SAN DIEGO — The members of Nickel Creek have won Grammy Awards, sold millions of albums, toured the world, earned critical acclaim and collaborated with everyone from Yo-Yo Ma, Dolly Parton and The Killers to Lyle Lovett, Fiona Apple and Brad Mehldau. In 2007, the group became the first act in any genre to perform on back-to-back weekends in Indio at the stylistically disparate Coachella and Stagecoach festivals.
What this 34-year-old San Diego-bred trio has not done, at least so far, is scored a hit single. And while there seems to be clear hit potential for the ebullient "Where the Long Line Leads" — a standout song from "Celebrants," Nickel Creek's first new studio album in nine years — the group's members sound taken aback at even the notion one of their songs could earn major national radio airplay and zoom up the sales charts.
"I feel like I don't even know what 'hit' means in our world," said violinist and singer Sara Watkins, 41, who shares her bandmates' penchant for fusing bluegrass, folk, country, rock, neo-classical and various genres in between.
