If it weren’t such a handy crutch that we music writers lean on from time to time, we could retire the concept of the “supergroup.” It’s a trite euphemism for one of the things we most cherish among top-tier musicians - collaboration. Just because three great singer-songwriters also have a band that tours and records from time to time doesn’t mean they’re asking for a new laudatory label. That said, any credible assessment of I’m With Her, the harmonizing and songwriting trio of Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan would concur that they are indeed super.
As fresh as the impact of I’m With Her’s first performances still feels, it’s hard to believe they joined forces more than ten years ago, when they were invited to share a workshop stage at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Sara Watkins says it “felt significant” when they joined their voices, like an exciting first date. (Echoes of the famous Laurel Canyon kitchen jam that launched Crosby, Stills & Nash come easily to mind.) They started touring in the US and UK even before releasing the album See You Around in 2018, which won awards at Americanafest and the Grammys. The trio blew through like a beautiful breeze and then shifted back to their various, high-level pursuits. But a reunion seemed somewhat inevitable, to us and to them.
“I love this band so much,” Watkins says in the interview presented here. “I'm just always so delighted to get to stand next to these musicians and hear them every night. It's an incredibly pleasurable experience to be on stage and off with them, and I'm such a fan of both of them.”
I’m With Her’s second album, Wild And Clear And Blue arrived last Friday, and it’s even more sumptuous and moving than their debut. Back then, their plainspoken folk was arranged for three instruments and three voices in a way that could transfer immediately to the stage. Here, the group aspired to a more layered and atmospheric sound. So they called on Josh Kaufman to produce, he of the trio Bonny Light Horseman, of history with Josh Ritter, and a renowned passion for the Grateful Dead. Little from that resume directly influences Wild and Clear And Blue. Instead, the natural resonance and lushness of the artists’ voices are enhanced with subtle drums and bass, plus some organ and sparkling extra guitars here and there. Meanwhile, the outstanding instrumental voices of Jarosz on mandola and Watkins on fiddle play a starring role.
Opener “Ancient Light” swings freshly in a jagged time signature while flooding the zone with sweet harmony and lyrics that weigh the earthly and the mystic. It makes me think of photons traveling light years from distant stars and coming to rest in a dappled forest. That was the first song the writers composed, followed by the title track, which follows. It’s about falling under the spell of music as a young person and how that gift gets carried and amplified across a life.
“Standing On The Fault Line,” a song about living in precarious times and contemplating the possibility of moving away from home, features Sara on the lead vocal. What starts in a pensive tone grows in a slow, grand crescendo to passionate three-way harmony. “Find My Way To You” brings the most bluegrass texture, with a lilting fiddle and mandolin riff and O’Donovan’s silken and nimble voice carrying the lead. The album ends with “Rhododendron,” a prayer to nature set in Appalachia with a breathtaking mingling of lyric and music.
I remarked to Watkins that the lyrics here and throughout the album seem to defy the truth that they were co-written. They seem to have poured out of a single, inspired heart.
“That's the dream,” she says. “Because we want to write about our shared experiences and the things that we can all relate to. That's pretty common with co-writing, but especially when you've been able to share a lot of life with people. You're able to empathize. You're writing from some shared knowledge.”
Those hive mind songs have been coming together for about four years, she tells me, because all three artists have careers that to some degree or another need to be scheduled out months and years at a time. “Every fall, we made time without any idea when we would be able to record. We just made time (to) come together and just reconnect,” Watkins says. “We would do a big grocery shop, live in a house for three to four to five days, and write and not really leave, except to go on walks. And then at the final writing session, we started talking about who we wanted to produce the record.” The sessions commenced in March of 2024 and wrapped in July.
The three artists came from very different backgrounds. O’Donovan grew up near Boston in a family that participated in Irish music. She launched her career during her years at the New England Conservatory with the progressive folk band Crooked Still. Watkins, a native of southern California, got involved with Nickel Creek at age eight, and the band’s immense success in edgy bluegrass dominated her next 20 years. Jarosz is ten years younger than her bandmates, but became acquainted with them on the bluegrass festival circuit as she came up out of Wimberly, TX as a widely hailed prodigy. What they have in common, besides striking visions and voices, is a gift for balancing the homey/accessible with musical sophistication that leave all of their projects worthy of long-term listening. I’m With Her draws on all those strengths in an exponential way.
In the conversation above, Sara Watkins talks about how the trio has affected her, and she answers my questions about two of her other major achievements of the past few years - the brilliant Watkins Family Hour, Vol. 2 album, and the ambitious Celebrants, the latest reunion project by Nickel Creek.
