A new description of
Chris Thile would be hard to come by, especially since all the good superlatives have already been used. They called him a child prodigy when he was 12 years old and making his first solo album, 1994's Leading Off..., and a virtuoso when he was 20 and putting out his third solo effort, 2001's
Not All Who Wander Are Lost. On the heels of those descriptions came effusive adjectives for his talent with a mandolin, words like "brilliant," "bold," "utterly fantastic," and "staggering."
Heady stuff for someone who was barely out of his teens. But to hear
Thile's joyful playing, or to see his fingers fly with easy speed and agility over his mandolin as they did when he appeared with his bandmates from
Nickel Creek on the 35th CMA Awards Show in 2001, is to learn firsthand that the enthusiastic praise aimed at the young mandolin player isn't just hype. In addition to his work as a solo artist,
Thile has been part of
Nickel Creek, with siblings Sara Watkins and
Sean Watkins, for more than ten years. He helped
Nickel Creek earn a pair of Grammy nominations for a self-titled debut album, which was released by Sugar Hill in 2000 and claimed a niche in Billboard's
country Top 20. Their sophomore effort, 2002's
This Side, later nabbed the group's first Grammy win for Best Contemporary Folk Album. In 2001,
Thile took home the title of Mandolin Player of the Year from the Instrumental Bluegrass Music Association, while the band was honored as Instrumental Group of the Year. He and his bandmates were nominated that same year for the CMA's Vocal Group of the Year and the Horizon Award.
Thile started earning awards and championships years ago. He took home top honors in mandolin competitions in both Arizona and Kansas when he was 13, a time when he also received a nod from the International Bluegrass Music Association with a nomination for Player of the Year. He and
Nickel Creek played during a Grammy Awards ceremony while backing
country superstar
Dolly Parton, and
Thile and Sara Watkins made appearances in a
Parton music video. Country Music Television also took notice of
Thile and his fellow bandmembers, airing videos of the band's "When You Come Back Down" and "Reasons Why." Initially,
Nickel Creek also included Scott Thile, the mandolinist's bass-playing father. The elder
Thile bowed out after the group launched its first album. The younger
Thile acted as producer on
Not All Who Wander Are Lost. Among the album's guest artists are the other two-thirds of
Nickel Creek,
Edgar Meyer, Jeff Coffin, Union Station's
Jerry Douglas, and
Béla Fleck. One of
Thile's enduring influences, John Moore, was one of his first mandolin instructors during
Thile's childhood in California and plays in the band Bluegrass Etc. Moore formerly was a member of California, a first-rate
bluegrass band, along with Dan Crary and
Byron Berline. (The trio
Thile formed with the Watkins siblings borrows its name from a song written by
Berline.) Through this flurry of activity,
Thile continued to record on his own, releasing
Deceiver in the fall of 2004. The album showed him exploring a more progressive and experimental side of
bluegrass music, instead of just the hotshot mandolin playing that marked his prior albums. The more organic-sounding but still eclectic How to Grow a Woman from the Ground followed in 2006 and earned
Thile a Grammy nomination for Best Country Instrumental Performance. He recorded the album with the backing band the How to Grow a Band (with whom he later toured), which comprised
Noam Pikelny, Gabe Witcher, Chris Eldridge, and Greg Garrison. ~ Linda Seida, All Music Guide
