Tag: Jubilee

Mental Health, Healing, and Redemption Flow From Becky Buller’s ‘Jubilee’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

With her work as a songwriter and as a sidewoman, Becky Buller made a name for herself long before she became a bandleader. In 2015, after becoming a mother, she realized the need to control her own schedule and reluctantly began a touring career under her own name. But for someone more comfortable outside of the spotlight, the pressure and stress of leading her own project took its toll and in 2020 Buller found herself in a mental health crisis.

Her new album, Jubilee (available May 17), chronicles her journey through depression in the form of a song cycle including instrumental interludes. This project was initially commissioned by the FreshGrass Foundation and was recorded almost entirely live with Buller’s band. The music is beautiful and vulnerable – and the group’s chemistry and musicianship shine.

In a BGS interview, Buller opens up about what triggered her mental health breakdown, about the stigma around mental health care, and how she found her way out of the dark through medication, songwriting, therapy, and prayer.

This album was commissioned as a long form composition by the FreshGrass Foundation for debut at their 2023 Bentonville, Arkansas festival. How was your experience as a writer working in a song cycle/conceptual format, versus previous songs and albums that you’ve written?

Becky Buller: I almost always follow the muse where she leads. Having an assignment generally tends to squelch my creativity. I’m so grateful to the FreshGrass Foundation for commissioning me to write this piece, but I’ll admit, after I hung up the phone last fall, I did panic a little bit. But once I settled on the topic for the cycle and decided that the previously unreleased song, “Jubilee” (co-written with Aoife O’Donovan), would be the seed I would plant and water to cultivate the entire project, the rest of the music came to me pretty quickly.

Tell me about your connection with Aoife – how did that come about, and where did it lead the project?

She and I were talking at the 2019 Newport Folk Festival about writing together at some point. She was there touring with I’m With Her, and I was there with the First Ladies of Bluegrass as part of a historic all-female Saturday night headliner set curated by Brandi Carlile, which included folks like Yola, Sheryl Crow, Linda Perry, and Dolly Parton.

Once I got back home, I ended up sending Aoife the first stanza of “Jubilee” and she said the idea of needing a rest resonated with her. We started writing “Jubilee” just before the pandemic shutdown, finishing it in December. Ironic that we were singing about needing a rest… and then we got one! [Laughs]

[Laughs] You manifested it! But the rest for you – it didn’t really help? From your bio it seems like it caused a crumbling of sorts?

No, I don’t know how to rest.

I’m the same. I find that when I have time to think it can be very confronting.

That totally resonates with me, it exposed all the cracks in my foundation.

I was really interested in the line, “She’s been told that she’s absurd,” as a potential crack in the foundation – the idea of the separation between an artist and a human. That one could feel respected as a musician, but not as a person… where is that line coming from for you?

Or not respected as either…

We all have so many voices and opinions whirling around us. Some louder than others. Some speak honey, some poison. Unfortunately, and more often than not, I tend to fall victim to the poison, trying my best to get others to change their opinion of me. Fruitless, I know.

So you’re speaking about personal and professional critics who you feel don’t respect you and your art, that type of chatter, seeing negative feedback or commentary?

I’ve always been more comfortable in the background.

Interesting! So how did you end up leading a band?

I was terrified of leading a band! There were folks that got mad at me, because I wouldn’t start my own band. I didn’t know how I would fund it. I definitely didn’t think I could handle the stress.

What made you decide to do it in the end?

I was a side person for the first half of my professional career. Wrote a lot of songs cut by colleagues and heroes in the bluegrass industry. In 2011, I took a break from the road. In 2012, Jeff and I were expecting [our daughter] Romy. That fall, I joined up with Darin & Brooke Aldridge’s band and toured with them for two seasons… We had our baby girl in March 2013.

I recorded a solo record, my first in 10 tears and my first with Dark Shaddow Recording. It officially came out October of 2014. By that point, Romy had started walking and Jeff and I determined that I needed to be able to create my own schedule. I was under contract to the label to sell a record, so I needed shows…

So I gave my notice to Darin & Brooke, held my nose, and walked out on the water. I’ve had my own band since 2015.

When I started the band, I also started going to a Christian counselor. I knew the stress of running a band would be too much for me… it helps. It helped untie all sorts of knots in my brain. Even after all of these years, I will wind up in situations where I feel myself leaning in a certain negative way and I’m so grateful when I catch myself and say, “No, I don’t have to think that way anymore.” But the counseling wasn’t enough when the world shut down.

