Becky Buller delivers the 2024 World of Bluegrass Keynote Address – photo © Frank Baker
If IBMA gave an award for bravery, Becky Buller would win it hands down this year. Maybe every year.
The multi-talented fiddler, songwriter, and bandleader used her World of Bluegrass keynote address Tuesday to address the elephant in the room: the need to deal with, and erase the stigma of, mental illness.
She is not, by any stretch, the first musician to be riddled with self doubt – “What if you all found out I was a phony?” – the financial pressures – “When I started my band, my husband’s only request was that I didn’t bankrupt our family” – and other pressures that can pile up over time. But she’s the first major player in my 15 years of IBMA coverage to address those issues head on.
A silence settled over the room as she traced her journey from stage fright to full blown depression and anxiety. Some of her insecurities had been with her for years. Even when she became the first woman to win an IBMA instrumental award and female vocalist of the year in 2016, she wasn’t sure she was worthy.
“My heroes win awards,” she recalled thinking. “Not ordinary people like me.”
But everything came to a head during and after the COVID pandemic. She had a new record, but no band and no festivals to offer dates to help promote it. She broke. Buller didn’t directly address her state of mind as she bottomed out, but she dropped a big hint, saying a therapist she worked with “is the reason I’m still here.”
Near the end of her powerful address, Buller turned her attention to those in the room who are in the same boat she was in.
“If you’re at a crisis point right now, please know that it will get better,” she said. “Don’t give up. The world needs your voice and your music.”
She referred to the headline on a 2020 Rolling Stone article: “We can’t have all our artists die,” and she called for moment of silence for those in the industry who lost their lives to mental struggles.
And she called on IBMA to do more, including adding a page of mental health resources to the association’s web site.
In his introduction, IBMA Executive Director Ken White called Buller “a brave person, and a personal hero.” By the end of her soul-bearing remarks, White certainly wasn’t the only person in the room who felt that way.
