Becky Buller
Powerful Original Bluegrass Music
Photos By Jason Myers
For most of her life, eight-time IBMA award winner Becky Buller has been in a band, but she has been sidelined since mid-March when the pandemic forced the cancellation of shows.
“It’s been just awful,” the fiddler/vocalist said from her Manchester, TN home. “Things you probably wouldn’t think about have affected me. Of course, there’s the obvious. I can’t get out and perform and my band can’t get together.”
“It’s tough, too, because some of the guys in my band don’t want to encourage people to congregate because they might get COVID, and I respect that,” Buller adds. “Then, you have other people that do want to get out and hear live music, and I feel for them too. I’m caught in a really tough spot. There’s no good answers. That’s been the hardest thing for me to come to terms with and honestly, I’m still working on that. No matter which way I choose, there’s going to be somebody who’s mad.”
Adding to her struggle is the heartache over not being able to tour with her fellow Becky Buller Band (B^3) members Prof. Dan Boner, Nate Lee, Ned Luberecki, and Daniel Hardin in support of her new album Time and Distance on Dark Shadow Recording that came out on Oct. 30th.
Fortunately, that’s not prevented Buller from finding ways to get her singles out to the public through social media outlets.
The 13-track CD includes the single, “Tell the Truth (Shame the Devil)” that she co-wrote with Jon Weisberger and recorded with the Fairfield Four who previously guested with her on “Written in the Back of the Book” from the Crepe Paper Heart CD.
“Releasing this in the midst of COVID is especially difficult, not knowing when I’m going to get to share this music with a live audience. At this point we haven’t even had a chance to get together as a band and work up the new songs. We’ve not played together in the same zip code since March.”
“The newest baby is always the sweetest and the best,” the mother of one says with laughter. “This is really a beautiful album; I’m so tickled with the way it turned out. This is the quickest we’ve finished up a record. The last two albums took a couple of years to finish because [my producer] Mojo was renting studio space, the band had a busy tour schedule…life got in our way! This time we set out to have a quicker turnaround time. We started recording this last fall and finished it up in the spring one day before the shutdown.”
“The Fairfield Four and I have performed ‘Written In the Back Of The Book’ together live a few times now. I’ve been joking that we’re on a ‘First Baptist Church’ tour because the last two Novembers we’ve played at First Baptist Churches: in Manchester, Tenn., in 2018 and then at First Baptist Church in Elizabethton, Tenn, in 2019. I told them this November we’ve got to find a First Baptist Church to perform at together. One of The Four suggested we aim for Hawaii this time.”
“They’re legends. They’re some of the last people performing a cappella African American roots gospel music. The youngest guy in the group is in his 60s; two of the guys are in their 80s. They’re just treasures, and it’s such a joy to get to share the gospel in song with them.”
Buller penned her next single, “Don’t Look Back” with Valerie Smith and Val’s husband, Kraig.
“It was centered around a greeting card she found at a thrift store,” Buller explains of the song’s origin. “It just really spoke to her. On the front a little girl is standing at the junction of these two roads in the middle of the woods. One sign said ‘Your Life’; the other said ‘No Longer An Option.’ I think it’s an important reminder. We can’t go back. We’re living in the present tense.”
Buller did enjoy a bit of time travel when Ronnie Bowman teamed up with her vocally on “You Come Around.”
“Oh, be still my trembling 16-year-old heart,” Buller says, gushing over the experience. “What a thrill to get to sing with him. It’s been a dream of mine ever since he released his Cold Virginia Night album back in 1995.”
She wrote the song with Grammy-winning songwriters John Pennell and Jeff Hyde.
“We wrote that a long time ago. That was my first time writing with John and Jeff together, and I believe that Jeff brought that idea to the table. We jumped in there and wrote it with him. I feel like it has a little more country flavor to it, but it’s hilarious to me. Anytime I write with Jeff Hyde [a member of country star Eric Church’s band], I say, ‘Hey, this sounds like a country song. Hint! Hint! And he’ll be like, ‘Oh, no! This is definitely a bluegrass song’,” she adds, chuckling.
She and Hyde also penned the 2018 IBMA Gospel Song of the Year, “Speakin’ To That Mountain.”
“That was an extra big thrill to me to bring home the Gospel Song of the Year. My walk with the Lord is the most important thing in my life, then family, then bluegrass music. It blesses me to know that the gospel songs I’ve written especially bless people,” Buller says tearfully.
Buller and the B^3 worked on her new project under the direction of Dark Shadow Records label head and Buller’s producer Stephen Mougin.
“He has wonderful ideas for arranging both instrumentally and vocally. He’s so talented all the way around. Mojo is also very receptive to ideas from the band. He creates a really friendly workplace for us all to be creative in. He’s a great engineer, and he’s out to make all of us sound and look our best.”
