The Lighthouse's Tale

The second track on the Sugar Hill debut is sung by the lighthouse itself. Its keeper is to marry a woman who dies at sea in a storm. He buries her in the sand and then leaps from the tower. Thile sings lead over his mandolin, with Sara Watkins on violin and Sean Watkins on guitar, both singing harmony, and Scott Thile on acoustic bass. A Houston Chronicle critic was struck that a band singing so sweetly about foxes and lighthouses had two thirds of this song's characters die. NPR called it a narrative folk song that sounds like a standard.

Released as a single with live versions of The Fox and Let It Fall, a radio edit and the video, it reached 49 on Hot Country Songs and 147 in the UK. The video places the band beside water, at a lighthouse on the ocean, a bridge over a small river and a mountain lake. The lighthouse is Cape Neddick Light near York, Maine, and the clip was nominated for a CMT Flameworthy award.

Live

setlist.fm logs 175 Nickel Creek performances, fifth among their songs. It was taped at Rockygrass in 2001, played at the 2007 farewell show at the Ryman, used as an encore at Newport Folk in 2014 and released on Live from the Fox Theater, and it stayed in the 2023 and 2024 sets, often straight after Where the Long Line Leads. Thile has also played it solo and with Punch Brothers, and the Hudson River Maritime Museum ran it on its history blog in 2020. The upload in the hypersongs web is the official upload on the band's VEVO channel.