Sara Watkins hopes to not repeat herself musically — but she isn’t trying all that hard not to.

“That sounds so stressful,” Watkins said about a month ago while taking a break from rehearsals with her solo band in Asheville, North Carolina. “The idea of going into an album to try and surprise people, or to try and create, just out of the blue do something that you haven’t done, for the purpose of doing that.”

Fortunately for the Nickel Creek singer, songwriter and fiddler, change happened naturally on her third solo album, “Young in All the Wrong Ways,” released in July. Just before recording, she left Nonesuch Records, which released her first two solo records (2009’s self-titled effort and 2012’s “Sun Midnight Sun”), and switched managers. At the same time, Watkins took stock of her creative life.

“For me, a lot of this album came out of a feeling of wanting to move forward, and just see what that is and embrace some sort of feelings of unrest as good symptoms of taking some new steps in life,” Watkins said. “Sort of taking on the future in a positive way and not wanting to stay in a rut creatively or philosophically or just in terms of how you see the world, wanting to move forward each day. So, fortunately, it gave me things to write about, so that lyrically I didn’t have to stay in a rut either.”

This resulted in an album far more personal than anything else she’s recorded before — and far more rocking, with electric guitar, Hammond B-3 organ and a full drum kit pushed to the fore on many of the tracks. Watkins is currently on the road supporting the record, and will perform at Volcanic Theatre Pub tonight.

Watkins was in Bend last year with the seven-piece Watkins Family Hour, the formerly live-only project she started with her brother (and Nickel Creek bandmate) Sean Watkins at the Largo in Los Angeles. This time out she’ll just have a trio, which will require her to reimagine some of the panoramic arrangements on “Young in All the Wrong Ways.” Though the new album is lighter on Watkins’ signature fiddle playing than past releases, she’ll of course switch between guitar and fiddle throughout the show.

“I’ve played all of these songs in a lot of orientations already,” Watkins said. “It’s true, Family Hour was a big band onstage last year, but even after the Family Hour tour, I did a tour with Patty Griffin and Anais Mitchell where it was kind of songwriters in the round. It’s this accordion in terms of collapsible and expandable with these songs, and that’s — I enjoy that.”

As usual, Watkins kept busy during the four years between solo albums. Nickel Creek, the newgrass trio she formed with her guitarist brother Sean Watkins and mandolinist Chris Thile when all three were kids (Sara was just 8 when the group played its first show), reunited in 2014 to release its first studio album in nine years, “A Dotted Line.” Also last year, Watkins toured in a trio with songwriters Sarah Jarosz and Crooked Still’s Aoife O’Donovan under the name I’m With Her. And speaking of Thile, who takes over as host of the long-running “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show in October, Watkins was about to head out on a “Prairie Home Companion” cruise when she spoke with GO! Magazine.

“I get bored of my own songs and of the limitations that happen when you just do one thing, even if you’re in charge — especially if you’re in charge sometimes, there’s limitations to what you can do,” she said. “I really enjoy being a teammate, like a sideman. I really love being in bands, and I also enjoy doing my own show and being at the helm.”

Last year’s Family Hour shows pointed the way for many of the sounds found on “Young in All the Wrong Ways.” In particular on songs such as the title track and “Move Me,” Watkins pushed the electric sound to match what she calls the songs’ “fighting lyric(s).”

“I don’t think that what I’m doing on this album, or sonically what’s happening with the instrumentation and all that, I don’t think it’s out of the blue in context with, for instance, what we did on that (Family Hour) tour,” she said. “I think over the last four years there’s been a lot of, you know — there’s some bigger songs in my world right now in terms of sonically, thinking about like electric guitar solos. It is a step from the (solo) record I did four years ago, but I think it totally makes sense, and for me works with the lyrics.”

For the first time Watkins wrote or co-wrote every song on the album, contributing to the more personal nature of the material. She did plan to record a cover song, as she did on previous solo albums, but the song didn’t end up fitting with the rest of the record’s themes.

In past interviews Watkins alluded to the difficulty she occasionally has writing songs. She didn’t complete her first song until she was in her early 20s, she said.

“But once I started writing, it’s not that it’s hard — it’s not that it’s a struggle, and I hate it. It’s a puzzle,” Watkins said. “For me, I always want to make sure that I have something that’s worth saying to say. Or I guess a better way to say that is, when I’m writing a lot of times it just comes out of me in sort of like nonsensical confusion, journal, kind of just stream-of-consciousness stuff. And sometimes there’ll be a little nub in there, a little crumb or something that I feel like I can dig into.”