I totally understand what you’re saying about the schedule. It’s so interesting how being a mother in some ways necessitates being a band leader rather than a hired gun on tour. It’s something I think about a lot, because you need control. But also, man, that’s a lot to take on at once!

It is. And I’m so grateful for a tight community of touring mamas who get it. My folks are working on moving to Tennessee, but up ‘til now, they’ve been in Minnesota and unable to help us much. I’m so grateful for the beautiful Tennessee family God planted me in. We also have the best neighbors and church family. I couldn’t do what I do without their love and support.

I wanted to thank you for your openness about mental health on this record. I saw in the liner notes that you said medication has been a really helpful part of your healing. I also take medication for mental health and I feel there’s a lot of stigma around it. Often on the road, I’m surrounded by folks self-medicating with drugs and alcohol who are afraid to take prescribed medication for their mental health issues. How has medication helped for you?

The culture I grew up in was very against prescription medication for mental health. More faith and prayer and less self-pity, that was supposed to take care of things. I’m like the fellow in the Gospel of Mark who fell at Jesus’s feet, crying out “I do believe, help my unbelief!”

Like you, I’ve also been around a lot of musicians who are self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. I never want to wake up not knowing where I’ve been, etc. For these reasons, I was afraid to take medication.

But in mid-2020, I literally felt something in my brain pop. I couldn’t make complete sentences. I couldn’t write my own name correctly. I needed the medicine to help me begin climbing out of the hole I was in.

My doctor is also a musician and understood where I was at. He told me to give him a year and we’d get it sorted out. And he was right. In the late summer of 2021, when we found a medicine that I responded to, it felt as if a cinder block was lifted off of my head. I know getting to debut at the Grand Ole Opry on September 3, 2021, was also a huge validation, and part of my healing journey.

Thanks so much for sharing all of this, Becky! You’ve made a beautiful record and one that I think will help a lot of people feel less alone in facing their own mental health journey.

Photo Credit: Shayna Cooley

25 Years On, It’s Old Crow Medicine Show’s ‘Jubilee’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Old Crow Medicine Show co-founder and frontman Ketch Secor is always busy. In September, Secor and flatpicking master Molly Tuttle co-hosted the Annual IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards, a brief respite from the ongoing national tour Secor and Old Crow are currently on. They hit the road earlier this year after releasing Jubilee, their latest record, celebrating 25 years as a band. With a few recent lineup changes, their energy is still fresh and exciting — and in this exclusive BGS interview, Secor explains that you really just have to see them live to fully understand and appreciate the bit.

This will be the second tour with the current lineup, right? What do you think will be different with touring Jubilee?

Ketch Secor: In typical Old Crow fashion, an 11th-hour lineup change occurred as we were putting the finishing touches on this album. We’ve hired two new players, and that’s Dante’ Pope on drums and piano, and PJ George as a utility player, so with these two additional players we have yet another iteration of Old Crow that has subtle differences from any other one we’ve had before. This kind of thing just makes it fun. That fluidity of the lineup has made it a lot more palatable — it’s still Flagstaff in the fall, but getting to see it with somebody who’s never been before, and getting to share the stage with people who bring out something new in you musically.

I feel like music for the old-time string band – and maybe this is the same for bluegrass – but music is really relational. It’s about who you’re with. I play different with different people. The pitcher isn’t gonna play differently because of who the shortstop is, but in a string band, the fiddler’s following a groove that the banjo sets, and if there’s a great mandolin player with chops then the fiddler is going to weave in and out of something differently.

How did you choose the guest appearances on this album, like Sierra Ferrell and Mavis Staples?

KS: That kind of thing just evolves. Making records in the 21st century, collaborations are what’s on the menu more so than when we were kids. We didn’t think about who was going to be the guests when we were kids. For Sierra, we thought that song needed something, and we realized it was a duet. I’d been sitting on that one for a couple years. I rewrote it as a duet, and we called the best woman to sing on a cock-fighting song — we called out to West Virginia.

Why are collaborations more necessary now?

KS: If I could be frank, it’s because labels are trying to do anything they can to sell albums. It adds to social media platforms. It increases the scope in ways that are much more specific to these times than just making great music. When Lita Ford came out with Ozzy Osbourne, that probably had a different purpose to it than it does today. Independent labels are taking a cue from hip-hop artists who experiment with this all the time. Bluegrass and old-time and traditional music tends to be 10 years behind those types of styles, so it makes sense that nowadays we’re all making collaborative contributions.

Were there any surprising or touching moments working with Willie Watson in the studio again? Was the chemistry there after 12 years?

