Live at the Iowa Arts Fest | June 3, 2006
By Sean Moeller

The final notes to “When In Rome,” the opening track off Nickel Creek’s last record “Why Should The Fire Die?” and the first song of the Southern California band’s hour and a half set, were still hanging in the air, sharing with the street lamps.

Mandolinist Chris Thile points out five people standing on the rooftop of the Atlas bar just on the other side of the intersection where the main stage at the Iowa Arts Fest in Iowa City was positioned, likening their vantage points to those people share from Waveland Ave. across the street from Wrigley Field.

“And any visiting song that sucks, you throw it back, right?” Thile posed to the high ups.

The roof dwellers and the thousands that filled the streets never had to treat Nickel Creek or still boyish Australian Ben Lee the way they would Albert Pujols or Andruw Jones.

It’s early June so the mosquitoes aren’t restless and the shad flies weren’t cluttering up in any humidity. The night was ideal for food vendors and artisans plying their oils and handicrafts. Where there’s smoke there’s beer and where there’s a free outdoor concert there’s an outpouring of interested folks with strollers, lawn chairs and kabobs in tow.

Lee, who’s joining the bluegrassy Creek as support for a few weeks before tagging along with Dashboard Confessional for the rest of the summer, is still on the road playing songs from his 2005 release “Awake Is The New Sleep”—an album that has continued to gain favorable response late in its life. It recently garnered three Arias—the Australian Grammy—and the Aria-winning song of the year “Catch My Disease” (more summer than an ice cream truck and a dead lawn) is still being added to radio station playlists almost a year after the record’s release.

Saturday, Lee performed with keyboardist/percussionist Lara May, whom he claims has a knack for floral arrangements and “occassionally gives me a haircut.” The two played a great deal from the new record, simplifying arrangements to fit more of a breezy, outdoor atmosphere, but it was Lee’s quirky ease on stage that won over a crowd of predominantly older listeners. His songs about love of the do or die variety and his journalistic treatment of his feelings was accessible to a crowd that warmed easily.

He posed in classic rock star poses for those with digital and cell phone cameras—smacking of Elvis and AC/DC—recited a rap about himself that we could have done without, told a story about a drummer of his who studied at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop who could kick himself in the head and explained how a stolen kiss with David Hasselhoff at the Aria Awards led to his writing “Love Just Leaves You Bruised” with Ben Kweller and Ben Folds (the other 2/3rds of The Bens).

“I wouldn’t say there were attachments as to what would happen next, but I expected a call from him the next day. He never called,” Lee said. “I called up my friends Ben Kweller and Ben Folds and said, ‘I want to write a song about these feelings I’m having.’ This song’s for The Hoff, wherever he is.”

At times Lee seemed to try too hard to “melt faces” with his arena rock persona, but he shone through with songs that, while at times come off as being way too literal, can’t help but be adorable. In “Catch My Disease,” his ever-morphing final verse, where he lists certain things that get played on the radio before saying (now a bit tongue-in-cheek) that they don’t play him on the radio, he mentioned that they play Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland on the radio. Sometimes Lee and Nelly Furtado aren’t so far removed in their approach. This was a night—with Lee looking rakish in a bright white blazer—when he was doing it for the masses.

Nickel Creek—Thile, and brother and sister Sara and Sean Watkins—have been playing music together since 1989, but they’re young codgers, not veterans in any other sense than in their abilities. They’re just as quick to reference Radiohead, Britney Spears, Old Crow Medicine Show as they are to bring Tom Waits, Bach and Randy Newman into the conversation. They played cover songs by each of the above-mentioned artists including renditions of their original tunes that all floored. They must be one of the most exciting live bands working today and they’re incapable of being claimed by the country sect, the bluegrass sect or the rock and roll sect. It would be sheer audacity to say that the band was one thing or the other. They’re everything from Tegan and Sara with violins (the influence of Sara Watkins), John Mayer (the odd mannerisms of Thile) and Guster (the sly guitar work of Sean Watkins). It’s the perfect pie.

www.ben-lee.com
www.nickelcreek.com