Concert in the Garden

I saw Nickel Creek last night at Red Butte Garden, although I must admit that I wasn't able to stay for the whole show. One of the people I went with thought the motto went: "I am the sole musketeer...All for one, and only for me!", so we ended up having to leave well before the set was over. However what I saw was impressive and the ticket was free (although I would have preferred it had it been for the Rosanne Cash concert in two weeks). Nickel Creek have an eclectic mix ranging from quasi-Celtic, to Appalacian folk, to country, to Bluegrass. Their instrumentals are excellent, and definitely worth toe-tapping to. While there were a couple of places where I thought they could use some developing, including lyrically and vocally, overall I'd say they were a very good listen and I recommend them highly. I had to laugh when I was leaving because they did an almost unrecognizable cover of Randy Newman's Short People, whose lyrics I remember still because I used to love the humor of that song. Nickel Creek's latest album Why Should the Fire Die? was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Contemporary Folk category. You can see one of their music videos that won other awards here. On a side note, music has become so commercial and tenuous, especially for the artist, that they were doing quite a bit of hawking their wares which grew tedious and downright embarassing after a while.