Wall Around Your Heart

Becky Buller’s first records came out on small independent labels. Born in St. James, Minnesota, in 1979, she grew up playing in her parents’ band, Prairie Grass, and studied bluegrass at East Tennessee State University. Her album Rest My Weary Feet appeared on SRS in 2000, and Little Bird followed on Bell Buckle in 2004, with Stephen Mougin among the players. From 2014 she has recorded for Dark Shadow Recording, the Nashville studio and label that Mougin runs. The Dark Shadow albums include ’Tween Earth and Sky (2014), Distance and Time (2020), the Christmas album The Perfect Gift (2022) and Jubilee (2024). In 2016 she was the first woman named IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year, and the first artist to win in both an instrumental and a vocal category.

Dark Shadow has also issued her digital singles. Two-song “Christmas 45” releases came out in November 2015 and November 2021, the second including “Mary Rocked Her Baby” with the Fairfield Four, and a cover of George Michael’s “Last Christmas” followed in November 2022. Ahead of Jubilee, the title song came out in February 2024 and “Alone” in April. “Jubilee,” written with Aoife O’Donovan, who also sings on it, and “Alone” were both cut with the Becky Buller Band: Jacob Groopman on guitar, Ned Luberecki on banjo, Wes Lee on mandolin and Daniel Hardin on bass.

Her next album, Songs That Sing Me, released on 5 September 2025, is a set of songs by other writers that shaped her, and its singles were spread over three years. James Taylor’s “Millworker,” with Dan Tyminski and Andrea Zonn singing harmony, came out in August 2022. “Wall Around Your Heart,” released on 23 June 2023, is a Reno and Smiley song she learned from the Bluegrass Album Band, reworked as a duet with Jim Lauderdale. Mougin, who produced it, played guitar, with Jeremy Stephens on banjo, Lauren Price-Napier on mandolin, Missy Raines on bass and Stuart Duncan joining Buller on twin fiddles. The Orleans song “Reach,” recorded with her First Ladies of Bluegrass bandmates Molly Tuttle, Alison Brown, Sierra Hull and Raines, came out in January 2025.

“Muddy Waters,” issued on 30 May 2025, is Phil Rosenthal’s song, first performed by the Seldom Scene. Buller said the damage Hurricane Helene did to the southern Appalachians made her hear it differently. Two sons of Seldom Scene members played on it, Chris Eldridge on guitar and Jay Starling on dobro, with Casey Campbell on mandolin and Jeff Picker on bass.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.