The June 2026 Cover Story: Rebekah Speer

Don’t tell Rebekah Speer she can’t do something. She will, no doubt, prove you wrong. In the eight years that I have known her, I haven’t seen much that Rebekah can’t do, and what she does, she pours her heart and soul into.

Early Years

Maybe it was growing up on a family farm in Lincolnton, Georgia, where she did hands-on work like tending to cattle, logging, carpentry, brick masonry, and even septic services, that Rebekah became a real jane-of-all-trades. 

Childhood was difficult for Rebekah, whose parents divorced when she was five. “Dad got remarried when I was seven, and mother remarried at some point.” She stayed with her dad before going to live with her birth mother when she turned 14. That lasted a year before Rebekah returned to live with her dad. 

In November 2000, Rebekah, her twin sister, Lizzy, and their little brother, Drum, were put into foster care. Lizzy was placed with Little Roy and Bonnie Lewis, while Rebekah and Drum were placed with their youth pastors, Robert and Holly Newberry. Drum eventually moved back with their dad after three months, and Lizzy and Rebekah chose to stay in foster care.

Rebekah stayed with the Newberrys for about nine months. They worked overseas building embassies and other government buildings. They had to be able to leave at a moment’s notice, and soon the Newberrys were packing for their new assignment. They had to leave the country, and Rebekah was left without a place to stay. She could either find a place, or the system would place her outside the county with strangers. “I was fortunate that Randy and Jeanie Smith invited me into their home. Randy was my English/drama teacher, and Jeanie was the media specialist at our school. I lived with them through my freshman year of college, and I’m so grateful for them. I know I was a handful at times with all the issues I toted and struggled with. One of the issues was that I never understood why Little Roy and Bonnie didn’t take both my sister and me. I never voiced that at the time, and I never realized how much it bothered me until it surfaced years later. It took me a long time to get over that feeling of not being good enough – way into my twenties.” 

Having Randy and Jeanie in her life was a godsend for Rebekah. “I needed a mama really bad,” she sighs. “I like to think maybe she needed a daughter, too.” The two remain close to this day.

Rebekah has other siblings as well – ten in all, including her foster brother, and an older sister her birth mother revealed a few years ago. 

The Importance of Music

Rebekah grew up around old-time, bluegrass, and country music. “My dad’s family was very musically inclined. My grandfather, his brother, and various cousins were local musicians. My Aunt Paulette was a great pianist and was well-known throughout the surrounding counties.” 

Rebekah recalls when Little Roy came to a pickin’ party during Thanksgiving when she and Lizzy were young. “They lived down the road from us. Hearing that music really set a fire in us, especially Lizzy. She was the star of the show.” 

Influenced by popular music, Rebekah says she listened to a lot of Fleetwood Mac and Bette Midler. “I absolutely fell in love with the Divine Miss M. I loved her antics, her wit, and her powerhouse vocals. And I could really lose myself and escape in her torchy ballads.” Rebekah says she is also a big Motown fan. But she always steers back to bluegrass and old-time. “Lizzy always had The Lewis Family and Flatt & Scruggs blaring in her room next door to mine, so I couldn’t help but know the songs.”

When she wasn’t listening to music while growing up, Rebekah loved barrel racing. “I had a little Arabian and quarter horse mix – a red mare named Betty. She was a hussy, and once I got on her, we would tear the ground up. But she also tore me up.” Rebekah suffered a head-butt to the mouth, a (twice) broken arm, toes, and fingers – all thanks to horses.

When it was time to go to college, Rebekah attended Georgia Southern University for two years, where she majored in music education. “I had a focus on percussion, but my dreams of being a drummer were ruined with a broken arm.” She persevered, playing through the pain. Realizing that was not sustainable, Rebekah knew she needed a change. 

She looked at Glenville State College in West Virginia, where her sister Lizzy had earned a bluegrass certificate. “I visited her there and met Buddy Griffin. Sadly, we lost Buddy to cancer a little over a year ago. He was a major influence on my bluegrass life. I liked the idea of a smaller college, so I transferred and got a degree in Music Ed, with an emphasis in percussion (I did it!), and I earned the world’s first Bachelor’s in Music-Bluegrass.” 

To make money, Rebekah formed a band called Mountain Fury. She played bass, and Lizzy joined her on banjo and fiddle. Rounding out the band were Eileen Marsh-Metheney on guitar and Rachel Singleton-Burge on mandolin. “We started playing in a little club called Bear Fork. We also played in a lot of churches and festivals around the state.”

Love That Stood the Test of Time

Rebekah met the love of her life when she least expected it. Jeff and Sheri Easter asked her to sell merchandise for them on a Gaither Homecoming Cruise in 2003. We did a couple of land dates before leaving on the cruise. I was learning the ropes from the other merch girl, and I couldn’t see who was playing. But I heard Gaither start the show with “Old Friends.” Ben came in on the second verse, and I immediately asked her if she knew who was singing. She told me it was Ben Speer. I just remember how I felt hearing his voice echoing through the arena. A couple of days later, Ben sat down next to me at the merch table and asked who I was. I shot back, asking who he was. He got a big laugh out of that and loved to tell people it was a blow to his ego. That started our friendship. A year later, we started ‘courting’ as we would call it.” 

