‘I couldn’t even find enough women to form a band’: Della Mae’s battle for a bluegrass breakthrough

When fiddle player Kimber Ludiker visited Colorado last month, she had just spent 10 days in bed with Covid. “The altitude was really hard on my poor recovering lungs,” says Ludiker, one of the founding members of bluegrass band Della Mae. But the trip was too special to miss: she and Avril Smith, her bandmate and partner, were taking Smith’s 11-year-old daughter to see the Chicks. “And honestly,” says Ludiker, “there would be no Della Mae without the Chicks.”

In the same way that the Dallas trio broke new ground to dominate country music, Della Mae have become the most influential all-women band in bluegrass. And as a majority queer, fiercely feminist five-piece acoustic outfit, they also sing fearlessly on topics that might rile the genre’s traditionally conservative audiences. Recent albums