‘She brings the joy’: Mandolin player Sierra Hull returns to Lexington for Railbird

Summer hasn’t even officially begun and already Sierra Hull has squeezed a season’s worth of musical adventures into a single month.

The six-time International Bluegrass Music Association Mandolin Player of the Year kicked off May by joining progressive jam band Goose for its Viva El Gonzo festival in San Jose Del Cabo, Mexico. A mere three days later she climbed aboard the first leg of Outlaw Music Festival, the decade-old touring Americana express headlined by Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. That run of eight dates out West, all of which included fellow bluegrass wunderkind Billy Strings, concluded last weekend. That gave Hull roughly six days to rest up and head to Lexington for a Saturday afternoon set at Railbird.

“There are some things that happen that you don’t even dream of,” Hull said in a phone interview prior to the start of her marathon of May activity. “Like I never would have dreamed of being on tour with Bob Dylan this summer, so I just feel so fortunate. There are a lot of things that feel like, in this moment, are happening in my career that tell me I certainly have to stop and be grateful.”

Hull’s early career

Admittedly, Hull has never waited around for opportunity to reach her. Even as a child, she took the initiative to further a prospective career in bluegrass as well a technical mastery of the mandolin that would eventually be matched only by her abundant performance exuberance.

She began playing at the age of eight, released her first independent instrumental album at 10 and was being mentored by Alison Krauss (herself a one-time child prodigy) at 11. She has since teamed with numerous bluegrass elders, including banjo great Béla Fleck. He produced Hull’s 2016 album “Weighted Mind” album and then recruited her as a contributor for his celebrated, cross-generational 2021 recording “My Bluegrass Heart” as well as a band member for extensive rounds of subsequent touring.

Playing Lexington the first time

Railbird, though, presents something of a full-circle moment for Hull. She first played Lexington through a pair of quickly successive visits to the “WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour.” The second teamed her with Kentucky-born mandolin, bluegrass and new grass star Sam Bush. She was 10 at the time.

“I was eaten up with playing music when I was a kid,” Hull said. “I still am, but when I was eight years old, I started playing mandolin and it took me no time to really fall in love with it and realize this is what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to do what Sam Bush was doing. I wanted to do what Alison Krauss was doing. I wanted to be able to live this musical life like my heroes — you know, traveling, making records, performing, all that.

“(WoodSongs host) Michael Johnathon and his folks invited me to come be on the show with a few other people. During that episode, he asked me, ‘Guess who’s going to be here next week?’ And I’m, like, ‘Who?’ He said, ‘Sam Bush. Are you a Sam Bush fan?’ And I was like, ‘Oh yeah.’ So when we come home, my parents got a call inviting me to come back the following week. They were like, ‘Well, we liked having you on the show last week. Why don’t you come back and play a song with Sam Bush?’ I was over the moon to be invited back to play with him.”

“Some people, when you meet them, you just get this feeling,” Bush said in an interview prior to his 2024 performance at the Moonshiner’s Ball. ‘You think, ‘Wow. That could be a special musician.’ That was the feeling I got when I met Sierra. If you keep your eyes and ears open, you will find things about these artists that can inspire you and drive you to play. Playing with Sierra, for instance ... it brings me such joy. She brings joy to the table, but it brings me joy to play with her.”

Touring with Bela Fleck

All of that outlines where Hull has been and how she answered the bluegrass call. But what best sheds light on the depth of her musical conviction is the music she has fashioned as an adult. Touring with Fleck behind “My Bluegrass Heart” in a band that boasted such fellow new generation artists as fiddler Michael Cleveland and multi-instrumentalist Justin Moses (Hull’s husband) offered something of a graduate course in string music, given the complexity and sheer technical daring of the repertoire.

“Béla is one of the most inspiring musicians in the world to work with. To be working Béla’s music and being able to really get into the weeds, to explore it in the touring sense and figure how to really get inside to find new ways to challenge yourself... it’s just so much fun. The guy is an endless source of creativity. Getting to have that in your ear, to stand two feet away from him and experience that every night ... you can’t help but be influenced.”

The newest chapter in Hull’s bluegrass saga unfolded in March with the release of her sixth album, “A Tip Toe High Wire.” It’s a work, cut with her touring band, that displays Hull’s instrumental prowess in glowing detail, as in the fiery instrumental “Lord, That’s a Long Way.” But the record also expands a balance between traditional and progressive bluegrass inspirations that have always distinguished her music. Similarly, it also reaffirms, whether through the remembrance of her grandmother summoned in “Spitfire” (where Hull switches from mandolin to guitar) or the percolating, percussive album-opener “Boom,” her talents as a producer, songwriter and especially as a vocalist.

“This record felt special in that it felt like the production, so-to-speak, was almost happening in real time before even hitting the studio. The further I dove into it, the more I just felt the inspiration to keep writing for this particular group of musicians. I knew it was a mix of what the band represents to me, which is both leaning into my roots, but also pushing things forward in a more progressive way.

“Anything I do is still going to come from a similar place of my influences and my musical bedrock, which is bluegrass, with some other influences scattered throughout. Being able to have the cohesiveness of the same group of musicians across the record also makes the whole thing feel like even if we want to take a step in a certain direction, there is still a foundation to what the body of the record sounds like.

“I mean, as an artist, I have a lot of things that I’m interested in, but at the end of the day, I’m still just kind of me.”

This story was originally published May 21, 2025 at 4:55 AM.