Bards and minstrels still wandered from place to place with their lyres, mandolins, and guitars, but music was increasingly something audiences went to instead of with.

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The symphonic sound is now based on mandolins, fiddle, dobro, guitar, string bass, and banjo with some of Nashville's best voices chiming in with close vocal harmonies.

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As a member of the Grammy-winning progressive-acoustic trio Nickel Creek, Watkins, a fiddler, along with Chris Thile and her brother Sean, helped introduce finger-picked jams to fans who had never given mandolins a second thought.

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The--you could have guys in medieval costumes playing mandolins, or you could have Jimmy Santi(ph) singing on the beach with El Santo and girls in bikinis doing the hippy hippy shake behind them, and things that would just boggle your mind.

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