the bass, put on a great show.

The show is everything you’d expect from this youthful bunch of seasoned pickers. They performed their hits, starting with the newest ones and working their way backward towards The Fox, intermingled with newer material. As a fan of the band, it was great to get to hear them perform these songs live one more time, but the fun came from the newer material.

It’s not uncommon for rock, pop, or country bands to espouse political views from the stage, but it’s somewhat unheard of at a bluegrass show. I guess the freedom Nickel Creek enjoys from not having the bluegrass label firmly affixed, gave them the liberty to venture into that realm. They firmly stated their pro-progress stance, Chris was very firm about it, and addressed an issue of national concern to all, the state of our National Policy on Breakups. (more…)

When Nickel Creek performs live tonight (11/2) at Washington DC nightspot 9:30 Club, National Public Radio’s microphones will be set up, carrying the entire concert live via online streaming at NPR.org.

The band is in the home stretch of their Farewell (For Now) tour, after which the three members (Chris Thile, Sean Watkins and Sara Watkins) will go their separate ways, pursuing other musical ventures. Thile has been recording with his new group, Punch Brothers, and the Watkins sibs have done shows with The Watkins Family Hour, and Sara has started work on a solo project.

This evening’s concert begins at 9:30 p.m. (ET) and will feature Nickel Creek with special guest, Bruce Molsky. Live streaming will be available at npr.org.

Speaking on Nickel Creek… We have been told that the band’s two final concerts - 11/28-29 at The Ryman in Nashville - will be filmed for a concert DVD, expected in 2008 from Sugar Hill Records.

Nickel Creek launched the final push in their Farewell (For Now) tour yesterday, with two weeks’ worth of dates with pop singer Fiona Apple. All involved seem excited about the collaboration, which will feature Nickel Creek both performing their set, and also serving as Apple’s band during hers.

The band is counting on concert goers to help them compile some video from the shows, and has asked fans to upload concert clips to YouTube. They will choose the best clips, and feature them on the Nickel Creek web site, and on their MySpace page.

As soon as you upload a video, they ask that you send the link by email.

These days stories of bad customer service are everywhere. I could tell a few of my own from right here in small town Virginia. Here’s a story of bad customer service set strait by Nickel Creek.

Nickel Creek hits the road next month on their much anticipated farewell tour. The tickets are hot commodities for fans that are eager for one last chance to see them in concert. The Washington Post reported Tuesday about a fan that had purchased tickets online through Ticketmaster, only to be told later that Ticketmaster wasn’t authorized to sell the seats she had purchased. The venue offered her alternative seating in a much less ideal position. She was, of course, upset by this turn of events and rightly upset that neither entity would take responsibility and make things right. She also found tickets, in the section she had originally purchased, for sale online at inflated prices. Yet neither the venue or Ticketmaster offered to buy those tickets for her after they messed up.

That was the story on Tuesday. On Thursday the paper ran a follow up to the story. In Thursday’s follow up, the story develops that Nickel Creek learned of the injustice and swooped in to save the day. The band replaced the fan’s tickets with three seats front and center, demonstrating that at least they understand customer service.

I’m glad to see Nickel Creek delivering a quality of customer service that is commendable. You don’t see that everyday in America, at least not anymore.

The dates for Nickel Creek’s spring 2007 tour are posted on the band’s web site. They will be out from mid-April until mid-May, and again breifly in the fall, and will then suspend touring and recording together for the indefinite future.

Given the excitement and interest that always accompanies “farewell tours,” anyone hoping to catch Nickel Creek live before they disband might be well advised to seek out tickets as soon as possible.

Chris Thile has recorded a solo set for Reg’s Coffee House, a show broadcast weekly from WRAX in Birmingham, AL, hosted and produced by Scott Register. He regularly includes live, in-studio performances, recorded especially for his show, and Chris was on hand recently to promote material from his latest How To Grow A Woman From The Ground CD.

Four songs from Thile’s set can be accessed online, all performed with only Chris’ voice and mandolin accompaniment. Fans of the new CD should find these sparse arrangements forming an interesting contrast with the recorded versions. The songs are Heart In A Cage, Stay Away, You’re An Angel, and I’m Gonna Cry, and Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground.

The flack Chris took for including what strikes us as a gratuitous profanity in the opening line of Heart In A Cage must had had some effect, as the line has been bowdlerized for this show.

If the link for the Thile audio doesn’t show up on Reg’s Recent Shows page, it should be in their Archives.

There is also a live Nickel Creek set on Reg’s site, recorded about a year ago. That show includes six songs: When In Rome, Jealous Of The Moon, Nice Dream, Reason’s Why, The Smoothie Song and Scotch & Chocolate.

Nickel Creek fans who are still processing the news that the band will not be performing together much longer can take heart with one bit of news.

Sugar Hill is set to release a special retrospective on the band next month, which will include 12 audio tracks from their previously released projects, 2 live audio tracks and a companion DVD with 7 Nickel Creek music videos.

The pre-released tracks are fairly evenly taken from Nickel Creek’s 3 Sugar Hill projects, and include the songs that got the most chart and video attention - like Smoothie Song, When In Rome, and When You Come Back Down, plus songs like Sara Watkin’s lovely and plaintive Out Of The Woods and Chris Thile’s The Lighthouse’s Tale from their self-titled “debut” from 2000.

