Heather Berry Mabe
Heather Berry Mabe is a singer, guitarist and songwriter from Sherando, Virginia. She recorded with the Daughters of Bluegrass, joined Junior Sisk’s band with her husband, the banjo player Tony Mabe, in 2019, and leads Red Camel Collective, the band that grew out of it. In 2024 she was the IBMA’s Momentum Vocalist of the Year.
As Heather Berry she made the album To a Dove (Blue Circle, 2005), playing autoharp on several tracks, with Mike Bub on bass, David Talbot and Eddie Adcock on banjo, Michael Cleveland on fiddle, and Sonya Isaacs and Becky Isaacs Bowman among the backing singers. With the Daughters of Bluegrass she played autoharp and guitar and sang on Back to the Well, which won the IBMA’s Recorded Event of the Year award in October 2006. She played guitar and autoharp, sang harmony and took one lead on Bluegrass Bouquet, and on Pickin’ Like a Girl (2013) she sang lead on “Buildings Ain’t Churches” and the first verse of “The Hummingbird Man.”
In 2019, when Junior Sisk started over without his long-time band, he hired Heather and Tony Mabe to sing harmony with him, with Tony on banjo and Heather on second guitar, and Jonathan Dillon stayed on mandolin. On Sisk’s Load the Wagon (Mountain Fever, 2020), recorded at Mountain Fever Studios in Willis, Virginia, she plays guitar, sings tenor behind Sisk on most of the songs and sings the lead on “Lover’s Farewell.”
In December 2023 Sisk’s band signed with Pinecastle Records as Red Camel Collective, to record and tour on its own when his schedule allowed: Heather on guitar, Tony on banjo, Dillon on mandolin and Curt Love on bass, with Heather and Tony sharing the lead vocals. The name comes from “The Man in Red Camels,” a song Sisk recorded. Their first single was a remake of Charley Pride’s “Roll On Mississippi,” later singles included her own song “Sincerity,” and the band has a self-titled album on Pinecastle. She received the IBMA Momentum Award for Vocalist of the Year on 25 September 2024, and the band was invited to make its Grand Ole Opry debut on 27 February 2026. In April 2026 Sisk introduced a new band of his own, with Red Camel Collective set to go fully independent later that year as he headed toward a farewell tour in 2027.