KS: Yeah, I think that having Willie back is just important to the ethos of Old Crow Medicine Show, and celebrating its 25th anniversary. We’ve been working together since COVID on some things from live streams to concert appearances, and this was sort of the next frontier for Old Crow and Willie in burying the hatchet and making music together. When you’re in a 25-year-old band you get a lot of ex-boyfriends. Hindsight is 20/20, and I just know that nowadays it’s better to be back on stage together. 

How has your fiddling changed over the years? What are some of the areas you focus on when you practice? Old-time is known for being scrubby, but there’s a lot more going on there.

KS: Well, it’s changed over the years as I’ve gotten to be a lot better and gutsier as a violin player. I play it harder and stronger and faster than I did when I was 18 when I learned. For 25 or some years it’s been my dance partner. At the quarter century mark as a violin player, I feel like I know my partner well. I know where to take it, where on the neck to go. I know how to get the sounds that I’m looking for.

But I’m not a player who practices. My practice is just playing 95 concerts a year for 25 years and making 15 records in that period of time and being a special guest on 50 other records. I’ve grown up like a plant in the window when it comes to my violin playing. I see where the light is and I’ve grown towards it, and it’s bushier and brighter than it used to be when I was just a little twig. It just keeps growing all the time, but it’s not because I’m changing anything. There’s no additive to the soil.

You play old-time, but do you ever try other genres?

KS: I’ve played a few jazz gigs, but it’s not what I do well. I listen to all manner of songs. As a fiddle player, I like to think about all of the music that I’m channeling into the way I play, and a lot of it is traditional fiddle music, but a lot of it’s not. I feel like there’s Public Enemy and Nirvana and Bosco and the Carter Family, and other things that are not fiddle playing in my playing. But mostly what there is in my fiddle playing is mileage. It’s experience. It’s rust. It’s calcified. That’s the case with people who’ve played music for a lifetime. They get better not because they’re doing something different, but because they’re doing the same thing again and again. 

You mentioned that folk music should be topical — not kept in a museum case. Do you think that kind of folk has a special place in the world right now given the political and economic hard times we’ve been seeing?

KS: I think that anybody who’s making genuine art has a reflection of the world around in that work. We the artists are sort of like poetic mirrors of what we see. There’s lot of songs now that reflect the discord, either in a lamentation or in a protest or in just a pure reflection. My music tends to talk about the plight of the people who are most associated with this music, so that can be the people of the Southern Highlands. It can be the hardship of the African American co-inventors of this music. But I’m also a real vessel for global topics, and I say that because when I read the news it’s almost like it starts riding on my back. So I’m thinking about flood waters in Libya and earthquakes in Morocco and school shootings in Nashville. To me they’re all part of a human struggle to find peace in the world. 

What change do you hope comes about from songs like “Allegheny Lullaby?” How do people take that sentiment and make it actionable?

KS: That’s a song about a limitation of choice. That’s a matter of equity or inequity. So the equitable solution is: More choice. It’s widening the spectrum of options for people who live in the coal district, and that’s a very doable action item. It’s just a hard thing to do and live the exact same way, without a change in economics, but that’s the story of the American people. We adapt. And so I think the natural adaptation cycle in the Southern Highlands is in flux right now because of some strident efforts to hold it back. The results of those actions are that you got an opioid epidemic, a fentanyl epidemic — so many dysfunctions. I’m looking forward to the people eventually standing up and getting what they need. I wouldn’t put it past the people to get that. They got it before. They unionized in those situations and fought for livable wages, and they can do it again.

You talk a lot about nature, like mountains and feral critters, in your music. Is that an intentional part of folk or where does that come from?

KS: When I think about what made [American music] so rich, I know it’s the land and the soil and the people and the stories. So to evoke the same is just a natural link in the chain forged anew. And that’s all I’m doing. I’m just singing about the rivers that mean something to me when I sing them. I don’t think you’re ever going to get tired of thinking about the Big Sandy River, no matter if it’s clean or dirty. It’s called the Big Sandy, doesn’t that sound like freedom? 

What do you hope listeners will take away from this album?

KS: You know, we make music because we’re a live band. We make albums because we’re a live act. Come and see us. If you like this record, go buy a ticket. We’re coming to your town; we have for a quarter of a century. We loved you then, and we love you even more now. And if you hear something on this record you like, then that’s just one more reason to come buy that ticket and see us when we come to your community and make a unique and special community in yours for one night. This is an age-old P.T. Barnum routine. The hat is magic, the ring is heavenly. Once you gaze on what lies behind the curtain, you will be dazzled. That’s where the magic is. The album is a big arrow.

Photo Credit: Joshua Black Wilkins