Back at Largo: Watkins Family

Diana and I made it back to Largo last night for our second trip. The night's entertainment? The Watkins Family Hour (apologies for the MySpace Link--ugh!). For the Pomerantzes in our reading audience, I'll point out that this is not the Watkins you are thinking of: rather, this would be Sean and Sara Watkins of the band Nickel Creek. With Nickel Creek on hiatus, the band members are all kind of doing their own thing--and lucky for us, the Watkins siblings must live here in LA, as they seem to play every week or so, usually at Largo.

I had the chance to see Nickel Creek as a whole once (at Bonnaroo 2006), and it was quite possibly the best show I've ever seen. The band has a great dynamic--and it should, given that it features a brother/sister pair and their childhood friend. Chris Thile, the band leader, is an absolute phenom on the mandolin. If I recall correctly, the Watkins's dad joined them on stand-up bass for a portion of the show, and danced a little jig. And as if that weren't enough, they did a totally awesome cover of an absolutely wonderful pop song most famously recorded by one Britney Spears (this isn't my video, but I must have been standing about 10 feet away from the person who did film it):

Don't hate on "Toxic." Britney or no Britney, that's just a great song.

Anyway, the Watkins Family Hour show was a lot of fun, though it didn't live up to either the Nickel Creek show or the Welch / Rawlings set we'd seen two weeks earlier. A few highlights:

• The show was billed as the "Watkins Family Hour with Special Guests". The guests turned out to be Glen Phillips (formerly of Toad the Wet Sprocket) and ... Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. What are the chances? The Welch/Rawlings part of the show was our favorite if for no other reason than it was great to see them playing the lighter, sillier stuff after a fairly somber set of their own.
  
• At some point after they introduced a song, there was a silent pause, and I yelled a supporting "Woo!" Sara then muttered something that I'm pretty sure was a Big Lebowski quote ("No, [like I said,] Woo peed on my rug!"). Awesome.
  
  
• Sean was sick, so only sang on one song, which was disappointing. The one song was pretty fun--a very short ditty called "Hello, Goodbye"--not the Beatles song. From a different performance:

• At some point, Gillian came out to inform Sean and Sara that she and David were tap dancing back stage.
  
  
• They ended the main set with a really fun version of "Hot Corn, Cold Corn"--just a fun ol' country bumpkin song.
  
  
• They ended the encore with probably my favorite song of the night, a cover of John Hartford's "Long Hot Summer Day." Just a great rendition of a really nice peice of music, and show's off the nicest parts of Sara's voice. I wish I had a recording with the full band (including Welch and Rawlings), but here's a good recording of just Sara:

All in all, a solid show. No very good videos of the Watkins Family Hour themselves on YouTube--this is the best I could find: