By DAN ARMONAITIS
The Becky Buller Band will perform Friday, Dec. 13 at the Chapman Cultural Center as part of the Bluegrass Spartanburg series presented by the Spartanburg Philharmonic. But, first, its leader and namesake has some business to take care of in Nashville.
Buller is a member of the First Ladies of Bluegrass, an all-female supergroup that is performing this week in the CMA Theater at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Earlier this year, the museum put up an exhibit, “American Currents: The Music of 2018,” which includes a segment devoted to the First Ladies of Bluegrass.
For those unfamiliar with the supergroup, the First Ladies of Bluegrass features Buller on fiddle, Alison Brown on banjo, Missy Raines on bass, Sierra Hull on mandolin and Molly Tuttle on guitar. The connection: each is the first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Association’s award in her respective instrument category.
It’s pretty cool company and evidence of the tremendous level of respect Buller, who was named the IBMA fiddle player of the year in 2016, commands in the bluegrass community.
“I’m so grateful and I’m trying really hard to stay in that place in my mind,” Buller said of her recent successes. “With everything that’s happened, I just set the bar a little bit higher. It’s like, ‘oh wow, that happened. Well, now I’m going to try for this.’
“And, you know, I struggle with feeling like I’m being ungrateful because of that, but I love a challenge.”
Until recently, Buller was best known as a top-notch songwriter, whose songs have been recorded by such major bluegrass figures as Ricky Skaggs, Rhonda Vincent, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out. She also spent a decade as a member of Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike as well as some time backing Darin & Brooke Aldridge and participating in various other recording projects.
It wasn’t until she formed her own band, however, that Buller took her career to the next level. She captured IBMA awards for New Artist of the Year and Songwriter of the Year in 2015, won for Fiddle Player of the Year and Female Vocalist of the Year in 2016 and has also won awards in the Recorded Event of the Year and Gospel Recording of the Year categories.
Her latest album, “Crêpe Paper Heart,” was released in 2018 by Nashville-based label Dark Shadow Recording.
“I feel like I’m sort of living backwards because you’re supposed to have a band and do that thing and then get married and settle down and have kids and stuff,” said Buller, who gave birth to her daughter, Romey, in 2013. “I had avoided starting my own band for a long, long time because I knew how much stress it was going to be, but here I am doing it and I’m enjoying it.”
The Becky Buller Band also includes 2018 IBMA Banjo Player of the Year Ned Luberecki, 2015 IBMA Momentum Award winner Nate Lee on mandolin and twin fiddle, Daniel Hardin on bass and Dan Boner on guitar. The latter currently serves as director of the Bluegrass, Old Time and Country Music Studies program at Buller’s alma mater, East Tennessee State University.
“We like to say that we play original, powerful bluegrass music,” Buller said. “And mostly what (the audience is) going to hear are original songs by myself and the guys in the band. But we always throw in some covers they might recognize from people like Reno & Smiley and James Taylor.
“We play all sorts of stuff. We love all branches of the bluegrass family tree, and the music that we write is inspired by that.”
Buller said the band puts on a “pretty high-energy show” and with Friday’s concert at the Chapman Cultural Center being so close to Christmas, fans can expect to a hear a few holiday tunes as well.
“I’m just grateful to the Chapman Cultural Center and the board members who are behind Bluegrass Spartanburg for having this vision and this passion for bluegrass music and keeping it alive and vibrant in the Spartanburg area,” Buller said. “I’m so excited we’re doing this and just thrilled they asked us.”
One of the Bluegrass Spartanburg board members, award-winning banjo player and Union native Kristin Scott Benson, is a longtime friend of Buller. Benson and her husband, award-winning mandolin player Wayne Benson, reside in Boiling Springs.
“Kristin actually gave me her old banjo case, so she goes with me everywhere I go,” said Buller, who is primarily known as a fiddle player but also plays some banjo. “I just love Kristin. I was desolated that she and Wayne moved away from middle Tennessee when they had (their son) Hogan and went back to South Carolina to be near family.
“I get it now that I have my own kid, but I hate that they’re not close by because I love both of them so much. They’re great people, they’re incredible musicians and they’re good friends.”
In the past year, Buller was involved in three projects nominated for the upcoming Grammy Awards to be held in January 2020.
Buller played fiddle on “Swept Away” from Missy Raines’ “Royal Traveller,” which was nominated for Best Bluegrass Album, and she co-wrote “Crave” from Frank Solivan & the Dirty Kitchen’s “If You Can’t Stand the Heat” album, which was nominated in the same category.
She also co-wrote “Don’t Tune Him Out (Tune Him In),” which was performed by The Whites for a compilation of Rick Lang songs, “Gonna Sing, Gonna Shout,” that was nominated for Best Roots Gospel Album.
“I’ve been a songwriter for as long as I can remember, and I really think it’s my therapy,” Buller said. “It’s my way of dealing with the world and processing what’s going on around me.”
Buller grew up in Minnesota, where she first took piano lessons before taking up fiddle so that she could sing in her parents’ bluegrass band, Prairie Grass.
“I was about 8 years old, and I decided that I wanted to sing in their band,” Buller said. “They said, ‘well, you have to play an instrument because everybody in a bluegrass band plays something.’ It’s the very rare that you have a bluegrass band with somebody who’s only singer. So, I looked at their band and realized they didn’t have a fiddle.”
While bluegrass was her passion, Buller also studied classical violin. Then, when she was 16, she read the liner notes for “Carolina Moon,” an album by Lou Reid, Terry Baucom & Carolina, and her life changed forever.
“Their bass player, Marcus Smith, had gone through the bluegrass program at East Tennessee State, so they got Jack Tottle, the founder of the program, to do the liner notes for that record,” Buller recalled. “And when I saw that you could get credit for playing bluegrass music, I told my parents, ‘I am going to Johnson City, Tennessee, for college.'”
Buller has lived in the Volunteer State ever since but has never lost touch with her Minnesota roots. As part of the “American Currents” exhibit, which will remain on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum through February 2020, Buller contributed a instrument with immense sentimental value.
“I cry when I think about this, but my great grandpa Buller’s fiddle is in there,” Buller said. “He carried it back to Minnesota in a gunny sack from a logging camp when he was working in Saskatchewan. That’s actually where he learned how to play, and he drug it back home to Mountain Lake, Minnesota. He was a Mennonite, and Mennonites don’t dance, so he had to go down the road about five miles to Odin to play for the Norwegian’s barn dance on Saturday nights.
“And then he’d get in trouble Sunday mornings because he was tired and didn’t want to go to church. So, he was a backsliding Mennonite because he was playing fiddle. And, now, after all these years, his fiddle is in the Country Music Hall of Fame. How wild is that?”