No limits on musical landscape for adventurous fiddler Sara Watkins

Jeremy Cower

"It kind of feels like I'm trying on all these different clothes," fiddler Sara Watkins says of her practice of mixing genres and collaborators.

If variety is the spice of life, then fiddler Sara Watkins' career is a mighty flavorful stew.

The 30-year-old California native's itinerary veers from project to project, indiscriminately mixing genres and collaborators, with exciting irregularity. When not headlining her own shows, as she will do Saturday in Memphis at St. Mary's Episcopal School's Buckman Arts Center, you may find her, teaming with Lyle Lovett to provide music for a production of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing," touring with alternative rock band The Decemberists, hosting public radio's "A Prairie Home Companion," or singing Dolly Parton's "Jolene" with Fiona Apple in Los Angeles.

"It keeps getting more and more diverse, which is really fun," says Watkins, anticipating an upcoming fall tour with gospel vocal group the Blind Boys of Alabama. "It kind of feels like I'm trying on all these different clothes. One day I get to sing duets with Garrison Keillor. The next I'm playing with John Prine. Part of the fun of being a musician is getting to play with other musicians. It keeps you from getting in a rut. It inspires you."

If Watkins is a little musically promiscuous now, it may be because for so much of her early career she was associated with one act. Watkins and her guitar-playing brother, Sean, first began playing with mandolin player Chris Thile as Nickel Creek in 1989 when Sara was just 8-years-old. Their first gig was at a Carlsbad, Calif., pizza parlor.

"We were pretty bad," Watkins recalls. "We were just a kids band. What you're imagining is probably 100 percent accurate."

The trio got a lot better. By the time Watkins was in her teens, Nickel Creek was a staple of the bluegrass circuit. In 2000, the group met Alison Krauss at a show and asked the icon to produce their breakthrough debut on the respected bluegrass label Sugar Hill Records.

Nickel Creek made three albums for Sugar Hill, each more successful than the last. The band's progressive take on acoustic music broke them out of the narrow confines of the bluegrass genre and made them the biggest crossover success since Krauss.

They famously covered the progressive alternative rock band Pavement on their 2002 LP This Side, which won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. And their 2005 album Why Should the Fire Die? earned them comparisons to such out-there musical trend setters as Wilco and Radiohead.

By the end of 2006, however, the trio that had been together since they were children needed a break from each other. The band announced an indefinite hiatus that remains in effect today.

"We had been a band for 181/2 years and had dedicated ourselves to it completely for a good 10 or 12 years," says Watkins, who performs often with her brother, who will join her here on Saturday along with Grammy-nominated Nashville guitarist Todd Lombardo. "We had been so immersed in each other's company and each other's creativity that we had kind of overfarmed it. We just need to let it lie for a little while. We wanted to do other stuff."

For Watkins, other stuff included making her solo debut. She signed with Nonesuch Records and began work on a record, finding a not-all-together expected producer in former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. As musically adventurous as Watkins herself, Jones is bluegrass fan and played with Nickel Creek in 2004 on a tour of the Mutual Admiration Society, a collaboration between the band and Glen Phillips of the pop group Toad the Wet Sprocket.

"(Jones and I) kept in touch, and he approached me at the Cambridge Folk Festival after Nickel Creek played there about producing my solo record. I thought he was joking at first," says Watkins. "But we started discussing the songs and musicians and our vision for the project and found ourselves on the same page very quickly."

A mix of Watkins originals and covers of everybody from Jimmie Rodgers to Jon Brion, Sara Watkins came out in 2009 to positive reviews praising the performer's immaculate taste and expert musicianship.

Watkins has begun work on a follow-up, but other projects have been dominating her attention of late. Most recently, she and Sean launched a podcast of their Watkins Family Hour, a residency gig the pair play at Los Angeles club Largo featuring guest artists like Apple, Jackson Browne and Gillian Welch.

Running about nine years old now, the Watkins Family Hour, with its relaxed, almost conversational vibe, helped prepare Watkins for a stint earlier this year as guest host of "A Prairie Home Companion." Her status as the only guest host in the show's history has prompted rampant speculation that Watkins is favored to replace host Keillor should his on-again-off-again 2013 retirement actually take place.

"I don't think his audience would be happy with anybody else besides him," Watkins says, swatting down the rumors. "He is that show, and I don't think anybody else can do it but him."

Sara Watkins

8 p.m. Saturday at Buckman Arts Center at St. Mary's School, 60 Perkins Ext. Tickets: $28, available by phone at (901) 537-1483 and online at buckmanartscenter.com.

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