Sara Watkins: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

Sara Watkins: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert with tags npr, npr music, national public radio, live, performance, tiny desk, tiny desk concert, tony desk, tiny concert

The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It's the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space.

Bob Boilen | May 13, 2021

This is so enchanting. The painted scrim, the scenery trees are not only a setting for Sara Watkins and her bandmates, but we also discover a "magic desk." And as Sara lifts the desk's top, we hear a guitar playing an alluring melody; in fact, it's Harry Nilsson's dreamy song "Blanket For a Sail."

I admired Sara's talents first as a fiddler, guitarist and singer playing in Nickel Creek, then her solo work, and much later with the trio I'm With Her. However, none of her music, even her solo recordings, ever sounded quite like the music on this Tiny Desk (home) concert. The songs are from her new album, Under the Pepper Tree.

"It's a children's record, largely inspired by thinking back on the music that meant so much to me as a kid," she says. "I've got a daughter now, and so much of the music that I heard as a kid has stayed with me and served me well."

One of music's magical properties for Sara is the way it can ease transitions. Maybe it's from childhood to adolescence, or falling in and out of love, or simply getting your child to sleep. For this Tiny Desk, we hear old cowboy tunes via the Sons of the Pioneers or Rogers and Hammerstein's "You'll Never Walk Alone." Yet, even Sara's original songs have that feeling of serenity and grace, like a world with a magical desk or curling up in a blanket under a pepper tree.

SET LIST

"Tumbling Tumbleweeds"

"Blanket For a Sail"

"Under the Pepper Tree"

"You'll Never Walk Alone"

"Night Singing"

MUSICIANS

Sara Watkins: fiddle, guitar, vocals

Davíd Garza: guitar, vocals

Alan Hampton: bass, vocals

CREDITS

Video: Caitlin Gerard

Audio: Sam Weber

Creative Director: Jacob Boll

Cinematographer: Indeana Underhill

Editor: Robin Gonsalves

Camera Operator / G&E: Stas Bondarenko

TINY DESK TEAM

Producer: Bob Boilen

Video Producer: Maia Stern

Audio Mastering: Josh Rogosin

Associate Producer: Bobby Carter

Tiny Production Team: Kara Frame

Executive Producer: Keith Jenkins

Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

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