“ This is an album that chronicles a period in my life when I was doing some course correction,” Sara Watkins reflects on the genesis of her new record, Young in All the Wrong Ways. “I think everyone does course correction every few months, or every few years. You look around and think, ‘Huh, I didn’t mean to still be here, but I guess I am.’ Then you have to make adjustments. Maybe it’s moving or maybe it’s changing your job or just adjusting your lifestyle or cutting out a food. For me, I found myself in a place where I realized, ‘I don’t want to be here for the rest of my life. Where do I want to be? How do I get there?’ That turned up a little turbulence that I wanted to embrace as a positive thing because it meant I was changing; I was moving forward. Someone told me that the album sounds pessimistic, but, for me, it’s the exact opposite. It’s realizing that every morning is a new day and it’s not too late to change.”

Watkins recruited producer and Punch Brothers fiddler Gabe Witcher to help her explore these themes. The pair first met when the 35-year-old Watkins was just eight and already distinguishing herself as a fiddle player, en route to forming Nickel Creek with her brother Sean and Chris Thile (who currently fronts Punch Brothers). Witcher and Watkins later reconnected when she was in her twenties, performing with Sean in Watkins Family Hour. “There’s something I really enjoyed about the fact that Gabe hasn’t produced a ton of records,” Watkins explains. “I wanted to work with somebody who was discovering his or her process with me. Gabe also knew me really well, and we have a common appreciation for moments that might not be precise but are very compelling. He was a really great teammate on this project.” That team also included fellow Punch Brother Chris Eldridge (acoustic guitar), Jay Bellerose (drums) and Paul Kowert (double bass), as well as a multitude of guests such as Jim James, Benmont Tench, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan.

YOUNG IN ALL THE WRONG WAYS

This was one of the first songs in the batch that I wrote. It also made sense for it to be the first song on the record because it sets the tone quite well. That tone is the realization that I didn’t mean to be in this valley for quite this long and that I was not going to be there anymore. I wrote the song while I was realizing this in my own life, and it seemed to be a good way to start the album.

THE LOVE THAT GOT AWAY

“The Love That Got Away” is the only song on the album in which I play the ukulele. I was playing this descending line on the uke one day, and I was thinking about some friends. It’s a song about how complicated life can be. In theme with this course correction, it’s about how someone got to this place in life. This song doesn’t resolve things in a way that’s necessarily optimistic, but I think if you are going to face the future and embrace the unknown, you have to come to terms with the alternatives. Do I want to stay in this institution or this belief system I know very well or do I want to consider that I might be wrong?

ONE LAST TIME

This is the only older song on the record. I wrote it with my friend Jon Foreman years ago. I had been playing it live, but it didn’t really fit on a record until now. I started writing this one on fiddle, strumming out chords and singing. It started out much higher and Jon wrote the bridge, which got too high, so then I lowered the rest of the song but kept the high, high bridge. This song is about wising up to people and realizing that “Maybe this is not the same thing for you as it is for me. Peace out.” [Laughs.] I used to call this one “My Kisses,” but, now, it’s called “One Last Time,” and I think that title fits the content of the song a little better.

Jim James sings harmony on this one. We wanted a male harmony on it, and we tried to figure out who it would be. It’s a silly song and he’s got a sense of humor, so I emailed him and asked him if he would be interested, along with an MP3 of the song as we had it. Two hours later, he sent back two passes at the harmony, both of which we ended up using. It was amazing. Man, what a pro. He was like, “Absolutely, I’ll do it. Here it is—if you like it, great. If it doesn’t work, no sweat— don’t worry about it, no harm done.” I love that he’s on it.

MOVE ME

One time, I was flying over the coast of Florida into Miami at night. The Florida landscape is full of bays and nooks and crannies and curves. But the tip of Florida seemed a square and, because of the streetlights, it looked like a grid. That’s what we do; we try to find the straightest way from Point A to Point B. If you look around in the world, straight lines are hard to find. That’s also true for the lines between right and wrong and between these so-called “black and white” issues that a lot of us were taught when we were kids because that’s all our little brains could handle.

In life as a grown-up, we continue to realize, “Oh, this isn’t a black and white issue. There’s so much in-between these two sides.” A lot of this album is me just navigating the in-between and not wanting to be pulled north or south or east or west, but trying to find my own way.

LIKE NEW YEAR’S DAY

“Like New Year’s Day” depicts going out to a desert. The desert for me is a very special place because I grew up in San Diego and I live in Los Angeles. The desert is never far away, always getting closer. We used to go out to camp in the desert a lot when I was a kid. We’d go to bluegrass festivals, which are out there in Nevada, Arizona or parts of eastern California. There’s a great expanse to this flat desert that is near and dear to my heart—like the ocean—because you are completely exposed. It’s a little of a “come-to-Jesus moment” in terms of the fact that it’s you and the world and you’re so close to the sky, and there’s a little bit of a “you-and-the-universe” feel.

I had this accidental habit that formed on New Year’s Day. I stayed over at someone’s house after a party, and I woke up at around 5 a.m. and just decided to leave. I got up and, instead of going home, I drove east and I went out to the desert. No one was on the road and it became this thing that I did a few years in a row.

