Sara Watkins was born June 8, 1981, in Vista, California, and by 1989 was the eight-year-old fiddler in Nickel Creek alongside her brother Sean and mandolinist Chris Thile. This episode examines what growing up inside a touring progressive bluegrass trio taught her, from technical dexterity to the harder skill of knowing when not to play, and what happened when the band's seven-year hiatus left her alone with a blank page and a severe case of imposter syndrome.

The hosts follow her signing with Nonesuch Records in 2008, the counterintuitive choice of Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones to produce her 2009 solo debut, and the trial by fire of opening for Robert Earl Keen, Tift Merritt and Donovan Frankenreiter. They then map the communities she built next: the Watkins Family Hour residency at Largo, the supergroup Works Progress Administration, I ...