Missy Raines & Allegheny: America's Leading Traditional Bluegrass

Missy's unparalleled bass playing and the band's harmonious blend of tradition, bring a fresh and invigorating sound to the bluegrass scene.

With her latest album, Highlander, bluegrass/Americana icon Missy Raines takes inventory of where she stands at this current juncture in her storied career — this melodic ode to her native West Virginia, which simultaneously serves as an ideal prism of time and space Raines peers through into the unknowns of tomorrow. “Making this record and having this band has been sort of a homecoming,” the legendary bassist/vocalist says. “I’m at a point in my life where I’ve been able to look back at what I’ve gone through, what I’ve done, and the path I ultimately wanted to take.” Throughout her storied career, Raines has garnered some of the biggest accolades in the music industry, including 14 International Bluegrass Music Association honors, with 10 being awarded for “Bass Player of the Year.” Raines’ 2018 release Royal Traveller was also nominated for a Grammy Award for “Best Bluegrass Album” in 2020.

Highlander brings together some of the finest musicians in Nashville and beyond, including country star and fellow West Virginian Kathy Mattea; fiddle virtuosos Michael Cleveland, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Darol Anger and Shad Cobb; renowned bluegrass vocalists Danny Paisley, Dudley Connell and Laurie Lewis; with dobro wizard Rob Ickes and banjo great Alison Brown also making guest appearances. “I’m embracing bluegrass again, and it’s all been incredibly good for me,” Raines says. “In every sense of the way, I almost can just go back [in my mind] and rely on those intrinsic things I learned as a15-year-old in a field at a bluegrass festival — tapping into how I felt back then, and how I still feel today about this music.”

With modern-day bluegrass currently experiencing another high-water mark as names like Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle and Sierra Hull proudly carry the torch of tradition and evolution, Raines finds solidarity in the ongoing growth and progress of the “high, lonesome sound” — this fine line between respect and rebellion that Raines has seamlessly balanced since the beginning. “I watched that first generation of [bluegrass] people doing all that — creating traditional music, then breaking away from it to do their own thing,” Raines says. “And all of it is still surviving and flourishing. To me, there’s nothing more bluegrass than the act of absolute innovation — and that’s what we’re doing, because that’s what Monroe did from the start.”