Born in 1981 in Oceanside, CA, “I wanted to be a mandolin player from the time I first saw one when I was two,” Chris Thile recalls of the eight-stringed instrument with the strings in pairs, tuned the same as a violin. “It took me three years to convince my parents that I was for real. They got me a mandolin when I was five, and I took lessons for the next six years from the man I first saw playing a mandolin.” Thile issued his first album, Leading Off (on Sugar Hill Records) when he was 12. Even earlier, in 1989, he met siblings Sean (guitar) and Sarah (fiddle) Watkins at a Carlsbad pizza parlor, where they went to listen to bluegrass bands, and started their own bluegrass group. That band, Nickel Creek, quickly became one of the hottest acts on the folk and bluegrass festival circuit, selling two million copies of its four albums, including the Grammy Award-winning disc This Side.

Thile has recorded with such well-known musicians as the Dixie Chicks and Dolly Parton, as well as recording a pair of duo albums with Oakland mandolin master Mike Marshall. Discovering Edgar Meyer was a real ear-opener for Thile. “The first time I heard Edgar was in his band Strength in Numbers on their Telluride Sessions album. Until then I had no idea that the bass was capable of so much, especially his facility with a bow. So I started following him. I memorized that record,” Thile recalls. “I wrote bad knock-offs of their music. Edgar took me under his wing when I was 19, in Nashville making my third solo record. So our duo CD is the culmination of seven years of working together.”

Recalling the early days, Thile says, “I’d go to Edgar’s house and he’d bring a stack of classical music which I didn’t know about, and I’d bring rock records, which he didn’t know, and we’d play things for each other, then get out our instruments and play music.”