Twelve years later, Rebekah and Ben tied the knot. “He asked me several times over the years to marry him. “It was the fall of 2014, and I was taking the trash out, and he came out on the back deck and asked me to marry him. I don’t know. Seemed like a good time to say yes.” She still hemmed and hawed for a couple of weeks until Ben took her to Tiffany’s to get a ring. “I led him out of there and into Kay Jewelers. I told him, ‘Darling, I will always know you took me to Tiffany’s, but we both know I have Kay’s hands!’”

Ben’s Alzheimer’s kicked up in late 2015. “What a terrible disease,” Rebekah says. He passed away in April 2017. “I’m still trying to get over losing Ben.” 

Making a Life in Nashville 

Rebekah moved to Nashville in 2004 and landed her first professional side musician role with Lizzy and Little Roy Lewis in 2005. She interned at The Sound Shop under GRAMMY-winning engineer Mark Capps while continuing to perform with Lizzy and Lewis. “Mark was a big influence on me and how I do things in the studio. I set up many of his sessions and worked with him for many years, off and on. Another one gone too soon; I miss him dearly.”

In 2010, she joined Valerie Smith and Liberty Pike for a year. Rebekah decided to come off the road sometime in 2011. Depression and anxiety sent her into a month-long episode of what she referred to as ‘bed rot.’ 

“Lizzy called and told me Tom T. and Dixie Hall needed someone to do graphic design work, which grew into doing in-house recording and engineering for the Halls.” She and Dixie worked together to release the final box set of The Daughters of Bluegrass, a project that included 120 female bluegrass artists and 70 songs from Hall. “Tom T. and Dixie were family.”

Rebekah accepted a job at Catch This Music Studios on Music Row, and she also worked as a house engineer for The Tracking Room. “I was setting up for 80+ piece orchestras and working with Top 40 artists. I learned a great deal, but I didn’t sleep a lot back then.” 

Graphic Design and Sound Engineering

Rebekah began doing graphic design for the Halls, but it was Ben who had a big hand in teaching her about the printing process. “It was a necessity during the Mountain Fury days. Ben told me how much a graphic designer would cost, and I melted. Then he showed me how much a graphic design program would cost. I wasn’t daunted. Thanks to a program called LimeWire, I managed to get my hands on a copy of Photoshop and learned to do my own graphics. Don’t come for me Adobe – I’m a bonified full on subscriber now!”

She still does graphic design work, including album covers and posters. You are looking at her work now – Rebekah is a two-time IBMA Designer of the Year nominee for her work as graphic designer of The Bluegrass Standard and for many of your favorite bluegrass album and single covers. 

Rebekah’s first live sound gig was for James King at Nashville’s Station Inn in 2011 or 2012. “I was paid with a XXXL bright yellow hoodie of James riding on a tractor.” She is still running sound there. “Josh Ulbricht called me in 2020 during Covid, and I started running sound for an empty room. That gave me an opportunity to learn that room, and the grace to mess up, and no one would know. It’s a very intricate room to mix, so learning how to do it without the bodies in there really put a feather in my cap.” 

One of the shows she ran at Station Inn was one Deanie Richardson was playing fiddle for. “We had worked together on the Daughters’ project and hadn’t seen each other in a while. I reckon I impressed her enough during that show that when I arrived at IBMA in 2022, she asked me to run sound for the Sister Sadie shows. They asked me to join them officially in February 2023.” 

Recording Studio

Rebekah will soon be bringing her recording skills in-house with a new five-isolation booth recording studio. “I designed and built it myself.” She converted the garage of the home in Lebanon, Tennessee, into a studio, which she calls The Queendom Sound. “I’m putting in state-of-the-art equipment. I’m looking forward to getting it up and going along with my guard dog, Birdie.” 

Solo Artist

Rebekah’s single, Needle in the Heart of West Virginia, was released in September 2025 on the Huckleberry Records label, earning tremendous airplay and strong reviews, including becoming one of the top-played songs on SiriusXM’s Bluegrass Junction. 

“Donna Ulisse was having one of her Little House songwriting camps back in 2018 or 2019, and I got off work (doing carpentry) and popped in to listen to the songs. It was a song she wrote with her students, Mark Bondurant and Terry Jacobs, and her husband, Rick Stanley. I knew immediately that I wanted to cut it. She wouldn’t let me have it for a few years.”

The song is about the opioid epidemic in West Virginia. “I have ties there, and a lot of drug abuse in my immediate family,” Rebekah says. “It was easy for me to connect with the song.”

In March 2026, she followed with the release of her latest single, Why Worry, further showcasing her expressive vocal style and growing artistry as a performer.

With a focus on recording more and developing a catalog of music, Rebekah’s plans for the future are many and varied. “I am getting back into writing as well,” she says. “There’s no telling what I’ll do next.”

https://www.rebekahspeer.com/