Becky Buller   -  Biography

Becky Buller is a Minnesota native whose parents were members of a regionally popular bluegrass band, Prairie Grass. During the summer, the family would take off almost every weekend in their renovated 1970 Ford school bus to bluegrass festivals and pre-1850 reenactments. Buller and her brother Michael would often get up on stage to sing "Slewfoot" with the band, standing on tiptoe to reach their mother Linda's guitar mike.

It took Buller about a year to convince her parents, who were already paying for weekly piano lessons, that she really wanted to play the fiddle. At 10, she enrolled in Suzuki method violin classes and was soon involved in the Mankato (Minn.) Area Youth Symphony (MAYSO) as well as her high school band as a percussionist, jazz band as the electric bassist, choir and show choir. By 13, she joined Prairie Grass and tried her luck on the fiddle contest circuit. In 1996 she became the Minnesota Junior Fiddling Champion and was selected to participate in the Minnesota All-State Orchestra. Her fiddling influences include Stuart Duncan, Alison Krauss, Eddie Stubbs and Jason Carter.

Buller tried her hand at songwriting while still in high school, completing her first compositions while bagging clothes at her parents' dry-cleaning shop. In 1996, she won first place in the Hank Williams Songwriting Contest in Avoca, Iowa. Two years later, she took part in the International Bluegrass Music Association's (IBMA) Songwriter Showcase at the World of Bluegrass Week in 1998. In 2001, she was awarded the first-place prize in the bluegrass category of the prestigious Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at MerleFest in Wilkesboro, N.C. That same year, she graduated from East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tenn., with a degree in public relations.

Buller's songs have been recorded by Rhonda Vincent & the Rage ("Fishers of Men"), Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver ("Be Living"), the Mark Newton Band ("Charlie Lawson's Still") and others. She released her solo album Little Bird in 2004 and tours with Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike.