A Marriage Made in Music
Justin and Sierra aren’t quite sure when their first meeting was. She had seen him play at local festivals with Kentucky Wind. He remembers meeting her at an IBMA convention one year. After years of friendship and Justin filling in with Sierra’s band on various instruments, somewhere along the way their friendship began to blossom into love.
“This sounds cliché, but it was her heart,” Moses said of his attraction. “I could tell she was a genuinely nice person all the way around. Then, the fact that she played music like she does gave us even more of a connection.”
“I think it’s natural when you can play music with somebody, and you understand that in a deep way about the other person. I think it would be crazy to say that wasn’t part of it. Some girls go for the bad boys. I wanted me a nice guy,” Sierra said with a laugh. “I knew he had a good heart and was a sweet person. He’s dependable, and that’s attractive to me to have somebody that will really be there for you.”
The couple exchanged “I do’s” on May 14, 2017. The newlyweds learned to juggle music and the marriage.
“I guess it’s important to know where the line is between the two,” Justin explained. “I love playing music with Sierra in all of its different forms. For me I know that I love her more than I love any of that, and it was important for us to figure out how it was all going to work.”
“It can be stressful working together sometimes in certain situations,” Sierra admits. “We’re both very strong-headed people when it comes to music because we’re passionate about it. I’m used to being in the role of the band leader/artist. Justin is used to being in the more supporting role.”
“It’s been difficult at times when I’m the leader because I say, ‘I know you’re thinking something, and you’re not telling me,’” Sierra explains. “He’d say, ‘I’m just trying to be a professional. I’m hired like every other person in your band in this situation.’ It gets a little bit tricky because I have to treat him like anybody else that I’m hiring to play with me.”
Instead, the husband and wife have discovered their duo shows work better.
“It sounds funny to say,” Hull says. “There’s no outside influence to what we’re doing. The duo is just about the two of us.”
“It gives us both the chance to take on different roles,” Moses adds. “She and I, for the most part, have found a good balance where we can both assert our musical ideas and we tend to end up going in the same direction.”
“It’s fun for me to be able to play somebody else’s music,” Sierra adds. “I love a lot of the tunes Justin writes and the songs that he brings to the table that he doesn’t always have the opportunity to perform when he’s playing in somebody else’s band. We can support each other in a more balanced way.”
That discovery was highlighted to them in 2018 when they opened the show for Hot Rize at the Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman series in Nashville.
“That still stands out as one of the more special shows we’ve ever played together,” Sierra remembers. “Just the magic of being in that room with a lot of our friends and really being able to feel like they’re hearing some of my music, he’s sharing some of his music, and we’re being able to play some things that we would only do together. We both walked away from that saying, ‘This is the way we should be working together.’ It felt really fun and satisfying.”
In the duo shows, Justin is reminded of his wife’s talents.
Justin says, “I’ll be listening as a listener while I’m playing and think, ‘Wow, she’s really good!’ It’s easy as somebody’s partner—you hear them play all the time—to take it for granted.”
For Sierra, cheering on Justin happens easier when she is truly a listener and not performing.
“A good example is being here at home—Justin does a lot of session work for people. I’ve been lucky enough to hear him upstairs recording. He might be playing mandolin and Dobro™ and banjo all on one track for somebody, and I’m getting to hear it from outside the door of the music room. Sometimes I’ll hear him playing something and I’d think, ‘It’s kind of insane that you can play one instrument and switch over and play another one, and it sounds equally good—and then he picks up another’!”
They’ve also found it’s crucial for each to have a distinct musical identity of their own—allowing them to support each other.
“It’s kind of nice to have some separation from it so we can do our thing when it makes sense and that be really special,” Hull says. “We can be cheerleaders for one another. After so many years of working together in various situations, we’ve found that’s an important role. We each need somebody to bounce ideas off of that maybe isn’t directly inside the operation. I can be working on something that no matter what he says, it comes from an outside point of view. If he’s working in a particular situation, I don’t have that same kind of emotional tie because it’s not my thing. I can give in some ways a clearer perspective, and I think that’s important.”
