“This album was inspired by being able to get back out on the road post-pandemic. I had done an album called Weighted Mind (2016), which was a very stripped-down kind of record— mostly myself and a bass player, then it turned into some trios. So I was excited about the idea of putting a touring band back together and building something different for 25 Trips (2020). But I didn’t really get to do that because I put out the record and then, a week into it, the world shut down. So I didn’t get to support that album on the road with a full band,” Sierra Hull explains as she details the antecedents to her new record, A Tip Toe High Wire.

“I started thinking about this one a few years ago, but I wasn’t sure if it would become a full album, if we would just release a few songs or exactly what the deal would be,” she acknowledges. “Then on the heels of the pandemic, when things started opening back up, I put together a band, which is primarily the band that’s on this record. That’s when I started thinking about some of the music I had written during my time off the road, while also feeling inspired by the sound of this band playing my music. So I started writing some songs with this particular lineup in mind.”

That lineup features Shaun Richardson (guitar), Avery Merritt (fiddle), Erik Coveney (bass) and Mark Raudabaugh (drums). On A Tip Toe High Wire, Hull also draws in such notable players as Béla Fleck, Tim O’Brien, Aoife O’Donovan, Lindsay Lou, Ronnie Bowman and her husband, Justin Moses. The 10 original songs on the album are steeped in the sounds that first spoke to her as a preteen and have led to six International Bluegrass Music Association Mandolin Player of the Year awards. Yet they also embody the curiosity and spirit by which she’s been invited to perform and record with numerous esteemed artists, including Sturgill Simpson, Billy Strings, Brandi Carlile, Cory Wong, Bobby Osborne, Missy Raines, Molly Tuttle and Mac Wiseman.

A Tip Toe High Wire, which she produced with her friend and engineer Shani Gandhi, is her first independent release. Hull suggests this is a welcome challenge at the current stage of her career. “I’m kind of stepping out into this unknown space,” she says. “That’s a little scary, but I also feel like, at this point in my life, I’m ready to embrace the freedom that it represents.”

Boom

“Boom” was one of the first things that we recorded during these sessions. Some of the music I’ve made in the past and songs like “Spitfire” on this record lean a little bit more into the lyrically vulnerable space. With “Boom,” there’s a joy that inspired one aspect of what the record would become. Later, when I began sequencing the album, I kept going back to “Boom” as the opening track.

This is one we’d already played live a good bit. I really enjoy the groove, which is a lot of fun to play and to sing over. I liked the idea of opening the album with a welcoming vibe so the listener would know that there’s going to be joy scattered throughout this album.

Come Out of My Blues

I’ve loved so many songs that Pat [McLaughlin] wrote with John Prine. From time to time, I cover “Summer’s End,” which they wrote together. After John passed away, I was doing a lot of writing, and I thought it would be really cool to do something with Pat. I had done some projects for Sturgill Simpson with David Ferguson as the producer/engineer, and he’s good friends with Pat. So he introduced us and Pat came over to the house.

Many of the songs on this album started with something that I had already been messing with, then I collaborated with somebody to finish. But with this one Pat brought the song. He had the opening lyric: “Birds are singing right outside my door/ Songs I’ve never heard ‘em singing before.” I thought, “Oh, that’s really a sweet sentiment.” But it was a much different melody—more of a straight ahead kind of country melody.

Then, a couple months later, I was sitting with my mandolin in my hand and changing strings, so they were sort of split-tuned in kind of an unconventional way that I thought sounded kind of cool. Bill Monroe sometimes would experiment with split tune things and a couple of his songs had unique tunings.

So I was imagining something that would be a fun nod to that Bill Monroe-meets-old-timey thing. I thought, “The way this feels instrumentally, I would love to have a lyric that feels really joyful to sing over it.” I started thinking about that and I pulled up the lyrics to the song I had written with Pat. They kind of f lowed over the melody, but I thought I probably needed to write new lyrics rather than use the ones I had because they were written to a different melody and that song already existed.

I workshopped it with my band and, when I mentioned this to Pat, he was so gracious. He said, “Take the lyrics, change the melody, do whatever you want.” Then when I sent him the version we were working on, he gave me the grace to fit the lyrics to this new melody.

When we finally recorded the song, I kept thinking, “Man, it would be really fun to have Tim O’Brien sing on this.” Tim is an effortless, amazing singer and I’m such a fan. I’d never had him on any of my records before and I thought, “This song feels like the right fit to see if he’ll do it.” He was willing, and I think he made the song by being on it.

