Sierra Hull is having an eventful freshman year in college.

She entered the Berklee College of Music last fall with the promise and pressure that comes with Berklee’s prestigious Presidential Scholarship, and found herself juggling the arduous first year class load with a busy touring schedule. She was gone for 25 days in October/November on the American Revival Tour and a week at the IBMA World Of Bluegrass, but managed to keep up with her studies.

This next week Sierra will see the release of her AcuTab mandolin instruction DVD, Secrets Songs & Tunes, on Tuesday (3/16) while she begins tracking for her next Rounder CD in Nashville.

Barry Bales will be producing for this project, and tells us that he is excited to get to work next week.

“We are tracking at Brent Truitt’s studio with a great line-up of musicians. Stuart Duncan, Bryan Sutton, Randy Kohrs, and Ron Stewart, as well as all the members of her band – Clay Hess, Cory Walker, Jacob Eller and Christian Ward – on various tracks. It was a wonderful surprise to get a bunch of great original material from her. Probably 9 or 10 will be from Sierra herself. I think she has all the potential in the world to do whatever she wants to in this business, so I’m just thrilled to be involved.

There’s no definite time set for finishing up, but hopefully we can wrap up everything by the end of April.”

Rounder won’t even think about discussing a potential release date until the album is completed. 2010 is shaping up as a big one for Ms. Hull.

Bales will have a bass DVD from AcuTab in the near future as well.

UPDATE 3/14: Sierra also shared a few words about the new project…

“I’m SO happy to be working on a new album! So much has changed for me since the release of Secrets, and I certainly feel I am going in to the studio very fresh and eager.

It’s been a long, but short process of nailing down songs, deciding where to record, who to guest on the record, etc. It’s a bit of a challenge because I had so many of my favorite players on the last record. I’m thrilled to have some new people coming in to play and sing on the new record, as well as getting the chance to work with the guys in my band. It’s been tough to get everything all planned out with being so far away and in college – thank goodness mid-terms are now over!

Working with Barry has been great, and I’m really honored to have him help me with this project, as he is by far one of my favorite musicians. It’s always a different experience to work with someone new, and so far it’s been great!

I can’t wait to get in the studio Monday and get started!”

Casey Henry has agreed to send us occasional updates from The American Revival Tour, where she is performing with Dixie Bee-Liners. Also on the tour are Sierra Hull & Highway 111 and headliners Uncle Earl.

Here is Casey’s report.

Do you remember the song that Madeline Kahn sings in Blazing Saddles: I’m Tired? It has the bit about “coming and going and going and coming and,” well, I’ll stop right there. But if I had to pick a theme song for the last few days of this tour, that would be it. It seems like FOREVER since I wrote my last post about the tour, but it was only a week and a half ago!

Since then we’ve been to Baton Rouge, Houston, Fayetteville, AR, Springfield, MO, Bowling Green, KY, and Knoxville, TN. We’ve had two computer crashes (Sierra Hull’s and KC Groves), one lost wallet (Sierra’s), one minor van repair (when Cory Walker’s computer blew one of their van’s fuses), and one case of laryngitis (Kristin Andressean), but no major disasters.

There have been some great moments as well, like when Uncle Earl pulled together and rearranged all their songs when Kristin couldn’t sing (the show must go on…). Uncle Earl also wrote and recorded a theme song for the daily tour blog (which is over on the Murphy Method Blog). They even sang it on stage one night!

At a coffeeshop called Coffee and Chocolate in downtown Knoxville we discovered that they had Kopi Luwak, a kind of coffee beans harvested from the forest floor in Sumatra after having been eaten and excreted by cat-like creatures called Luwaks. They roast the beans just like regular coffee, but they are highly prized for their unique flavor. We’ve been talking about this kind of coffee for years and we could not pass up the opportunity to try it. A two ounce package cost us $60 and we split it eight ways. The coffee (which they brewed in a french press) was very good. It had a very earthy flavor. But… It was so not worth paying $480 a pound.

Oftentimes on tour the best moments occur serendipitously. In Bowling Green Jeremy Darrow and I were walking around near the theater and we ran across a micro-distillery called Corsair. Their door was open, so we went in, met one of the owners, and he gave us an impromptu tasting and a little history of their business. A great find.

In Knoxville I ran across Morelock Music, which which was right around the corner from The Square Room, where we played. Matt Morelock has put together a charming store that combines instruments, LPs, consignment vintage clothing, and music lessons. This huge banjo, which reached from floor to ceiling, made me feel right at home.

In Arkansas we drove right by Janet Davis Music. Unfortunately it was on a Sunday, and they were closed, but one of the guys who worked there had come to the show the night before and offered to let us in if we wanted to stop by anyway. We didn’t have time, but I’ve always wanted to see her store.

