‘The Human Condition’: Becky Buller Brings Real Talk About Depression Into Bluegrass

There’s no shortage of sadness in bluegrass. It’s right there in the mournful fiddles, in the broken-hearted lyrics; it’s baked into the high lonesome sound itself.

But often the cause of that constant sorrow is external: Usually, someone left or someone died. Sadness as a mental state, as an internal storm, as depression — that’s rarely discussed in bluegrass.

Becky Buller set out to change that.

The bluegrass singer-songwriter and fiddler found herself deep inside such a storm in 2020 and 2021, lashed by the career perils of the pandemic, personnel changes in her band, financial stressors, and more she couldn’t name. She documents her struggle — and what brought her through to the other side — on Jubilee, a song cycle coming this Friday via Dark Shadow Recording.

“There’s so many songs about all aspects of life in bluegrass. We cover the human condition,” Buller says. “We’re a close-knit group in so many ways, and yet there’s still a stigma about talking about this because it shows weakness, and we don’t want folks to see us cry. On the other hand, this is an epidemic, and people are dying. So I’m definitely willing to lay aside my pride to try to help folks.”

Too Much

Growing up in southern Minnesota, Buller played fiddle in a bluegrass band with her parents while also studying classical violin. She joined the Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music program at East Tennessee State University, touring with college bluegrass bands and other groups and graduating with a degree in public relations. For a decade, she performed and recorded with Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike, and then joined Darin & Brooke Aldridge’s band. Meanwhile, she released a few solo albums and wrote songs in ever-wider circles in the bluegrass world.

In 2015, she won International Bluegrass Music Association awards for New Artist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, and Collaborative Recording of the Year, and she decided to start her own band. That’s when things got more complicated.

“Songwriting has always been my therapy and my way of interpreting and processing the world around me,” Buller says. “But as I’ve gone along and as I’ve gotten more responsibilities, it’s harder and harder to make the time to write, to get in that head space. When I started my band in 2015, I started going to a Christian counselor because I knew that the stress was going to be too much for me, and I wanted to have somebody that I could talk to about everything. It’s definitely untied a lot of knots in my brain, and I’m so grateful for that, and I’m continuing to go. But when 2020 hit, it was too much all at once.”

She felt crushed by the weight of needing to provide for her family and her band at a time when touring was cut off. And the Becky Buller Band’s then-new album, Distance and Time, had its release delayed by several months to wait for a time when promoting an album seemed feasible again. She was contemplating a small business loan and wondering how she’d ever repay it, and she was juggling being a wife, a mom, and an artist in a world turned upside-down.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” she recalls. “If I did fall asleep, I was having really horrible nightmares. And at one point, my brain popped. I literally felt it pop. I got to the point where I couldn’t make complete sentences. I didn’t want to leave the house.”

Her husband helped her get to a psychiatrist, and medication helped restore her to stable ground.

“I’m not ashamed to say that it’s helped me so much,” Buller says. “Getting to write this song cycle has been a very, very therapeutic process, and I hope that the music is helpful to the folks that are listening to it. If somebody is out there struggling with their mental health, I hope this music will bring them some hope and some healing. I want to encourage people to reach out. I want them to know how precious their lives are to their friends and family and to their Creator.”

‘The Woman Behind the Words’

Jubilee, as the name might suggest, didn’t start out as an album about depression. It started as a song Buller co-wrote in 2020 with fellow singer-songwriter and fellow mom Aoife O’Donovan around the idea of longing for a season of rest.

Becky Buller during the recording of “Jubilee” at Studio 9 in North Adams, Massachusetts, last fall. (Photo by Shayna Cooley)

In 2022, Buller received a commission from the FreshGrass Foundation (No Depression’s nonprofit publisher) to compose an original piece of music to debut at the FreshGrass Festival in Bentonville, Arkansas, the following spring. After considering a range of ideas for a song cycle, she followed that most classic of advice for writers of all kinds: Write what you know.

So she poured all of the sadness and despair of the preceding years into nine more songs, each, like “Jubilee,” with one-word names, like “Woman,” “Spiral,” and “Alone.”

Expressive instrumentals escort the listener through a story about falling into darkness, and then rising up out of it. Meant to be heard all in one sitting, the album charts a full journey, and true to its subject matter, it’s not an easy one.

In “Woman,” the first song with vocals, Buller sets the scene of “the woman behind the words” onstage who, despite having an audience, doesn’t truly feel heard. She sings songs with “a story to impart / yet never reveals my inmost heart.”

“Jubilee,” Buller’s co-write with O’Donovan, lands in the middle of the album, with O’Donovan contributing vocals entwined with Buller’s own. In the context of a musician stretched to the breaking point, “I need a year of jubilee” — in the biblical sense of a pause and reset after a long period of toil — is a plea. It’s a respite that seems out of reach for most in these busy times, and in the music business in particular.

By “Alone,” Buller’s interior struggle is laid bare, and it’s bleak. “I’m about to break,” she warns early in the song, and its builds to a chilling final chorus: “It would be better if I was laid beneath a stone / It’s over and I’m left alone.”

The turning point comes in “Whale,” a mirror of the Bible’s Jonah and the whale story in which Buller sinks to her greatest depths but then is returned to the surface: “Retched up onstage under the lights,” she finds new confidence, and new motivation to make the most of her “blessed second chance.”

The full story of Buller’s battle with depression is there in the songs, but Jubilee’s liner notes offer even more insight. Buller is clear about her Christian faith in a long essay in which she gives details about her mental health struggles, but she’s equally clear about how medication helped her through her darkest season. She wanted to let listeners know, she says, that seeking help from science doesn’t indicate a lack of spiritual faith.

“I grew up in a culture that was very anti-medicine for mental health,” she says. “If you have any mental health issues, that shows a lack of faith. It’s self-pity, and you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep going. And I’ve tried really hard to do all that. I’m with the guy in the gospel Mark who said, ‘I do believe, but help my unbelief.’

“It’s just hard walking in this world, it just really is,” she continues, “and I want people to know that I’m clinging to faith in Christ this whole time, but it was like something physically happened to me.” Just as you see a cardiologist for a heart issue, or a pulmonologist for a lung issue, she says, brains need care, too.

“All I know is that the medicine has really helped me, in partnership with the counseling, with daily routine and trying to read my Bible every day, trying to get good exercise, trying to not take on more than I can handle.”

From left, Becky Buller Band members Daniel Hardin, Jacob Groopman, Becky Buller, Ned Luberecki, and Wes Lee (photo by Shayna Cooley)

Lighting the Way

With the ground back under her feet and support from multiple sources, Buller’s life and career seem firmly back on track. She’s been touring and writing songs, and a Grand Ole Opry debut that had been delayed early in the pandemic was rescheduled. Speaking in an interview with the Opry’s My Opry Debut show before she took that hallowed stage in September 2021, she says, through happy tears, “I’ve come through so much to be here.”

Jubilee closes with a short “Postlude.” It’s mostly an instrumental wrap-up of the story arc anchored by Buller on cello banjo, but the few words carry a lot of weight. “Won’t waste this opportunity / To be a living jubilee,” she vows.

That means telling her story, she says, and letting people know they’re not alone.

“I hope whenever anybody has an interaction with us, whether it’s at a concert where we’re on stage or online on our social media, I just hope people leave that moment feeling refreshed and rejuvenated and happy and hopeful. I want to be that light. I want that light to just pour out of me and help others, inspire others.”

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. If you or someone you know needs support, call or text 988. Resources and a chat option are available at 988lifeline.org.