Muddy Water

The CMA invited me to do this writer’s round kind of thing in New Mexico several years back. I don’t do many of these things, but I flew out and did it with a few other writers. I remember hanging out on the balcony of the hotel where I was inspired to write this song. I looked down, there was a fountain and, for some reason, this lyric came to me—“You muddy your water cause you want them to see you as deep.”

Sometimes you write something, and you think, “What does that even mean?” But it painted this story to me. I’m singing the song in the third person, but I definitely feel like I’m singing as much to myself as anyone else. The idea is that sometimes we feel that if we let somebody in on who we really are when all of our walls are down, they’re going to think we’re not interesting and that whatever we are is not enough. It’s a really silly way of thinking because we’re all beautiful, unique individuals, but, at times, we feel insecure and feel like we’ve got to appear a certain way.

So there’s this idea of trying to uplift each other and not feel like we have to be anything other than what we are. I think that’s a beautiful thing to remember and this discussion came up later that week when I was doing a co-write with my friends Andrew Petroff and Caroline Spence. I said, “I have this lyric and this is kind of what I think it means, but maybe we could kind of dive into that a little bit.” So they helped me make the song come to life from there, where it’s about accepting yourself for who you are.

Lord, That’s a Long Way

As a mandolin player, I love a good instrumental tune. I love writing lyrics, but writing instrumental music is woven throughout my stuff as well. This particular tune kind of wrote itself quickly.

I don’t write this way very often, but I imagined the way I wanted it to feel when I played it live with this particular group of musicians. I wanted it to feel like the traditional bluegrass that I grew up with, but I also wanted it have an interesting part for our drummer. So I thought it would be fun to start out with more of a rhythmic riff from the mandolin, then another instrument jumps in, and then another jumps in—kind of building it from the ground up.

The title “Lord, That’s a Long Way” is something I’d had for a long time as a working title for a fun instrumental. It’s based on a phrase that my husband’s mama would often say. As she got older and started losing her memory from Alzheimer’s, she would say a lot of the same things in the sweetest way. When we’d go visit her, she’d ask, “How far do you live from here?” We’d say, “Well, we live in Nashville. It’s about three hours away.” Then she’d go “Three hours? Lord, that’s a long way.” She’d always say it the same way, “Lord, that’s a long way.” That would be her phrase, so I just thought it would be a fun way to honor our sweet Mamaw Moses.

Spitfire

This song is for my Granny and it’s a meaningful song for me, but I wanted to write it in a way that wasn’t exclusively saying, “This is my grandma’s life.” In some ways it’s a sad song but I don’t altogether think of it as a sad song because of what’s there in the lyrics: “Tougher than thorns on a briar.” That’s like my granny with all the things she went through and made her the beautiful, bold, fiery woman she was. She was gentle and wonderful in her own way, but she would also be one to fight for you and the people she loved. She was unapologetically herself and didn’t take crap from nobody.

I think about the resilience she had and I could have probably written 10 more verses about all that she lived through and the things she experienced. She grew up in the mountains of Tennessee, an Appalachian woman with no money and a sixth-grade education who then had to go work in the tobacco fields. If I ever start being like “Woe is me,” I always kind of think, “Well, what would granny have done?”

With this particular song, I wanted to capture the essence of my granny, but I didn’t want to ever say, “Grandma.” I wanted it to be the story of a character that you can hopefully imagine. It could even be a person that you know in your life—someone who has that kind of resilience.

Let’s Go

This was an idea that I began playing on the mandolin and I already had the lyrics jotted down separately. Oftentimes, I’ll do that—I’ll write lyrics and stash them away, sometimes without a melody at all. I do the same thing instrumentally where I capture little melodic ideas on voice memos on my phone. Then, sometimes I’ll have ideas that marry up.

I had the lyric “Kansas City three times down/ Colorado once, twice, 12 times now,” which was completely true in the moment. I was out on a tour with Béla Fleck, and I was sitting in the back of the tour bus somewhere out in Colorado, when I realized that between my own tour dates I had been doing that year, as well as a slew of dates with Cory Wong and then stuff with Béla, that this was my 12th or 13th time to Colorado. I thought, “Wow, now that’s doing some traveling.” Then I realized that the night before I had been in Kansas City, where I’d previously played at a festival with my band, I’d done a show with Cory Wong and I’d been with Béla. So the lyric, “Kansas City three times down/ Colorado once, twice, 12 times now,” was written in the moment of that actually happening in my life.

Sometimes you start writing and you don’t know where things are heading, but this was about the idea of being on tour so much. The second verse, “Middle of nowhere staring at a wall/ Under the big sky feeling so small” was sort of a nod to Big Sky, Mont., and thinking about the beautiful places that we had just been. But then sometimes you’re in the middle of nowhere in some place, stuck in a dressing room somewhere, and it’s cold outside or it’s raining, so you can’t really go out and enjoy walking around. Sometimes you’re literally bored, staring at a wall.

