Passages of Time with Sierra Hull
Photo by Shelly Swanger
“There’s something intimate about knowing people in the audience and nerve wracking a little bit,” instrumentalist/singer/songwriter Sierra Hull said, chuckling. The night before her interview with Bluegrass Unlimited, she had performed in front of musician friends and industry professionals at the Nashville, TN venue 3rd and Lindsley. The three-time IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year has taken the stage in a variety of settings in her career from bluegrass festivals to Carnegie Hall.
“There’s something really amazing about getting to play bigger venues or festivals, but I really think some of my favorite shows in memory have been smaller ones where there’s a special kind of connection that happens between the musicians on stage and the audience. It can sometimes be harder to feel that in a really large space,” she says.
Since that March 2019 interview, the performing world for Hull and other musicians came to a screeching halt. COVID-19 squashed her plans to embark on a tour in support of her latest album, 25 Trips.
“I’ve missed performing. I’ve missed the guys in the band. We had already been rehearsing the new music in January leading up to the start of the tour. We got to play a couple weeks of shows just before everything shut down. We still had two or three months of heavy touring in front of us. To have all of it postponed is certainly disappointing. I can’t wait to get back out there.”
In the interim Hull has performed a few shows that were able to meet the social distancing guidelines, and she has enjoyed life in other ways.
“I know there are so many people that have struggled this year because of all the things that are going on, but if there’s a silver lining, it has been wonderful to get to be home for once and enjoy music in a way that I haven’t in a long time. When you tour as much as I do, sometimes it feels like you’re always playing your own music night after night after night.
“I’ve been able to use this time to practice and learn songs simply for the love of it, not necessarily because I have a big tour to do. I’ve enjoyed listening to music just as a fan and also going back and learning, for example, a Tony Rice solo I’ve always wanted to learn like I did when was I younger. I think there’s something nice about diving back into music that way, which really requires time and focus,” she tells Bluegrass Unlimited.
Hull also was afforded the time to go into the studio on mandolin with Sturgill Simpson as part of the recording band he dubbed, “The Hillbilly Avengers.” They recorded Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1: The Butcher Shoppe Sessions and Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 2 – The Cowboy Arms Sessions.
“I was already a fan of his music having seen him play live,” Hull said. “So it was great to have an opportunity to actually dive into his catalogue through making these albums. I’ve been most struck by his songwriting and how great his songs are. The material is really interesting and fresh in the bluegrass context. For Volume 1 we cut 20 songs over six days in the studio. We were moving along pretty quickly to get all that done, so every note played on the record was ‘live’ in the studio as the track went down with little to no overdubbing. It was definitely a different approach and a more organic, raw process than the way a lot of records are made these days. I found that really refreshing and fun. He would say, ‘Quick! Cut it before we learn it’,” she said, laughing.
25 Trips
Hull is all about exploring the music and following her muse’s direction. Her last project, the Grammy-nominated Weighted Mind, was a bare-bones production with bass, mandolin and voice along with banjo from producer Bela Fleck, but she took a different approach this time around with her fourth album for Rounder Records, 25 Trips.
“I didn’t want to make the same record again. I’m very proud of Weighted Mind, but I wanted to use the studio a little bit differently this time to explore building tracks from the ground up by adding multiple instruments and singing harmonies myself. At the same time, I wanted to get back to a band sound and have that feeling of everyone playing in the room together.”
Following up on a project that peers and fans rave about can be inspiring yet somewhat intimidating when it comes to focusing on making new music.
“I think there’s always a little bit of awareness in the back of my mind, knowing I want to make the best record I can. You want to do something that you hope people will like, but those kinds of thoughts can really get in the way of the music that you’re trying to make as well,” she explains. “To let too many thoughts about how successful it may or may not be or how many people will or won’t like it can conjure up feelings of doubt or fear that can be counterproductive to making good music.”
Instead, Sierra is learning to trust herself and create music that feels good to her.
