ON the Beat | Family Affair with Friends Attached at UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall
This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on December 8, 2022. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
Holiday-mindedness is the rule this month, maybe more so than in the past three years. Thus, it is incumbent on me to report that the Watkins Family Hour concert last week at Campbell Hall featured only one actual Christmas song. Granted, the tune was an obscure and instantly loveable gem from Guatemala, sung by very special guest and Guatemalan-in-L.A. Gaby Moreno.
Even so, some implicit holiday spirit — of the good-hearted family gathering sort — descended in the room with the return of the ever-malleable project led by Sara (voice, fiddle) and Sean Watkins (voice, guitar). We can thank the hip Los Angeles haven of Largo for the monthly series, in which the siblings — also leaders in their own rights and founders of Nickel Creek — invite noted guests to the club (and their special club) once a month. They are currently promoting both the 20th anniversary of the Family Hour, and a new, third album, Vol. II, from which the concert included Ernest Tubbs’ “Thanks a Lot” and tUnE-yArDs’ “Look into the Edges.”
Needless to say, diversity rules in this family. It also rules in their rich body of originals, from sensitive singer-songwriter fare to brisk bluegrass workouts, harkening back to their youths as bluegrass champions in the backwoods of San Diego.
