Basic Folk: Eleanor Buckland of Lula Wiles

Originally from a rural Farmington, Maine, Eleanor Buckland of Lula Wiles grew up playing fiddle in her family’s jams. This week on Basic Folk, Buckland talks being a fourth generation musician, her rock guitar father, and the basements tapes she has from her grandma, legendary bluegrass player, Bettie Buckland.

As a kid, Buckland’s violin took her to fiddle camp where she cultivated her love of folk music and met the future members of her band Lula Wiles. That same violin landed Buckland at Berklee College Of Music where she studied Violin Performance before she decided to pursue songwriting. Since then, Buckland’s band Lula Wiles has been growing with great speed after then their first album in, Lula Wiles in 2016. Buckland remembers with gratitude how much support Matt Smith of Boston’s Club Passim gave the band starting out. In our conversation, she says Smith would find the new band opening spots almost every month. She believes it was because of Smith’s investment that the group has grown so fast. They just released their latest album What Will We Do Now out on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

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