Becky Buller joined KGNU backstage at RockyGrass 2025 to talk about her music and recent projects. She shared her experience performing at a fundraiser in Gold Hill and discussed her impactful album Jubilee, a song cycle addressing her struggles with depression and anxiety. Becky highlighted her new album Songs That Sing Me, releasing September 5th, and the recent single “A Hazy Shade of Winter.” She also spoke about her ongoing involvement in the bluegrass community as both mentee and mentor, teaching at RockyGrass Academy and embracing the tradition of mentorship. Becky is nominated for multiple IBMA awards this year and remains dedicated to creating music that connects and inspires listeners. (Interview: 7/25/25)
Riley Ann: Thanks for tuning into KGNU Community Radio. My name’s Riley Ann. I am backstage with Becky Buller. Welcome, Becky.
Becky Buller: Hey, Riley. Thanks for having me.
Riley Ann: Yeah, Riley. Perfect. I love it. That is very southern. I love it. It feels like the name of a fiddle tune or something, or maybe a song. I’m gonna have to write that on my list.
Becky Buller: Oh, I love it. I would love to be your muse for your list of song ideas. That’s great.
Riley Ann: Well, great set today. How did it feel up there?
Becky Buller: Thank you. Amazing. I love RockyGrass. I love the energy of this crowd. Gosh, yeah, it was just great. Perfect. Perfect afternoon for bluegrass, Americana, roots music.
Riley Ann: Great. Well, RockyGrass loves you, so thanks so much for being here. And, you know, KGNU is community radio, and we really appreciate our listeners and musicians who come and support our causes. Becky, I understand you recently played a fundraiser just last weekend up in Gold Hill for PG&E.
Becky Buller: I know. And that was my first time at Gold Hill.
Riley Ann: It’s like walking into the Old West.
Becky Buller: It was amazing. It really was great. But for everybody who knows about Gold Hill, you’ll love this—they GPSed us up Left Hand Canyon and Lick Skillet Road in a rental car.
Okay, have a good laugh at our expense. Anyway, it was really fun getting to play the Charles with my friends Rebecca Frazier, Eric Ned Luki, who plays banjo in my band. And, let’s see, Todd Livingston was there, Dave Richie—I haven’t seen him since college. It was wonderful to see him. The Foggy Mountain Spaceship was there too.
So very, very fun. I wish that we had a little more time to look around.
Riley Ann: Yeah. Well, and I love—you mentioned Lick Skillet Road. I think that sounds like a great new single for you.
Becky Buller: I think we have a Lick Skillet Road out around Manchester, Tennessee, where I live. All the inspiration is everywhere.
This kid’s coming. But y’all, I just do want to say thank you to those of you who support KGNU and the wonderful things they’re doing here at Community Radio Needs. So, you know, keep it coming, please.
Riley Ann: Thanks, Becky. Really appreciate that. You are such a prolific songwriter, and you just keep churning out all kinds of music.
I know Jubilee really made some waves last year. Can you tell me a little bit about that record?
Becky Buller: Sure. Jubilee is a really special project. It’s a song cycle, meant to be listened to in sequence, in its entirety, because it tells a story. That story is my lifelong struggle with depression and anxiety that came to a crisis point during the pandemic, like it did for so many people.
Fortunately, I am blessed to be here, after being in a very dark place, to have a wonderful community around me that helped pull me out of it and back to doing what I love, which is making music. This album started life as a commission from the FreshGrass Foundation, which puts on FreshGrass festivals in Bentonville, Arkansas, and North Adams, Massachusetts.
It’s a huge honor to get asked to write a piece for this. And yeah, we liked it so much we decided to record it. We performed the piece at the 2023 Bentonville, Arkansas festival. We recorded it that September in a day and a half in North Adams, Massachusetts.
It was just a whole whirlwind process. It came out last May. It debuted at number one on the Billboard Bluegrass chart, which was amazing. The best part is the people who have come up to me and said, “Hey, this music has really touched me,” or “I have a kid that is dealing with this and I’m gonna share this music with her.” I mean, that’s huge. I’m really honored that the music is helping folks.
Riley Ann: Well, thanks for sharing your story and your experience. I think being vulnerable is such a powerful means of connection.
Becky Buller: Mm-hmm.
Riley Ann: Especially through music.
Becky Buller: Mm-hmm.
Riley Ann: Yeah. I just think that’s incredible. Thank you.
Becky Buller: You’re welcome.
Riley Ann: I understand you have a new single that just got released, brand spanking new.
Becky Buller: So, my new album that I’ve been working on for three years got interrupted by the Jubilee Song Cycle record.
