A woman may become a First Lady in some contexts by marrying, but in the world of Bluegrass, the title comes through hard work and talent. The five women taking the stage at the Country Music Hall of Fame Theatre Wednesday evening achieved the title as the first woman to win an IBMA Performer of the Year award for their respects instruments, some of them going on to win numerous times.
Alison Brown was the first, winning on the banjo in 1991, the month and year Sierra Hull was born. One of the younger members of the group, Hull won in the mandolin category in 2017 and the new two years as well. Missy Raines first won for bass player of the year in 1998 and has won a total of eight times, more than any bass play in IBMA history; and Molly Tuttle won for guitar in 2017. Becky Buller was not only the first woman to win the award for fiddler of the year, but the first human being to win for instrumentalist and vocalist in the same year.
As Museum Director Abi Tapia pointed out in the introduction, rather than competing for featured lineups and festival spots, these women have banded together to support and to push each other creatively. Audiences fortunate enough to attend a performance can attest to the magic when the five come together on stage.
Featured in the Museum’s American Currents exhibit, the five play and sing together on Raines’ latest CD Royal Traveller, nominated for a Grammy this year.
The show opened with a rendition of the old-time tune “Sally Ann” sharing harmonies on the lyrics and trading off solos putting their own spin in traditional bluegrass style. They followed with Tuttle’s “Friend of a Friend,” co-written five years ago when she first came to Nashville.
The women took turns introducing one another and taking the lead on songs. Hull talked about the first time she discovered Alison Brown’s music, and her surprise at seeing a woman holding a banjo on the cover of an album. Brown said after hearing Earl Scruggs, she was drawn to the banjo, which she referred to as “a divine instrument: man plays it and only God knows why.” She played her twist on his instrumental “Earl’s Breakdown,” which she calls “Girl’s Breakdown.”
Brown produced Missy Raines’ current CD, and the group sang “Swept Away,” written by Laurie Lewis, whom she called “a hero for us all.” Raines sang the lead with Tuttle and Hull joining in for their sweet harmonies.
Hull led into a sassy song she found deep in Loretta Lynn’s catalog, “You Wanna Give Me a Lift.” Next Buller introduced Molly Tuttle, noting that she appears on the cover of the current Acoustic Guitar magazine. Buller, hailing from Minnesota, with fiddling grandfathers on both sides of her family, described her great grandfather’s fiddle he bought for fifteen dollars at a logging camp and carried home in a gunny sack, now on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum exhibit.
Sierra Hull also mentioned one of her heroes, Bill Monroe, whom she was too young to meet. She described being backstage at Ricky Skaggs’ medallion induction ceremony, when he was allowed to play Monroe’s iconic mandolin, usually on display at the museum. Seeing it, she admits that she rain on stage and “ugly cried.”
The group provided plenty of variety in their set list, moving from an old ballad—but a happy one—to their own originals, including an instrumental Hull wrote years ago, giving it a title she said sounded like a 15-year-old named it: “Hullarious.”
In the second set, Becky Buller opened with “Why Don’t You Just Say Goodbye,” which the group followed with “Rain and Snow, showcasing Molly on guitar and Sierra’s haunting tremolo on mandolin, with all five demonstrating just why they have been recognized so often.
They also played “Fair Weather,” a song Sierra Hull had first discovered on one of Alison Brown’s albums, but which the band had not performed together before.
Several of their original songs evoke a strong sense of place, including Raines’ “Allegheny Town” about her area of origin in West Virginia, where, she says, people have to make choices about staying or leaving, both of which come with a cost.
Alison Brown introduced her song “Leaving Cottondale,” written when she was playing with Alison Krauss and Union Station. At the time she “thought it would be a good idea” for the whole band to stay at her grandma’s house in Cottondale on the Florida panhandle.
Becky Buller also performed her moving song about addiction “I’ll Take Everything,” pleading with anyone dealing with the problem to “please get help. . . If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for those who love you.”
The stage hands moved a microphone to the front and center of the stage for the five to deliver an acappella rendition of “Wagoner’s Lad,” a Joan Baez song that had haunted Hull when she heard it on a trip to Colorado. The five women traded off verses, uniting for harmony on the chorus, “Oh hard is the fortune of all womankind.”
Before the encore, they sang “Over the Line,” co-written by Tuttle with Nashville songwriter Steve Poltz.
As further evidence of their eagerness to share the stage with other talented females, they returned, joined by fiddlers Deanie Richardson of Sister Sadie and Kimber Ludiker of Della Mae, who traded off solos on “Walking in the Winter Wonderland” and then joined Becky Buller for triple fiddles on an instrumental peace.
For the finale, the Ladies brought out Nashville mandolinist Roland White, known as much for how he welcomes musicians to Nashville as for the music he makes. He joined the group for “Christmas Time Is Coming,” encouraging the audience to sing along on the final chorus. The entire show felt like a perfect holiday gift.