John Coffelt, Editor

Hometown Bluegrass artist to perform festive show with takes from holiday album and welcomes daughter to stage

World renowned Bluegrass artists the Becky Buller Band will perform a Christmas Show at 7 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 8 at South Jackson Performing Arts Center.

“Music is such a part of me and I can’t imagine life without it,” Buller said. “Especially at the holidays. Some of those old Christmas songs are just good friends and I love it when they come around to visit every year.”

This special Christmas presentation is the last of the band’s events for 2024 and is a rare local appearance for a Grammy-winning group that tours across the nation and hits bluegrass festivals across Europe.       

“We will do a mix of content from the “Perfect Gift,” an album that came out in 2022,” Buller said. “And do some crowd favorites. We want to encourage the crowd to sing along with us.”

Buller said she was anticipating a great show here in Coffee County.

“It’s always great to perform near home. I know that the holidays are such a difficult time, everybody is so busy all year round but especially during the holidays. I want to thank everybody who plan to come and see us and celebrate the holidays with us,” she said. “We will also have a very special guest joining us, Miss Romy Haley.”

Haley will perform a duet, “Merry Macaroni Art,” with her mother that is about an ornament from the family Christmas tree.

“My mom made it when I was in the second grade,” Haley said. “It’s spray painted bronze and it’s just macaroni hot glued onto a piece of cardboard.”

Buller said she wrote the song with prolific songwriter Lisa Aschmann, and she and Haley performed the duet in the studio for “The Perfect Gift” album.

“It’s not that hard (working in the studio),” Haley said, to a slight sideways glance from her mom. “You just have to put your voice up to the microphone.”

This was Haley’s first time in the studio, and she was pleased to have been paid for her contributions.

This year with her parents living nearby and daughter onstage this will be a special Buller family Christmas.  Buller recalled celebrating Santa Lucia in her Swedish-Lutheran home in Minnesota and being asked to play hymns for the advent service.

“Christmas is very, very important to me,” Buller said. “I come from a very musical family. They both play, they met in college when my mom walked up to my dad and told him he was playing cheater chords on the guitar. We had a quasi-family band when I was growing up…so I grew up playing throughout the year, but especially at Christmastime.”

The Becky Buller Band will soon hold its ugly sweater contest on social media, and the banjo player Ned Luberecki was recently inducted into the Banjo Hall of Fame. A new album is due to be released in early January.

Tickets for the Christmas Show are available at beckybuller.com or at southjackson.org.        

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.