Roots and Americana music has been enjoying a well-deserved resurgence in the last decade plus, and that genre of music naturally lends itself to collaboration with other musicians. Kind of like more acoustic-based musicians of yore getting together on an old-timey porch to swap songs, share stories and harmonize.
This intimate form of musicianship is beautifully represented by the female folk trio I’m With Her, which features singer/songwriters Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins. The group’s tour stops at Santa Rosa’s Luther Burbank Center on Saturday, June 6.
Speaking by phone from her Los Angeles area home, Sara Watkins explained the origins of the band. “I met Aoife (pronounced EE-fuh) at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, and I met Jarosz at the Dripping Springs Songwriting Festival in Texas,” she recalled. As happens frequently at music festivals, there’s some down time, and musicians jam together for fun and inspiration.
Watkins said the first notion of the three doing something more official came about at yet another, completely different festival, this time in Colorado.
“We found ourselves assigned to be on stage together, which we were very happy about because we were all friends and got together a little ahead of that workshop just to arrange a couple of harmonies and songs that we could do. And that process was just very easy,” she noted. “In addition to liking how our voices sounded together, just the communication was really easy to just whip something up quite quickly and that we were happy with.” From there, the folk supergroup of sorts was born.
If Sara Watkins’ name sounds familiar, it’s because she first came to prominence in another folk-based trio, Nickel Creek, who one could argue were at the forefront of the mainstream popularization of folk over the last few decades.
That band consists of Watkins on fiddle; her brother, Sean Watkins, on guitar; and well-respected mandolin player Chris Thile. Nickel Creek scored some radio air-time with the lovely if not unlikely 2000 hit song “When You Come Back Down” and went on to win a Grammy in 2002 for Best Contemporary Folk Album with This Side.
That group has been on hiatus since 2023 as members have been off doing other things. And this brings us back to I’m With Her, who themselves won a Grammy for Best American Roots Song in 2020 with “Call My Name” and yet again won that same Grammy this year for their song “Ancient Light.”
While certainly proud of the myriad awards she’s won thus far in her career, Watkins doesn’t dwell when asked what they mean to her. Instead, she steers more towards the notion of how to be a successful creative. “I mean, success is largely determined by the process, creating something that we’re really proud of,” she said.
Practicality aside, Watkins leans heavily into the reason she and her I’m With Her bandmates make the time to keep this project going, even though all three are spread across the United States. She observed, “It’s really nice that we feel very lucky to have this tour that we continue to get to be on and play these shows that we’re very, very proud of. We genuinely love to play these songs live for people.”
Digging in on this, she added, “We can only afford to keep making records and being a band if people show up, so we want it to make it worth people’s while. We want them to have the kind of memorable concert experience that we all hold so dear as audience members.”
I’m With Her performs at 8pm, Saturday, June 6, at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Rd., Santa Rosa. For tix, visit lutherburbankcenter.org. For more info on the band, visit imwithherband.com.
