Dark Shadow Recording has a new single today for the Becky Buller Band, another from their upcoming Jubilee album due this spring.
Today’s release, Alone, and the full Jubilee album, represent a special project for Buller, offering a deeply personal look at her battles with clinical depression, which came to a head during the pandemic shutdowns four years ago. Written as part of a song cycle on this topic, commissioned by the FreshGrass Foundation, Becky says that she hopes the cycle will offer some solace to anyone else mired in depression.
“As the pandemic shutdown persisted, I was careening toward a mental health crisis. Instead of viewing it all as a much needed break, I could only see a black hole intent on devouring me. I had a new album coming out with no gigs to promote it…no band to play any gigs anyway.
Although I had a great team around me and an extremely supportive husband, they couldn’t help because there were no right answers. When one more financial pebble was thrown at me, I shattered into a million pieces.
Alone is my attempt to distill off this poison.”
Jubilee is a sort of “in between” album for the group, coming before the release of Becky’s covers project, from which a pair of singles have already been promoted, based on the label’s belief in the importance of the music.
Studio support comes from Buller’s touring band: Ned Luberecki on banjo, Wes Lee on mandolin, Jacob Groopman on guitar, and Daniel Hardin on bass. With Becky on fiddle and lead vocal, they recorded this and the other tracks in the song cycle live in the studio.
It’s a serious song on sensitive subject, and the arrangement treats it that way. It may not be an easy thing to think about, but it makes for a thoughtful listen.
Alone is available now from popular download and streaming services online, and to radio programmers via AirPlay Direct.
