Sierra Hull: Bluegrass and Beyond

The mandolinist/singer/songwriter talks about the ambitious quest that's taken her to bluegrass's outer limits

“Boom” opens Sierra Hull’s fifth album with a bang. On A Tip Toe High Wire, just released, Hull continues her project of extending bluegrass’s boundaries while respecting its core. Note especially Sierra’s mandolin pyrotechnics from 2:07 to 2:35.

Music is not a competitive sport, but as today's mandolinists go, it’s safe to say that Chris Thile and Sierra Hull are at the top of the heap. And not necessarily in that order. I spoke recently to the singer/songwriter Robbie Fulks, who tapped Hull to play on his most recent album, Bluegrass Vacation. "Sierra’s tops,” said Fulks. “‘Best,’ who knows? I personally prefer Sierra's playing to Chris's. Sierra is more humble towards the music and so what comes out is a little more 'musical,' for lack of a better word."

What Fulks call’s Hull's humility has not kept her from striding, album by album (her fifth, A Tip Toe High Wire, was released on March 7th), beyond standard-issue bluegrass. On Tip Toe, she uses a drummer or percussionist on nine of the album’s 10 tracks and an electric guitarist on five. The music often rocks hard. What Hull is doing, and has been all along, is retaining her bluegrass identity while branching out into what I'll call roots-inflected pop. She is intent on stretching bluegrass convention, on lighting out for uncharted territory. Straining to describe a song like the Tip Toe instrumental “E Jam,” one reaches for terms like “avant-garde chambergrass.”

Having long shed the prodigy status that her early accomplishments brought her (playing the Grand Ole Opry at 10, Carnegie Hall at 12, and the White House at 20), Hull, 33, is not merely a mandolinist of seemingly limitless virtuosity (a six-time winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Mandolin Player of the Year award), but a singer with a liquid, melting soprano that’s capable, too, of some bite. She’s a clear-eyed, unsentimental songwriter. Hull wrote or co-wrote all of Tip Toe High Wire’s 10 songs, and her narrators and characters are as often in trouble, doubt or worry as they are content. “Singing hallelujah but we don’t know what it means/A pretty word to help us ease the pain,” she sings in “Truth Be Told.”

Hull has already begun touring behind Tip Toe, and celebrated its release with a March 7th show at the Brooklyn Bowl, on her home turf of Nashvill. She and the Sierra Hull Band—Shaun Richardson on acoustic and electric guitar, Avery Merritt on fiddle, Eric Coveney on bass, and Mark Raudabaugh on drums—will be on the road for the rest of 2025, including a 10-day stretch in June with Willie Nelson’s star-studded Outlaw Musical Festival.

Last week, Hull and band celebrated A Tip Toe High Wire’s release with a show at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl that included Hull’s daunting 2014 composition “Bluegrass Concierto, Movement 3”.

Yesterday, March 10th, Sierra took the time to field a half-dozen-plus questions I put to her. Her answers are lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Among the Musical: What first drew you to the mandolin?

Sierra Hull: My dad is the person who put the instrument in my hands. It wasn’t an unfamiliar instrument to me because my Uncle Jr., who lived next door, played a little and my dad had recently begun learning, too. I got a fiddle as a Christmas present when I was 8, but my tiny arms couldn’t reach the end of the fingerboard. Because the tuning is the same, my dad showed me a tune on the mandolin in hopes it would make it easier for me when we got a smaller fiddle. But I got hooked on the mandolin and there was no turning back.

ATM: What is it that you love about the instrument?

SH: I’m a small person to this day and the mandolin is small, too. I think the connection was immediate for a number of reasons, but it was the first instrument that I actually got to make music on. It felt natural to me almost from the beginning. I was already singing in church and music was in our lives from early childhood, so it simply felt right to learn to play something. I’ve always loved the uniqueness of the mandolin’s sound. There’s nothing quite like it.

ATM: Has anyone ever said to you, “I have trouble taking the mandolin seriously. It’s got such a twinkly little sound, it sounds like a toy instrument.”

SH: People say a lot of things about a lot of things. I spend most of my time in circles where the mandolin is a known and appreciated instrument, so I don’t hear remarks like that. But I’m also the kind of person that doesn’t expect everyone to love the same things. That’s the beauty of life. And... there’s a LOT of different sounds that can come out of any instrument, depending on whose hands it’s in.

ATM: Does it irritate you that Chris Thile is almost automatically cited as the Number One mandolinist?

SH: How could the comment irritate me when I agree with it? I wouldn’t be half the musician I am if I didn’t have Chris Thile as one of my guiding lights on the instrument. I’m proud to call him a hero and friend.

ATM: Who has taught you the most about playing music, period?

SH: That’s almost as hard as saying who’s taught me the most about life. One can always point to mentors. My earliest musical heroes, like Alison Krauss, Tony Rice, or Chris Thile are at the top of that list. But I could go back further to the local musicians with whom I sat in a circle jamming every weekend. Folks who weren’t aiming to be career musicians, but instilled in me the very love of music.¹

ATM: Why is bluegrass essentially hostile, or resistant, to women?

SH: I can’t say I agree that it is. It’s possible that my experience is unique, but I’m especially thankful that my male heroes have treated me with kindness and respect as far back as I can remember. It’s true that I often was, and many times still am, the only woman onstage, but I feel like I’ve always been given a seat at the table. Even back when I was a kid going to jam sessions, folks welcomed me and shared their knowledge with me. It’s true, there’ve been few women on the scene in years past. Perhaps adult women struggled to feel as connected as I did as a naive little kid. On the other hand, people like Lynn Morris, Alison Krauss, Rhonda Vincent, Alison Brown and many others have paved the way so that women like me can feel included and have a home in the music.

ATM: Is there a conscious sisterhood among women bluegrass musicians?

SH: Definitely! The sisterhood is strong. There’s a lot of love and support, and that’s part of the joy of doing this for most of us. I love the music, but the community is what keeps me going. It’s amazing how many women are out there making waves and young girls. It’s awesome to see!

Proof (not that any was needed) that Hull had arrived was Eric Clapton’s 2023 invitation to his annual Crossroads Festival, a celebration of great picking across genres. Sierra’s colleague since childhood, the guitarist Molly Tuttle (see ATM, 11/19/24), was invited to join Sierra onstage for some blazing stringwork. Other participants that year included Clapton, Carlos Santana, Jerry Douglas, and Gary Clark, Jr., but I doubt that anyone rocked harder than Hull and Tuttle on the bluegrass chestnut “Salt Creek,” which they’ve played together for probably 20 years.

1. See my January 24th entry in “Notes.” Yes, that’s Alison Krauss and Union Station playing the Opry in 2002, but who’s the pint-sized mandolinist in the middle, picking fiercely and grinning broadly? Why, it’s none other than an 11-year-old Sierra Hull, whom Krauss, another onetime prodigy, discovered and actively mentored.