Adam Steffey and his wife Tina came to the show in Knoxville. I’m glad I didn’t know that until after our set or else I would have been more nervous.

We have three more shows to go on our tour. When it’s over it will be one of those sad/glad moments: sad for such a great time to come to an end, but very glad to be going home!

Casey Henry has agreed to send us occasional updates from The American Revival Tour, where she is performing with Dixie Bee-Liners. Also on the tour are Sierra Hull & Highway 111 and headliners Uncle Earl.

The second week of the American Revival Tour (The Dixie Bee-Liners, Sierra Hull and Highway 111, and Uncle Earl) started in the cute, cute little town of Newberry, SC. Since we had driven down from Virginia on Tuesday, we had all Wednesday morning before the show to do whatever we wanted. Hiking was what we Bee-Liners wanted to do, so we Googled a hiking spot and took off for Lynch’s Woods at the crack of dawn. (It’s funny how nine o’clock can feel like the crack of dawn…) After a refreshing couple of hours stomping through the woods in the crisp fall air we all felt refreshed and renewed.

The hotel in Newberry is directly across the street from the Opera House, and I cannot express how awesome it is to be able to walk from one to the other. We carried our instruments across the street, soundchecked, then came back to our rooms to change, so we didn’t have to haul all our suitcases into the dressing rooms. The Opera House is really old, has been beautifully renovated, and is the only theater I’ve ever seen that has individual chairs for the side seating. Someone commented, “It looks like a president could be shot here,” somewhat morbidly referring to its resemblance to Ford’s Theater. The crowd was disappointingly small, but it was a Wednesday night, after all.

I’m getting the feeling that this tour is a well-kept secret. Those who know about it and come just love it, but not that many people know! I talked to a local banjo-player friend of mine after we played the Orange Peel in Asheville and she said she only heard about the show two or three days before, when it’s been booked for months!

While on tour there are always unexpected things that need to be taken care of, errands that need to be run, fires that need to be put out (metaphorically speaking!). Sierra experienced a computer crash leaving her out of touch for a few days, and seriously hampering her doing her school work while on the road. She and her manager Claire Armbruster took off early one morning so that they could stop by a Mac store before load-in time. Her computer required a new hard drive, which the warranty covered, but it’s back up and running. (more…)

Casey Henry has agreed to send us occasional updates from The American Revival Tour, where she is performing with Dixie Bee-Liners. Also on the tour are Sierra Hull & Highway 111 and headliners Uncle Earl.

Here is Casey’s report.

The arrival of November saw The Dixie Bee-Liners, Uncle Earl, and Sierra Hull and Highway 111 burning up the roads of the southeast in the first week of our much anticipated tour – American Revival: Celebrating the New Stars of American Roots Music.

When three bands of young-ish people get to travel together for four weeks, hi jinx will ensue. We have a long-running tour game involving sausage, but I’ll leave that for another time. Our most fun show, by far, was Halloween at the American Theater in Hampton, VA. Buddy Woodward, Bee-Liner mandolin player, is great at zombie makeup and we took full advantage of his talents. He also helped out Sierra’s band, giving fiddler Christian Ward a slash across the face, bassist Jacob Eller a bullet hole in the head, and transforming guitarist Clay Hess into a very convincing wolf-man. Ron Block went as Ron Howard—no makeup needed! Uncle Earl was four bad witches and one good witch.

Punch Brothers Chris “Critter” Eldridge and Noam Pikelny came for the night’s show. Critter dressed as a Christmas party guest, complete with battery-powered lights. Noam borrowed a spare witch hat and grey wig from Uncle Earl. They joined the Earl girls on stage to sing Happy Birthday to their fiddler, Stephanie “Pumpkin” Coleman, who turned 24.

Our post-show Halloween celebration took place at a little martini bar down the street—Six—where we had tapas and cocktails and played with the motorized witch hat KC Groves had found at the grocery store. It played Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead, and wagged its bell-adorned, pointed tip merrily back and forth.

Monday night we played at the Birchmere in Alexandria, a legendary bluegrass venue. For most of the Bee-Liners it was the first time we’d played there and we were honored to get to take the stage where the Seldom Scene ruled for so long. I actually had my fifteenth birthday party at the Birchmere. My parents took me and a group of my friends to see the Johnson Mountain Boys play. My friend Nancy Peterson, who came to the show last night, was at that party. She said it was like coming full circle, getting to see me play on that same stage.

Today is a travel day—more than 500 miles down to South Carolina. The Bee-Liners are stopping by WAMU this morning to play a little in-studio music and then hitting the road.

For more pictures and anecdotes, see Sierra Hull’s blog. I feel this must be the most-blogged-about bluegrass tour ever!