So it’s this funny juxtaposition, but I think that’s the beauty of touring. You wind up having these moments where you can feel all the wonder of these beautiful places and you learn to appreciate them because it’s not always like that. Sometimes you’re going to just have this crazy travel, and you’re going to feel worn out, and you have to muster up the energy to get out of bed and hit the road.

As I wrote the melody, I was thinking about every single person in my band and imagining what they could do. For some reason, I also heard Aoife’s voice on this with me from the get-go. That rarely happens, and as fate would have it, around this same time, she hit me up because she wanted me to play on something of hers. I said, “Girl, you won’t believe this, but I’ve been writing this song, and I hear you on it. I’m going to eventually record it, and I would love to have you on it.” So we basically did a little friends trade. I played on something for her record, and she sang on something for my record.

Truth Be Told

I started writing this opening lyric, “Said goodbye to the old year, hello to the new/ Something told me nothing’s gonna change” in early January, a couple of years back. Sometimes we celebrate the new year, and it can be such a joyful time, but it’s easy to forget how many people are struggling. The beginning of a new year doesn’t always signify a new start for everyone. There are plenty of people struggling to get going every day and dealing with real world problems.

That was where the sentiment at the start of the song came from. Then I shared it with Eric Gibson from the Gibson Brothers. Eric and his brother Lee have been dear friends of ours for a long time. They’re great songwriters and I had never had the chance to write with Eric. So we decided to get together and we ended up writing on Zoom because he was in upstate New York. I said, “I’ve got this one idea here that I’ve kind of started,” and he liked it, so we just kind of rolled with it.

The song form of this one feels really unique lyrically to me in the rhyme scheme. It’s fun to perform and it’s one of the more bluegrass acoustic-sounding tracks on the record in a way that leans into a lot of the music that I grew up loving.

E Tune

This is probably the oldest piece of music on this entire project. It dates back to when I made the Weighted Mind record. I wrote this one, then I shared it with Ethan Jodziewicz, who played bass on Weighted Mind. The song’s in the key of E and I often refer to Ethan as E.

I enjoyed playing it with him as a duo, but it was one of those things where we didn’t end up using it for Weighted Mind. But even though I didn’t feel like it f it on that album, I continued performing it live from time to time. I even tried to record it for my 25 Trips album, but I felt like the arrangement wasn’t happening or something.

Then when I put together this band that began touring with me on the heels of the pandemic, it started to really click. It was exciting to play it live, so we decided to record it. It finally felt right, especially with this collection of songs.

Being able to have Béla guest on it was the final thing that made me feel, “OK, this is what we’ve been missing.” It was a fan favorite, but adding Béla to it f inally solidified its place in the recorded format instead of it just being a fun live thing.

Redbird

I feel like songs can take on different meanings as you live with them. There are older songs of mine that meant something to me at a certain time, and then things in your life change and you relate to them in a different way or see them through a different lens.

With this song, when we first started writing it, I’m not sure any of us knew what we were trying to say. This ended up being a co-write between myself, Andrew Petroff and Heather Morgan, a great songwriter from here in Nashville. With this song there’s the idea of longing for something else, wanting to be pulled out of the place that you’re in right now.

I really love singing this song. When I wrote “Spitfire” about my granny, she was still alive. She passed away a couple of years ago, and now when I sing “Redbird,” I think of her because redbirds were her favorite. That brings a different emotional feeling to me in that light.

Haven Hill

“Haven Hill” is one of my favorite songs sonically on the record. Sometimes you go into the studio, you record something and everything falls into place. It’s kind of like you get a magical take of a song. I don’t mean that arrogantly about something that I was a part of, but I feel like everyone plays so beautifully on this track.

Part of why I called the record A Tip Toe High Wire is as a bit of a nod to the song “Spitfire,” but there’s also this idea of being independent for the first time, which is a little scary. I’m trying to push my own boundaries as an instrumentalist and as a songwriter and lean into some progressive things. But I’m also a lover of beautiful songs and the sentiment behind those songs. So, to me, this song is a reminder to try to live in the moment and not stress out about stuff as much as we all do, including myself, sometimes.

I think that in this position of being in my early 30s, I’m doing a better job of not worrying so much about what’s in front of me. I’m trying to live in the moment and be present, knowing that nothing lasts forever. I think this song’s a reminder to folks that there will be a lot of ups and downs, but we have to do our best. So try to savor that moment and these beautiful times that we have.