Watkins Family Hour: brother sister

Watkins Family Hour – brother sister

Family Hour/Thirty Tigers – 8 May 2020

For a group that has had a regular residency at LA’s Largo for the past eighteen years, it’s hard to believe that Watkins Family Hour has only recorded two albums. Of course, Sara and Sean Watkins have recorded in any number of other contexts from Nickel Creek to I’m With Her and Works Progress Administration. Along the way, they have also won a Grammy or two.

Finding they had time on their hands, along with a sense of urgency to create an album of their own work, brother sister was born. Most importantly, the two carved out the time to write together, usually during naptime for Sara’s toddler. Working with Mike Viola, they began to record, face to face, playing and singing, trying to capture the intimacy of a live performance. The approach clearly paid dividends.

Guitar and violin weave a web of silken beauty before the lyrics of The Cure establish the desire to stay in one place is actually an impossibility thanks to gentrification, “I’ve been praying for a breakthrough, as long as everything stays the same. I avoided the cure, but it found me anyway.” As Sara relates, “It’s a funny thing that a lot of us are so reluctant to do the thing that we know is going to bring us the outcome we’re looking for.”

Single notes from Sara’s plucked fiddle and bass from Sean’s guitar set the scene for Neighborhood Name, a song by Courtney Hartman and Taylor Ashton recalling how change continues to take place leaving nothing of your hometown the same, except for the name. It also relates to the notion of what is left of you when you leave. As Sara suggests, “it speaks to the question of wondering if anybody’s gonna remember you — if you made a mark at all.”

Sean’s memories of emerging from the darkness of a Zion National Park tunnel into the peace of a world of white create the glory of Snow Tunnel. The guitar and violin duet of Bella and Ivan playfully examines the world of two dogs who continually wrestle with one another. While most of the album features the Watkins, some tracks are filled out with the addition of Matt Chamberlain on drums, with Mike Viola lending a hand on keyboards.

Blood is thicker than water, and the familial bond of Sara and Sean Watkins is undeniable. More than just sister and brother they are kindred spirits, creating music that appeals to both body and soul. The Watkins Family Hour continues the journey of two musicians on the lifelong pathway of brother sister.