“From one record to another it’s okay if they’re different. Not every record is meant to do the same thing. Some people really find their lane and happily live there. I think that’s awesome, but for me—at least for now— I’ve been in a period of exploring and trying to figure out what the next thing is one step at a time. There’s something kind of exciting about that.”
At times, though, insecurity set in while she was working on the new music.
“It’s funny how living a very musical life can be an emotional roller coaster sometimes,” Hull says. “There will be days when I feel really inspired and full of confidence in the musical avenue I’m chasing. Then some days I feel hopelessly stuck searching for inspiration. Thinking thoughts like ‘I don’t know what I’m doing; I’m no good at this.’”
Hull was still deciding on what direction she wanted to take with the album, and her confidence level had dipped down when her husband, multi-instrumentalist Justin Moses, walked into the room.
“I have a memory of me working and playing at my little office desk with my mandolin and my computer when Justin popped in to say bye before heading off to his own session. After seeing I was frustrated he said, ‘Sierra, I believe in you so much. At some point you’re just going to have to learn to really believe in yourself and quit being so hard on yourself.’”
In that moment, the song and the album’s first single and opening track, “Beautifully Out of Place,” poured out.
You believe in me
But I can’t see what you see
How long is it gonna take me
To trust myself?
How’s that trust coming for Sierra?
“It’s always a work in progress,” she said, again with laughter. Growing up in Byrdstown in the least populous county of Tennessee, Hull was raised by salt-of-the-earth parents who kept her grounded.
“They were proud of us as much as any parent could be, but they also weren’t handing out praise in large doses for fear of inflating the egos of my brother and I too much. They were always real and honest if something was good or if it wasn’t. I’m so grateful for that. They taught me it’s important to be humble and that there’s lots of talented people out there.”
While grateful for that important lesson, Hull believes she became more critical of herself.
“I just have to remind myself sometimes that there is a difference between being an egomaniac that’s totally self-assured versus trusting that you know what’s best for you in your music, life or whatever it may be,” she notes. “I think those two emotions can get easily intertwined. Sometimes if I believe I really know what’s best I question, ‘Well, but what do I know?’”
“There’s good pride, taking pride in what you do and trying to be the best you can be because you believe that you are capable of being good at something. Therefore, you work hard at it. I think any musician has to have a little bit of that belief in order to be good at all. Balancing those two dynamics sometimes is a little tricky, but I’m working on that too. Even the greatest musicians in the world have these moments of feeling this way. If we weren’t feeling that way, we probably would quit pushing to become better. I think that’s also so important.”
Hull’s music continued to evolve on this new album, a reflection of how her life has changed over the years.
“Where I was four years ago when my last record came out until now is quite different. It’s funny how much can change in your life in such a short amount of time like that. There’s something about growing older that makes me have more peace with where I’m at. At the same time I think growing older can make me start to feel even more stressed about where I am and all I still hope to do in life. While other thoughts—like having kids of my own someday—start to feel a little more like, ‘Wow, that part of my life is probably just around the corner now and I look forward to that stage of life, too.’”
The new album, made with co-producer/engineer Shani Gandhi, delves into a passage of time theme including the unconventional title track.
“‘25 Trips’ is not your typical verse/chorus/solo arrangement song,” Hull explained. “It’s a little bit more of a musical composition built around a lyric. We felt like it really embodied a lot of both of our personalities in terms of sonic production and musical interpretation.”
Sierra, 29, wrote “25 Trips” after she turned age 25, which became a particularly prominent year for her. It was around that time she tied the knot and went to the Grammy awards for the first time.
“I reminded myself constantly, ‘Try to be present; don’t miss this moment.’ I was having things happen in my life that I knew I’d never get to experience again for the first time.”
“One day I was playing my mandolin and improvising a little bit when I started playing that main mandolin riff,” Hull recalls. “I thought that it was kind of fun and a little weird. I happened to hit record on my phone voice memos just in case I came up with something interesting. The whole lyric about ‘Hello time, will you slow down …’ all of that was improvised on the fly. The way the mandolin stops and starts and kind of slows down and speeds back up in the solo section up was all improvised. When it came time to record it, I ended up liking the improvisation from the voice memo I had recorded and basically had to learn it.”