She strives to balance the desire for technically skilled playing with the feeling of the song.
“Making that call can be difficult, and I do tend to want to play it until I’ve sucked all the life out of it, when it’s technically right but doesn’t have the same passion or intensity. Sometimes I have to get up and walk around the studio for a minute and come back and try playing it again or listening to it again. Mojo’s good about saying, ‘Okay. That’s it. That’s good. Thank you very…NEXT!’ I appreciate him being that referee between me, myself, and I.”
Part of his role incorporates helping Buller fight against her perfectionism in the studio.
“I hate to say that, but I have to play it several times. I try to be as prepared as possible when I get in there because I don’t want to waste Mojo’s time because that’s money, too, you know. It gets expensive! I want to make the best use of my time in there. I don’t want to wear myself out either. Sometimes you get in there and you hit a wall. Fortunately, they always make sure there’s chocolate available. If I don’t bring it, they have some there for me. In Harry Potter they have to have chocolate when they have an encounter with the Dementor. It’s the same thing with me in the studio.”
“A student of mine described fiddling so well the other day. She said ‘The fiddle is soooo emotionally taxing.’ I feel exactly the same way. Fiddle really is the devil’s box. It’s mean.”
“I still have a love-hate relationship with the studio,” she admits. “I hear all the things that I wished weren’t in my playing. All my imperfections are up there on the jumbotron for everybody to hear, and I just kind of melt under that. It’s really a struggle for me to fight through my insecurities and just enjoy the studio. I’m not completely there yet because I still feel like I haven’t logged as many hours in the studio as so many of these other pickers because I’ve been a live player most of my career and me getting to record this often is fairly to new me.”
But with time comes experience, and after seven years, she’s more knowledgeable.
“I’m getting to the point now that I know the angle the mic at in relation to my fiddle and that my fiddle sounds really good on those Neumann KM84 microphones. But I’m not the gearhead that the guys in my band are. Everybody has their niche that they’re excited and passionate about. I like writing songs. Let’s talk about that.”
Good idea! The 2015 IBMA Bluegrass Songwriter of the Year shines as a tunesmith. She co-wrote “The Shaker,” featured on The Travelin’ McCoury’s self-titled release that won the Grammy for 2019 Best Bluegrass Album, and the previous year she co-wrote “Freedom” from The Infamous Stringdusters’ 2018 Grammy award-winning album, Laws of Gravity. Along with Alison Brown and Missy Raines, she wrote “Chicago Barn Dance,” a nominee for 2020 IBMA Song of the Year that Special Census recorded. Buller has amassed a collection of songs that other artists have cut: Ricky Skaggs (“Music To My Ears”), Rhonda Vincent (“Fishers of Men”), Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver (“Be Living”), Josh Williams (“You Love Me Today”), Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out (“My Angeline”, “Rest My Weary Feet”, “Cottontown”) and Special Consensus (“She Took The Tennessee River”, “Scratch Gravel Road”).
“I prefer to write without an instrument because like John Hartford said when he would pick up an instrument too early in the process, his ‘fingers would follow familiar paths.’ That happens to me and I find myself falling into melodies that I’ve used already. I really like to write without an instrument and then go back and figure out what I did.”
“I started writing songs in middle school. I started improving on the piano. That was my first instrument. I switched pretty quickly after that into writing singing songs. I remember writing songs while I would be bagging clothes at my parent’s dry cleaner shop or while I’d be mowing the yard. It’s always been a source of therapy for me. It’s been my way of processing what’s going on in my life and the lives of people around me. It brings me a lot of joy and soothes my spirit.”
Like many songwriters, Buller finds her inspiration from a variety of sources. She quite literally dreamed up one of her album cuts, “I Dream in Technicolor,” that is dedicated to her 7-year-old daughter, Romy.
“The chorus of this song came to me in college and I tried different verses with it for years, not coming up with anything I liked until I started having these particularly lurid dreams recently. Maybe it was becoming a mom? Right after I had Romy, I was probably watching waaaaaaay too much Dr. Who. I had this dream that space lobsters had come to steal her! Romy is really proud she made it into one of my songs. I dreamt just about everything else I mentioned in the song as well.”
“It’s a very different song than what we’ve done before. It’s got a little bit of comedy to it. Sierra Hull encouraged me to record it and I’m grateful to her for the push. Mojo was skeptical about it because he wants us to be taken seriously. But he also wants us to grow musically. This was definitely stepping out of everybody’s comfort zone a little bit. I’m anxious to see what people think about it.”
That comedic aspect is a part of the entertainment package that B^3 showcases in their shows, but it’s also reflects the band’s personality off stage.
“Everybody works hard to keep it light and fun. A day hasn’t gone by throughout this pandemic that somebody hasn’t posted something ridiculous to the band text thread. It has really helped to keep our spirits up.”
