Nickel Creek

Bluegrass’s red-headbanging stepchild leaves the crotchety purists even farther behind, teaming up with Smash Mouth producer Eric Valentine to record a harder-rocking (but still drumless) alterna-pop record. Paste catches up with the band at its beloved L.A. home venue, Largo, and around the kitchen table of its bachelor crashpad. Wine and cheese, anyone?

It’s Tuesday night in West Hollywood and the six-foot bunny rabbit on stage looks depressed. Not quite suicidal, but easily down in the dumps. Slouching on his drum stool behind a lonely snare, saucer-like eyes red and unblinking, he sniffs out catharsis in a quasi-elementary rat-a-tat drum figure while blistering techno beats pour out of the club’s speakers. He occasionally reaches down and presses a pedal on the floor, twists a few knobs, alters the supplementary track and returns to his own pounding. A miniature keyboard nearby loops a sequence of chiming melodies, topping off an already dizzying sonic collage—a psychedelic rabbit hole we in the audience gladly tumble down.

This is just the opening act, granted, but I still have a hard time believing there’s bluegrass (however pop-infused) on the menu this evening. Then again, it’s my first time catching a show at Largo, a trendy Fairfax Avenue music venue that cares not for pigeons nor the constricting holes in which they dwell. The club books its fair share of acoustic singer/songwriters but—likely inspired by the ubiquitous presence of mad-pop-scientist Jon Brion (producer behind soundtracks like Magnolia and I Heart Huckabees), who enjoys a weekly Friday-night residence—artistic exploration and inter-genre collaboration are encouraged.

Our friend in the bunny suit eventually plods backstage holding his drumsticks, making way for the most recent installment of The Watkins Family Hour, a semi-regular Largo gig that Sara and Sean Watkins (two-thirds of celebrated newgrass trio, Nickel Creek) have been playing for a couple years now. The sibling pair takes the stage with a host of friends; only “family” in the musical sense but no less close, having played numerous shows together over the past several years.

If these relatively young bluegrass musicians don’t mind sharing a bill with an experimental electronic artist, they care even less about trying to look the typical bluegrass part. Sara’s fellow fiddler tonight, Gabe Witcher, sports a neatly coifed Mohawk and his dobro-shredding brother Michael wears glasses and has a wallet chain snaking into his back pocket. No one’s wearing cowboy boots.

Despite the absence of the Watkins’ usual partner-in-croon, mandolin guru Chris Thile—who has a gig with Jon Brion here Saturday night and won’t arrive in L.A. for a few more days—it becomes readily apparent why Nickel Creek has inadvertently rankled many of the bluegrass purists among its fanbase. Tonight the Watkins are just as likely to cover Radiohead (a convincing rendition of “Nice Dream,” though much airier due to Sara’s lead vocals), as they are a 1920s Tin Pan Alley tune.

Rigid bluegrass tradition is the sacred cow being mischievously tipped this evening, as the musicians onstage lovingly reinvent pop songs both old and new to fit their unapologetically elastic template. It all comes down to a wildly inclusive love of music, and there’s plenty of room for diversity with this bunch. When Jackson Browne hops on stage later in the set to join in for a few songs, the mob of twentysomethings falls right into sync with the moppy-haired L.A. luminary. Fiddle, dobro, acoustic guitar—it’s all just rock ’n’ roll, and it takes all kinds.

Fast forward to Saturday. It’s almost midnight and Chris Thile’s sitting in the passenger seat of my rental car, sweating profusely, running one hand through his spiky shock of blond hair, and stringing words together the way he typically plucks notes on his mandolin—absurdly fast, with unrelenting forward motion.