But, I think the bigger picture is that when you go out there, you think about the times you’ve had and the memories of everything. Immediately, you realize that you aren’t that person anymore, but the desert felt like this monument for a lot of things that mattered to me, and it was just this beautiful renewing moment I had on New Year’s Day. The song is about remembering that specific habit and about other things that seem to be monumental in our own minds or anchoring points in our lives that are good to come back to.

SAY SO

“Say So” started because I was really frustrated with a friend who was battling addiction. Here I was in the midst of writing an album to spur myself out of these ruts, and I really wanted to see that from my friend as well. It was frustrating to realize that you can’t make that decision for other people. “Say So” is trying to at least get the ball rolling.

I have the vision in my mind of a movie that probably exists where there’s a man and a woman standing on a cli™ or on the edge of a building, and the guy says to the lady, “Do you trust me?” And she’s like, “What?” Then he says, “Do you trust me?” And you can see that she does not trust him. Then she finally says, “Yes, I trust you,” and, in saying so, she decides that she does trust him. The power of words, the power of what comes out of your mouth, is a tiny covenant that we have with ourselves and with those around us.

In that moment, I was just thinking a lot about the importance of words. I was thinking that maybe if my friend just says that they’re trying or that they’re not going to do it, maybe that will be the first step to turning their life around.

WITHOUT A WORD

“Without a Word” is the last song that I wrote for the album. I started writing it on tour, which is rare for me. I was singing into my phone quietly as my bandmates were driving along, having a conversation. I wrote a couple of verses, just a little speck, and it just sat there until I came home from touring. Then I played it for Gabe and he really liked it and thought it was worth finishing, so I invited him over to help me. We were in the front yard and he played some beautiful chord changes on the guitar that elevated it. I went into my house after he left and started some more specific visuals.

I had this idea of everything being fine and in order, in a house, and you’re just sitting on the couch and then, all of a sudden, someone busts through the door like the Tasmanian Devil— spins around like the cartoon and trashes the joint. Then he busts out through the window, runs down the street and it’s as if he was never there, besides all the devastation, but no one else saw it. It’s almost like it didn’t happen, except for this huge mess you have to deal with.

I remember finishing it and thinking, “Where did that come from?” I had just finished reading The Great Gatsby, and I think that may have resonated in a way I hadn’t really noticed because it seemed to fit in with what was going on.

THE TRUTH WON’T SET US FREE

“The Truth Won’t Set Us Free” is the second-to-last song I wrote for the album. I wrote it because I had spent about a week on tour in the U.K. with the Transatlantic Sessions, in which American musicians and musicians from the U.K. get together and find common ground. Rodney Crowell was also a part of it. I had never really spent so much time around Rodney before, and he makes an impression—he has this great stride when he walks onstage and he has really great pacing to his stories. Driving down the road, we would hear a lot of stories and he would sing these beautiful country songs. When I came home, all I wanted to hear were two-step shuffles, so I wrote one.

I want to face issues that are uncomfortable. I want to make bold decisions that are truthful to me now, not who I was five or 10 years ago. “The Truth Won’t Set Us Free” is the opposite of that: You can’t really change where you are, you can’t be a di™erent person. Don’t even acknowledge that there’s more out there, because you can’t see it. It’s a little bit fatalistic, but I believe that a lot of people feel that way. There are many ways to handle life, and that song is trying to be a silly way of saying, “Well, screw it. What am I gonna do? I’m here.” If there’s a pessimistic song on the album, it’s that one, but I try to make it fairly lighthearted.

INVISIBLE

“Invisible” is about trying to be OK. It’s really the moment of starting over. That’s the song where a lot of the things I have been talking about really come down to a point. I was walking the dog and I just started crying. I realized I had to reconsider a lot of things in my life. I had to start over and be OK with breaking up from some of the fundamental things I had held on to. Some of these things are spiritual issues and some are just things that have become default beliefs culturally or socially.

In realizing that I needed to start over, I also realized what I needed to reach toward. It can be very uncomfortable to do that. It’s about invisible things, figuring out what this great in-between is. It’s di™fferent for everybody, finding who they are with respect to intangible things: love, relationships, certain truths. This song is me trying to give myself the freedom to reach toward things and not, by default, “holding on to not let go.” I feel like that line is what the rest of the song expands on.

TENDERHEARTED

“Tenderhearted” was inspired by two particular women in my life. My grandma would give these great, great hugs, and she was one of those people that, no matter what was happening in your life, you knew that she loved you, and that would just be everything. She went through so much in her life to get to that point. This song is about how kind people aren’t just kind, and big-hearted people aren’t just big-hearted. They’ve generally been put through the mill and somehow processed life in this beautiful, loving, positive way.

It’s not an easy process to get to that point where you have all this love and kindness. We don’t all quite come by that very naturally. There’s another woman I was inspired by who has this life where she has had so much loss and has gone through so much, yet nothing comes out of her except giving. The fact that she has seen so many things in this world only adds to what she can give to you because she has an incredible ability to process hardship and tragedy. It ends up coming out in a way that shines like gold. There aren’t a lot of people like that in this world, but I’m lucky enough to know a few of them.