San Diego's singer-songwriter and mandolinist
Chris Thile rose to prominence as a child prodigy performing bluegrass
music with two other
children as the Nickel Creek Band.
They recorded: Little Cowpoke (1993),
Here to There (1997),
Nickel Creek (2000), the album that made them famous,
This Side (2002),
and
Why Should the Fire Die? (2005),
albums rooted in fundamentalist Christianity.
Thile launched his solo career when he was only 13 with
Leading Off (1994), which already included several original songs
and featured famous bluegrass musicians like
Byron Berline (fiddle),
Stuart Duncan (fiddle)
and Pete Wernick (banjo).
Thile wrote all the songs on
Stealing Second (1997) with an even better cast of musicians:
David Grier and
Russ Barenberg on guitar,
Scott Vestal and
Alison Brown on banjo,
Stuart Duncan and Sam Bush on fiddle,
and Jerry Douglas on dobro.
The album stood out for the musicianship.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost (2001) too featured an impressive cast
of bluegrass musicians, perhaps his best.
However, Deceiver (2004) was entirely played by Thile, who alternated at a total of 39 instruments, and, more surprisingly, marked a complete
turn to pop ballads.
How to Grow a Woman from the Ground (2006) was a collection of mostly
covers performed by a classic bluegrass quintet (mandolin, banjo, guitar, fiddle, bass).
That quintet, relocated to New York, became the Punch Brothers (Gabe Witcher on fiddle, Chris Eldridge on guitar), Noam Pikelny on banjo) that recorded Thile's
most ambitious album,
Punch (2008), containing the
four-movement 44-minute suite The Blind Leaving the Blind,
followed by
Antifogmatic (2010), produced by Jon Brion, on which the music is
as austere as classical music and as hummable as the Beach Boys,
and
Who's Feeling Young Now? (2012).
The group became the emblem
of progressive bluegrass.
Meanwhile Thile started collaborating with all sorts of distinguished
folk and classical musicians.
For example, The Goat Rodeo Sessions (2011) captures a collaboration with classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma (and fellow bluegrass musicians Stuart Duncan and Edgar Meyer).
Reunions of the Nickel Creek Band yielded
A Dotted Line (2014) and
Celebrants (2023).
The Punch Brothers returned with
The Phosphorescent Blues (2015), containing the
ten-minute long song Familiarity,
All Ashore (2018) and
Hell on Church Street (2022), a tribute album to bluegrass legend Tony Rice.
After a long hiatus Thile returned with the spartan solo albums
Thanks for Listening (2017) and
Laysongs (2021), his most conceptual album, containing the three-movement
Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth.