“We have so much fun together out on the road. I just really appreciate each and every one of my band members because they’re good people. I told each one of them when they were thinking about joining, ‘I just want to have a good time with good people making good music…hopefully we’ll make good money! Then, we’ll go home.’”
While Buller includes many songs she has a hand in writing on her own projects, she digs for other great material. One gem she unearthed was Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” that Jerry Douglas helped her cover.
“That was killer getting to work with Uncle Flux,” Buller said.
She rediscovered the tune as a result of her appearance with the First Ladies of Bluegrass at the 2019 Newport Folk Festival.
“We were invited to be part of an historic Saturday night set that was curated by Brandy Carlisle. During the set there was a whole lot of love exhibited for Joni Mitchell. In our dressing room there was a big black and white photo of Joni. Because of that I started digging back into her tunes and my husband really loves the song, ‘Woodstock.’ He’s particularly a fan of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young version, as is Jerry. When we got into the studio, Jerry said, ‘Oh, I know you want to do Joni’s version, but can we please add this IV chord in here like Crosby Stills, Nash, and Young, please!” Both influences are evident in our recording. I couldn’t find a version of “Woodstock” with a clawhammer banjo and Dobro. This might be a first for that song.”
Buller also ventured out on one of the album cut, “Salt and Light,” which includes the Isaacs guesting on vocals and also Chris Brown of the Sam Bush Band on drums.
“That’s the first time I’ve gotten to record with a drummer on one of my albums. I’ve always been a little bit afraid to do it because I’m such a bluegrasser. You’ve got your people who are very against percussion of any kind on bluegrass albums. I really wanted to work with Chris on this cut. The band and I got the track back and Ned was like, ‘Is that us?! It sounds like somebody else. Can we have a drummer all the time?!!’”
It’s not Buller’s first time pushing beyond her comfort zone.
“I wasn’t chomping at the bit to be a band leader because I’m naturally a pretty shy person and definitely an introvert,” the leader of the Becky Buller Band says. “I just didn’t think that was something I could do. To this day, it’s something I have to work really hard at. The guys in the band have made things pretty easy on me, though.”
The Minnesota native first picked up the fiddle out of necessity because she wanted to sing in her family’s group, Prairie Grass. From there she has performed with Valerie Smith and Liberty Pike, Appalachian Trail, various groups at her alma mater East Tennessee State University, and then for Darin and Brooke Aldridge. Buller was a key sideman with no aspirations to change, but segued into her new role when she hit a crossroads between economic necessity and motherhood.
“I got painted into a corner,” she says. “I had the ‘Tween Earth and Sky record coming out, and I had a one-year-old daughter who was starting to walk. At that point I was playing with Darin and Brooke Aldridge. I got home off a weekend with them, and [my husband] Jeff said, ‘You just can’t do this anymore. You’ve got to be able to make your own schedule.’ We just didn’t have the support network for me to be part of another band and make that work.”
“But I had this record coming out, and I was under contract to sell this record for Dark Shadow Recording. I couldn’t escape being a band leader anymore. Though it has been stressful at times, it has also been wonderful and rewarding, too.”
Buller is anxious to start leading her band again, but she also has soaked in the time teaching more and spending quality time with her family.
“It has been wonderful to be home. This is the most I’ve been home ever, I think, probably since high school. [I’ve enjoyed] just watching Romy grow. She’s really gotten tall in the last few months. We’ve clicked into a new phase too. She’s turning more from being a little girl to being a young lady. My husband and I are looking at each other, wondering where our baby went and how this happened!”
That’s the question Buller sometimes asks herself about her professional life too. She made history in 2016 when she became the first artist to win in both instrumental and vocal categories at the IBMA’s. Her peers chose her as Female Vocalist of the Year, and she became the first female to win Fiddle Player of the Year against other worthy contenders like multiple year winner Michael Cleveland. For this year’s virtual awards show, Buller performed alongside Cleveland and Special Consensus for “Chicago Barn Dance.”
“I was like flipped out for a month—okay two months—getting ready to twin fiddle with Michael. He’s a quasar!”
The October awards show took place after this story’s deadline, but it’s possible that Buller could have several more trophies to add to her mounting collection. Some of those prized possessions in her home teaching studio include three Recorded Event of the Year awards, New Artist of the Year, and Instrumental Performer of the Year.
“Those are the highest honors in the bluegrass industry. I still have trouble believing that that’s really happened and that people have enjoyed my music that much. I don’t mean that to sound ungrateful. I’m in awe of that, and I’m continually trying to live up to the fiddle award particularly. I’m so grateful. It has been a beautiful life. I’m so blessed, and I’m so grateful to all the fans, to my family for hanging in there with me through all this, for the band hanging in there with me and making such great music. I’m surrounded by such great people all the way around.”
