"only the curious have something to find"

This was a week of anniversaries for me. Wednesday marked 6 years of me being Supervisor of Outreach Services and Thursday was the 14th anniversary of me starting at MSC. Sometimes it doesn't feel that long and sometimes it feels like i've been here my entire life (actually it is 38% of my life, in case you were wondering). To celebrate i took myself to Nickel Creek's Farewell (for now) Tour with special guest Fionna Apple at Pier 6 Pavillion on Thursday night. Nickel Creeek's last album Why Should the Fire Die? has been living in my studio CD player for about 2 months now. I really like it, a lot. I have always been impressed with the talent of all 3 members of the band and have wanted to see them live for several years. It looked like this might be my last chance, so off I went. What an amazing concert. The band consists of Sara Watkins on violin, Chris Thille on mandolin and Sean Watkins on guitar and they all do vocals. There was also a stand-up bass player for the tour. The talent level verges on ridiculous, especially if you consider that all 3 of them are still in their 20s. They played songs from all three of their albums, mixing near CD reproductions and drawn out improvisations. This was the first night of their tour and they sounded well practiced and seemed to be having a lot of fun. It was cool that instead of having Fionna Apple start the show, they had her come out and sing with them several times during the 2.5 hour concert. Her voice is amazing, especially coming out of such a tiny body (somebody give that girl a sandwich for goodness sakes). It was interesting to see Nickel Creek play the part of her back-up band, but it was unbelievable when they mixed their genres or did covers. The bluegrass version of Fionna's hit "Criminal" was crazy fun and i have NEVER heard a better cover of Patsy Cline by anyone. On the way back to the car i saw people standing by stantions by the buses waiting to meet the band. Eventually they all showed and here are pictures of Sara talking to fans, Sean scamming the phone number of 2 girls from Columbia and Chris singing a capella with some fans: And here is me with Sara and Chris: If you have any chance to see Nickel Creek in these last 3 weeks before they go their seperate ways, GO - it was amazing.