Valerie Smith and Becky Buller

By Chris Stuart

If you were in the audience for Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike’s showcase at October 2008’s World Of Bluegrass conference in Nashville, you might have noticed Valerie performing with even more energy than usual in her always high-powered stage show. Valerie and the band were up for the set and it sparked a standing ovation from an audience that often dares performers to entertain them. But, what gave Valerie a little extra hop in her step that night was something that happened earlier at the conference. She had walked into a vocal health screening clinic run by Dr. Thomas Cleveland of the Vanderbilt Voice Center and had a picture taken of her throat. What the doctor told her made her nightmares of the past several years finally disappear.

Fade back to February 2007 in Tacoma, Wash., at the Wintergrass festival: Valerie and the band put on another great show, a gospel set that was rated by some as the best they had seen at the festival in any year. But Valerie’s mood off-stage was more somber. She was due to go in for a second surgery to remove a growth in her throat. It was not cancerous—and she was thankful for that—but, it was possible that afterward she would never sing again. Valerie was used to hurdles, but this was a ten-foot-high stone wall.

For many years, Valerie struggled with pain in her throat. A misdiagnosis of asthma obscured the real problem. “For years, I was embarrassed to do an interview, because I felt like I sounded horrible just talking,” Valerie says. “People described my voice as having that ‘husky’ sound. That’s really not what I wanted to bring across. Even doing radio liners was a terrifying thing for me because I didn’t like the way my voice sounded. It sounded strained and damaged. Sometimes my voice would get so tired that it was hard to talk on stage.”

On a European tour in 2005, Valerie reached the point where she could barely sing. She recalls, “I got extremely sick in Germany. And Becky [Buller] had to rise to the occasion and front the band. I had to fake it and just sing a couple of songs a set.” Upon returning, she finally got a correct diagnosis from Dr. Cleveland at Vanderbilt of cysts as her throat problem and, in May 2006, she went in for surgery. The doctors found, however, a growth at the base of her vocal cords that would require a second surgery scheduled for late February 2007. Complications also arose from treating inflammations and infections with a mixture of steroids. It seemed at the time that she would never escape the endless cycle of problems.

After Wintergrass, the second surgery was successful, but, again, not without complications. She lost muscle memory in her esophagus and would have to learn to sing again with essentially a completely new throat. Faced with a lot of hard work and uncertainty in front of her, she did what few people would have done. She started a new recording project—a duet album with Liberty Pike fiddler and songwriter Becky Buller, “Here’s A Little Song,” released in September 2008. “Between Dr. Cleveland, Garth Whitcomb (a voice specialist), and lots of hard work and sticking-to-it, I finally got my muscle memory back and the throat loosened up. So, the duet album was my way of getting back on my feet. I had to do that album to continue to get better. It was like learning to play a new instrument. That tumor was no longer there, but I had sung around it for so long that it was a new voice.”

A decision to proceed with a big recording project after a possibly career-ending surgery tells you a lot about Valerie. But, looking back at her career, it’s not surprising. Faced with an obstacle, Valerie doesn’t wait for someone to take care of things for her.  She gets to work.

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