The new album is called Songs That Sing Me. It’s coming out September 5th. We’ve been releasing a bunch of singles, ’cause that’s what you do nowadays. The latest single we released yesterday was “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” which I didn’t even know The Bangles covered until maybe a month ago.
Fortunately, Simon and Garfunkel made their way under that rock when I was in high school and really inspired me creatively. I still go back to their records. It’s a safe haven for me. I love their music.
Riley Ann: Where can people find out about your new music and your shows? Like, where are you on the interwebs?
Becky Buller: I’m at becky.buller.com. That’s Becky and Buller is spelled just like it sounds: B as in boy, U-L-L-E-R. BeckyBuller.com. You can get to all of our social media pages from there. You can get to the new singles—we’ve got “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” “Muddy Waters,” “I Can,” “Oh, A Ride On By.” Everything that we’ve released from this new record is out there and available on all the places that you do the streaming.
You can get to all of that stuff from my website. We’ve also got a new Facebook community, an exclusive group for our fans if you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes stuff. We’ve just got a lot going on there.
So that’s called The Hive, and you can get to that through my website, becky.buller.com.
Riley Ann: I know you keep making the different lists on IBMA. Can you talk us through that?
Becky Buller: So Wednesday I found out that I’m nominated for Songwriter of the Year, Mentor of the Year, and Liner Notes for the Jubilee album at the 2025 IBMA Awards happening in September in Chattanooga. They moved this year—they were in Raleigh, but they’ve moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is great ’cause that’s an hour from our house in Manchester, Tennessee.
I’m very honored. I love bluegrass music. I’ve loved it since I was a kid. This is what I do. This is my thing. Hope to keep doing it forever.
Riley Ann: Yeah. Talking of Mentor of the Year, I feel like bluegrass, old-time, and roots music mentorship is such a huge part of that tradition.
Becky Buller: Yeah.
Riley Ann: What has that mentorship been for you as being the mentee and also now the mentor?
Becky Buller: I had so many wonderful folks that inspired me and taught me growing up in south-central Minnesota—the big bluegrass metropolis of St. James, Minnesota. My parents played, and I had a wonderful violin teacher, Patty Trias. She played a little fiddle in a country band, so she taught me some fiddle along the way.
And Brian Wicklund, a famous fiddler from up in Minnesota, Charles Gray with the Minnesota Symphony—I studied with him some. Then I went off to Bluegrass College at East Tennessee State University. There’s just so much kindness in the bluegrass community, and the old-time community as well.
Because all of us have been mentored along the way, we just wanna give it back to others. And to that end, I was teaching this week at the RockyGrass Academy. Wonderful to be back for my fourth time on the fiddle staff, along with my heroes, Darol Anger and Jeremy Garrett of the Stringdusters.
I just love it. I just—I love it when a student, of any age from like four to somebody in their eighties and everything in between, when the light goes on and they’re like, “Oh yes!” And that they just click into the next level of playing the fiddle or singing or songwriting or whatever we’re working on.
I just love that. That brings me so much joy.
Riley Ann: Well, I feel like you just exude joy when you perform, so it’s a real treat to be backstage with you here at RockyGrass. Becky, could you remind our listeners one more time where they can find information about where you’re playing and your new music coming out?
Becky Buller: Sure, sure. So you can find out more about me at becky.buller.com. That’s Becky Buller, B as in boy, U-L-L-E-R, BeckyBuller.com. Our new singles are there, all the social media pages, and anytime you run into us out in the wild or online, we would like to keep it all about music, mayhem, and merriment.
Riley Ann: I love the alliteration. Thank you.
Becky Buller: Thanks, Riley.
Riley Ann: Our pleasure. You are tuned into KGNU Community Radio, and this is our live broadcast from RockyGrass 2025. We are getting ready to head to the main stage here at Planet Bluegrass. We are the Fretliners.
Local favorites are gearing up for a great live set. We’re going to be switching over in just a moment, so please stay tuned for that and keep up with our entire festival broadcast. You can stream it at kgnu.org/rockygrass. If you like what you hear, we’ve got a tip jar—check that out at kgnu.org.
We also have a ticket giveaway coming up for KGNU Presents Swallow Hill Concerts at Left Hand Brewing. It’s the Fretliners with Shovel and Stone. That is Saturday, August 16th at 6:00 PM in Longmont at Left Hand Brewing. This is all ages, and it’s a pair of guest list tickets. The Fretliners are just about to take the stage, so we’ll be right back.
Thanks for tuning in.