The two live audio tracks were recorded at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, CA in November 2000. They are the band’s take on Keith Whitley’s You Don’t Have To Move That Mountain, a bluesy Gospel song Sara sings, as well as Chris’ tour-de-force performance of The Fox.

Nickel Creek concert goers will recall The Fox as a real show stopper when they performed it live. This cut launches with a mandolin solo, joined shortly by Chris’ voice, with the band drifting in over the first verse and chorus. What starts as a fairly conventional bluegrass treatment of the old folk song eventually expands, including bits of Bill Monroe’s Jerusalem Ridge and Big Mon, Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, and J.S. Bach’s E Major Partita over the course of a 9 minute romp.

The DVD includes all 7 Nickel Creek videos.

The two disk set will be entitled Reasons Why (The Very Best), and is set for a November 14th release. The full track listings (audio and video) can be found on the Sugar Hill web site. All pre-orders from the Sugar Hill site will also be entered in a drawing for a Nickel Creek prize pack which includes 14 CDs - all of the Nickel Creek releases, plus their various side and solo projects.

The Washington Post had a short piece about Chris Thile’s new CD, How To Grow A Woman From The Ground, in it’s weekend edition. You can read it online here. It’s only a couple paragraphs but it’s great that Thile is garnering some attention for bluegrass music. After the phenomenal popularity of Nickel Creek, it’s encouraging to read comments like this for a more bluegrass oriented project.

These are terrific songs, and their rhythmic and narrative thrust focuses the leader’s talents as never before.

This episode of The GrassCast features an interview with mandolin master Chris Thile.

We recorded this interview yesterday evening via the thilephone. Chris is on the road promoting his new CD, How To Grow A Woman From The Ground, and took some time out of his busy schedule to talk to us. We discuss the new record, preview some songs from it, and yes, we do discuss Nickel Creek and the recently announced dissolution of that band. From there Chris talks about his plans for the future and more.

John adds: I was particularly struck by Chris’ obvious passion for bluegrass music, and how pained he is by folks who try to explicity exclude his music from being included in even a broad definition of the term. His comments about what this rejection may mean for new fans who are drawn to his music, or Nickel Creek’s, are worthy of serious consideration by those who seek to define bluegrass narrowly.

The GrassCast is configured to be delivered in a variety of formats. You can listen right now within this window, subscribe for free via Apple’s iTunes Music Store to receive each new episode as it is published, or download the file to your computer to listen at your convenience. All those instructions and link can be found below.

This episode is 22 minutes in length, with a download size of 21 MB (for the MP3 file).

Just click the Listen now link below to hear the interview now. The GrassCast available through the iTunes music store is an enhanced podcast containing photos and hyperlinks relative to the subject matter being discussed in the interview.

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Billboard Magazine is reporting that Nickel Creek will put the band into “an indefinite hiatus in late 2007.”

From the article on the Billboard site:

“After seven years straight of touring and three records behind us, it’s in our best interest to suspend Nickel Creek by the end of next year,” says group member Chris Thile, noting that he and Sara Watkins have been in Nickel Creek since they were eight years old.”

Read the whole article here.

Brance adds: Rex Hammock has a nice post about this on his blog.

Nickel Creek fans can find video online of songs taken from recent live performances, posted on two different web sites.

Three songs recorded at the Bonnaro Festival in June are available on the AT&T Blue Room site. Included are Scotch & Soda, Somebody More Like You, and an extended version of The Fox.

There is another live performance of Scotch & Soda available on the Farmer’s Almanac TV site. This segment also features an interview with the band.

AT&T Blue Room has Bonnaro video from Bela Fleck & The Flecktones as well, P’Lod, Frontiers and Stomping Grounds.

Following up on the post about Sean Watkins’ online CD release…

VH1 has several Nickel Creek videos available online, including the two music video releases from their latest Sugar Hill release, Why Should The Fire Die, plus three songs from that CD performed live in the studio for VH1’s Live @ VH1.com feature. Find all of the online video clips here.

Nickel Creek recently recorded a live show in the studios of WRAX in Birmingham, AL. The audio can be accessed online at Reg’s Coffee House, a site run by Scott Register. Nickel Creek seems to be the closest thing to bluegrass on this site, though a few folk and acoustic artists are featured.

Six songs are included in the live Nickel Creek show, taken mostly from their last two CDs: When In Rome, Jealous Of The Moon, Nice Dream, Reason’s Why, The Smoothie Song and Scotch & Chocolate.

Why Should The Fire Die? the newest CD from the band Nickel Creek is released today. This CD features several songs that showcase the band’s bluegrass roots, but remember that the band members have never, to my knowledge, claimed that this is a bluegrass band, so be prepared for some non-bluegrass material as well.

They have an eCard available for the project which includes band bios, photos, audio, video, wallpapers, IM icons, and more. The music video is the song “When In Rome”. I sure hope that wasn’t Chris’ good suit!

The full text of the press release follows.

NICKEL CREEK TO RELEASE WHY SHOULD THE FIRE DIE?
ON SUGAR HILL RECORDS AUGUST 9
GRAMMY-WINNING BAND’S THIRD ALBUM OFFERS FURTHER FOLK-POP INNOVATION
(more…)