Nine years after their last tour and the last album of new music, the precocious bluegrass child prodigies who’ve grown into middle age as some of the best progressive string band musicians of this or any generation are back.

Yes, Nickel Creek has a new album entitled Celebrants, released yesterday, and they’re supporting it with a summer-long tour which comes around to Charlottesville (where I saw their “Farewell for Now” tour in 2007 and their “25th Anniversary Reunion Tour” in 2014) on May 1 of 2023. They are also playing at Wolf Trap on July 23rd.

The band shared teaser videos before the full release date, as seen for the songs Strangers and Holding Pattern below.

And they were also out road-testing a few songs, as seen in these videos taken in January in London which feature tunes from the new album.

The band was last together to support the album A Dotted Line, which was their first album in eight years when it was released. I wrote a review of the concert at the time but want to repost a couple of my favorites from that period: the original Destination and their cover of Mother Mother’s rather bizarre Hayloft.

And finally, for a real trip down memory lane, here’s the band from an early Austin City Limits show performing their signature tune The Fox.

Good to have you back together, Sara, Chris, and Sean.

More to come…

DJB

Photo credit: Nickel Creek.com