Another track, “Ceiling to the Floor,” that she and Kai Welch wrote, vied for a Grammy for Best American Roots Song. She was up against “Man Without a Soul” (Songwriters: Lucinda Williams and Tom Overby), “I Remember Everything” (John Prine and Pat McLaughlin), and “Hometown” (Sarah Jarosz). The album also received a nod for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.
“I certainly don’t expect to win with all the wonderful people in that category,” Hull said after the nominations were announced. “It was really rewarding to see one of my songs be nominated this time around because I feel like I’ve invested so much of myself as an artist into songwriting over the last few years. It’s been a big passion for me. We didn’t originally have ‘Ceiling to the Floor’ on the list of songs to record for this record. I had totally forgotten about writing it with my friend Kai Welch. I remember after Kai and I wrote it, I cried. It was one of those songs that every time I would hear it, it hit me that way. When I played it for Shani and she cried we were like, ‘What is it about this song? We gotta record it.’”
Going in to record, Sierra knew she would have the instrumental talents of Bryan Sutton, Stuart Duncan, Viktor Krauss and Justin Moses for the songs “How Long” and “Poison,” so she wanted to make the most of their time together.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to be in the studio with these guys that are such great instrumentalists that it seems crazy if I don’t have an instrumental to bring in.’” None of the tunes Sierra had already written felt like the right fit, so she started from scratch to write “The Last Minute” instrumental.
“I wanted to intentionally write something with a simple, singable melody. I don’t usually write in that kind of circumstance where I’m writing specially for a group of musicians and feeling like I have a deadline to finish something. I didn’t know if I’d be able to pull it off since I started at about
8 p.m. the night before the session, but it all came together at ‘The Last Minute.’” Hull also teamed with her friend and one-time roommate Laura Leigh Jones to write “Poison.” With material that was artistically serious, Sierra thought something was missing. “I was telling her I felt like I needed something fun on this record…perhaps even a little silly in some ways. We took some inspiration from Shakespeare. I think Laura Leigh said, ‘O true apothecary!’ (Romeo and Juliet) We hadn’t heard the word apothecary in a song. It’s very rhythmic in sound, so we started building on it, and next thing you know we wrote ‘Poison.’”
A teen prodigy, Sierra grew up in bluegrass music. Her mentor Alison Krauss invited her to the Grand Ole Opry stage at age 11, and two years later she signed a deal with Rounder Records. Hull played the White House, Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall and became the first bluegrass musician to receive a Presidential Scholarship at the Berklee College of Music. She recorded the album Secrets in 2008 followed by Daybreak, Weighted Mind, and now 25 Trips. In 2016, at age 25 Sierra became the first female to win the IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year award, which she took home the next two years. She also has IBMA trophies for Recorded Event of the Year for “Proud To Be A Daughter Of Bluegrass,” “I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You,” and “Swept Away.”
But it’s not the awards and accolades that Sierra wants people to consider when they think about her.
“More than anything, musician aside, I want people to think of me as a kind person that really cares about the people that I work with and the fans that listen to my music.”
She hopes those fans will continue to embrace the music she passionately creates even as she at times branches away from her roots in bluegrass.
“Bluegrass is my musical hometown. I still love and cherish it and visit often even if I do like to travel from genre to genre. I would hope that people would think of me as a well-versed musician that is really proud of my roots and is musically open-minded. Everybody perceives the music I’m making right now differently. Some people would still call it bluegrass, and some people label it as some kind of funky, jazz, bluegrass, Americana folk thing. At the end of the day I feel like whatever people make up their mind about what kind of artist I am is okay with me. That’s part of the beauty of making music.”
Whatever label her music is given, Sierra is excited to return to live performing.
“At this point who knows when we will really get to do a tour that was anything like what the 25 Trips Tour was gonna be,” Hull said. “By then, the record will be quite old, but I’m writing a lot and will have lots of new music to share when the time comes.”
