Intergenerational connectivity. It’s a key component for what drives I’m With Her, the three-person outfit made up of Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek), Aoife O’Donovan (Crooked Still) and Texas singer/writer Sarah Jarosz.
The trio is currently on the road promoting their sophomore bow, Wild and Clear and Blue, the follow-up to their 2018 Ethan Johns-produced debut, See You Around. While Watkins admits the first record was “very bare, written in about a week and a half and had material we performed basically as they were written,” the new collection of songs found the longtime friends adding more complexity to the process with help from multi-instrumentalist/producer Josh Kaufman, who is also a member of the collaborative ensemble Bonny Light Horseman.
“From the outset, we wanted to be open to playing with other people on this album,” Watkins said in a recent interview. “And we weren’t sure if that meant doing a full production on all the songs or if that would mean less than that. We ended up feeling like these songs were totally full and complete as we wrote them with just the three of us in a room. But we also wanted to have support on some songs.”
The auditory manna on this collection of songs runs deep. Highlights range from the soaring “Mother Eagle (Sing Me Alive),” which glistens with the group’s harmonies intertwining with Jarosz’s ringing octave mandolin and Watkins’ mournful fiddle runs, to the joyful melancholy of the glistening opener “Ancient Light,” to “Standing On the Fault Line,” a solemn meditation that speaks of choosing between sticking with a dream or moving on when expectations don’t work out. The arrangements that build from a solitary guitar to a hypnotic crescendo of dreamy vocals make it worth the price of admission.
Ask Watkins about the key to this kind of organic intimacy that goes far beyond the fact that the three members have relationships dating back years, and she says it hinges on the collective decision to hunker down and live with each song during the creative process. It’s on full display in the video snippets interspersed on the clips from the album posted on YouTube.
“It was a really enjoyable record to make all in all,” Watkins said. “We were all isolated in upstate New York in both studios [Rhinebeck’s The Clubhouse and The Outlier Inn in the Catskills]. That was good for us, to be out on our own and to be in our own little world. We’d get a bunch of groceries, do meals together and be in the same rhythm while making this thing out of our shared experiences and our collaborative songwriting process. It’s a beautiful thing to get to work with people you love and respect and that challenge you. It’s kind of magic. That’s how we like to do it versus having our work hours and then going our separate ways.”
While recording Wild and Clear and Blue in two separate chunks—in April and July of 2024—the passing of John Prine and Nanci Griffith, who both died during the pandemic, provided an inspirational spark while the album was being written.
“During the first writing sessions we did in November 2021, we were reconnecting and catching up on each other’s lives and things that were in our hearts and what was going on with our families and all of that stuff,” Watkins said. “The pandemic had happened and I think a lot of people were taking stock of what’s really important, as we do in various times throughout our lives. It felt like a pretty cultural moment. Certainly, losing mentors and people that are these flagships in your life—we just started writing about those magical moments we shared with our family and these people. I didn’t know Nanci, but we knew John some. These people hold places in our lives and our families’ lives and have been a structure in some of our most fundamental memories.”
She added, “’Wild and Clear and Blue,’ as well as ‘Sisters of the Night Watch’ and ‘Only Daughter’ were the first three songs we started writing. Out of the gate, there ended up being these narratives of the people who have taught us so much at a young age of learning to trust our intuitions that feel connected to our past and the wisdom the people have given us over the course of our lives and how we’re living in this moment where we’re reaching back toward that wisdom and trying to reach forward to the people coming up. All while we’re living in this present, while doing other things.”
Having already accrued plenty of mileage touring for a year and a half behind the first album—not to mention the years prior when all three musicians shared stages at different festivals and gigs—I’m With Her are raring to further share their creative chemistry with the world.
“We’re very excited to be out there. It’s going to be the three of us on stage, and it’s been really neat to see how the two records work together,” Watkins said. “Putting the material together kind of shines a light and creates a different picture because we have more songs to relate to each other.
“It’s just a bigger picture because of the context of the many years that we know each other and the writing that has happened,” she added. “We are delighted to be getting out there and playing shows almost all year.”
I’m With Her performs at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, on Oct. 5 at 2:10pm. hardlystrictlybluegrass.com
