Nickel Creek with Gaby Moreno, Frederik Meijer Gardens Amphitheater, June 8, 2023

After a warm late spring day (with atmospheric residue from Canadian forest fires actually visible under the stage lights), a capacity crowd of 1,900 was primed for ignition at my local outdoor amphitheater’s opening night. And once Guatemalan singer-songwriter Gaby Moreno had warmed us up with her beguiling vocals and deft guitar work, Nickel Creek didn’t disappoint.

Launching into “Where the Long Line Leads” from the brand-new reunion album Celebrants, fiddler/guitarist Sara Watkins shot off sassy sung verses like rockets, as mandolinist Chris Thile and guitarist Sean Watkins fueled the rhythm with their tight backing harmonies, then grabbed equal shares of the three-part choruses. And once Thile, then Sara ripped out incendiary solos, stoked by guest bassist Jeff Picker — whew! By the end of that opener, the progressive bluegrass trio had fired up Meijer Gardens but good.

It was a hot start to a hot night, even as the temperature on the amphitheater lawn went down with the sun. Mixing in about half of Celebrants with roughly equal selections from their previous four albums, Nickel Creek walked the line flawlessly between fresh and vintage, instrumental and vocal, tradition and the cutting edge. The trickily-timed bluegrass workout “Going Out . . .” slotted in effortlessly with obvious audience favorites like “Ode to a Butterfly” and “Smoothie Song”; Thile’s “The Meadow” proved another ironic kiss-off to passing romance in the ongoing vein of “Helena”, “This Side” and “Somebody More Like You”. Sara’s “Thinnest Wall”, goofily introduced as a song about “the middle of a relationship for a change,” wore its heart on its sleeve just as much as oldies “When You Come Back Down” and “Sabra Girl”; and Sean’s vocal feature “21st of May” proved weirdly sympathetic to its tale of a desperate preacher who believes that, at long last, he’s finally got the date of the Rapture right!

But for all the exhilaration, there was also serious joy at the heart of Nickel Creek’s set that burned bright even when the flames died down to a smolder. Along with the subdued “Strangers” and the stark final encore “Holding Pattern”, Celebrants’ title track (anchored by Thile’s 6/4 stomping and the audience’s offbeat claps) reflected on what the world had lost, then found — “Ho! for the gatherings/For having what we had again/Now that we/Know fellow celebrants/What the hell it meant.” The joy of reunion after enforced absence simply couldn’t be contained; it was there throughout the night — in Thile’s virtuosic solos and upbeat comments, in Sara’s sheer delight at the band’s first outdoor gig of the year (and her bandmates’ celebrating her birthday with onstage cocktails), in Sean’s unabashed grins, crossing his face in the midst of still more dazzling picking — and most of all, when the trio gathered around one mike for the daringly acrobatic vocal swoops of “Water Under the Bridge, Part 1”.

So it was obvious that Nickel Creek was delighted they could be back onstage, sharing what they had to give with us. And their generosity overflowed into the supersonic breakdown of “The Fox” (did Thile & Sean actually quote from The Beatles’ “Birthday” to give Sara one more shout-out?), the mash-up of hip-hop and yodeling that yields an attractively skewed cover of Mother Mother’s “Hayloft”, and the final, dizzying instrumental showcase “Scotch and Chocolate”, sending the audience home with jaws dropped, minds blown, hearts refreshed and spirits high.

— Rick Krueger

Gaby Moreno’s setlist:

• Maybe Today, Maybe Tomorrow
• Till Waking Light
• Quizas, Quizas, Quizas
• Por Que te Vas (from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish)
• Fronteras
• Luna de Xelaju

Nickel Creek’s setlist:

• Where the Long Line Leads
• First and Last Waltz
• Helena
• This Side
• Going Out . . .
• Celebrants
• Destination
• Ode to a Butterfly
• Somebody More Like You
• The Lighthouse’s Tale
• Smoothie Song
• Water Under the Bridge, Part 1
• The Meadow
• Thinnest Wall
• Cuckoo’s Nest
• 21st of May
• When You Come Back Down
• nElephant in the Corn
• Strangers
• Sabra Girl
• The Fox
• Hayloft
• Scotch and Chocolate
• Holding Pattern