Bluegrass and bass, a perfect combination for Missy Raines

By Ross Boissoneau

Music video at bottom for your listening pleasure.

The promotional material for her latest recording suggests Missy Raines has been exploring other sonic territory at the expense of the music she grew up with and has played all her life: “On her newest release Highlander, the bassist/vocalist/songwriter returns to her bluegrass roots.”

Raines is having none of it. Despite dipping her toes into jazz, funk and country/pop, she’s of the opinion that it’s all been part of her whole. Asked when she left bluegrass, she laughs and says, “Never. In my mind I never left bluegrass. I don’t even know how to do that.”

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Missy Raines

And why would – how could – she do that? Raines was the first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Bass Player of the Year, and has now won it ten times. In 2018, “Swept Away” from her album Royal Traveller was named IBMA “Recorded Event of the Year.” The song features the First Ladies of Bluegrass, so named for being the first women to win the IBMA Player of the Year award for their instrument: Raines, Alison Brown (banjo), Becky Buller (fiddle), Sierra Hull (mandolin), and Molly Tuttle (guitar).

She’s deeply rooted in the tradition, having grown up in West Virginia and soaked up the Southern Appalachian and Mid-Atlantic bluegrass of the time, as well as the sounds of The Country Gentlemen, The Seldom Scene, The Johnson Mountain Boys, and other groups propelling bluegrass in the 70s. In the early years of her career, she spent hours learning from and playing with many first-generation bluegrass legends and traveled extensively throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

She does admit that she’s included sounds and instrumentation outside what some might consider the bluegrass tradition. “I created music that would not fit in the box of traditional bluegrass, but it was always very rooted in bluegrass. I was doing new things but was not leaving bluegrass,” she insists. To Raines, all her music fits under what she calls the big tent of bluegrass.

Raines was encouraged to pursue music by her parents. They initially bought an acoustic bass for themselves before their daughter, already interested in piano and guitar, found her calling on the instrument that was bigger than she was.

“My first instrument was piano. That was the instrument in the house and I needed to express myself musically,” Raines recounts. “My parents were into bluegrass, and I wanted to play guitar and sing. I’d hang out with neighbors and friends and play.

Not many people had a big upright bass. My dad decided he’d enjoy it and bought it and brought it home for himself. I was ten or 11 and curious. I played it and fell in love with it.”

Sorry Dad. Raines started playing bass and never looked back. “I stuck with it. The way notes seem to fall, it had so much power and drive. The allure is there, but it takes years to create that power and drive. I’m still working on that.”

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Missy Raines

She’s now been working on it some five decades, and has played with a who’s who of bluegrass stars, from first generation pioneers to the aforementioned First Ladies of Bluegrass. Her latest recording, Highlander, was released on Compass Records, the label run by Brown and her husband, bassist Garry West. Brown also produced the album.

It includes Raines’s touring band, Allegheny, as well as a coterie of guests. Kathy Matteau sings with Raines on “Who Needs a Mine?,” written about how so many in her home state have dealt with the scourge of opioid addiction, with lyrics like “Who needs a mine to kill us dead when a little pill works fine instead?”

Other guests include vocalist and guitarist Dudley Connell of the Johnson Mountain Boys, with whom Raines often jammed, citing their sound as one the major influences on that of Allegheny. Danny Paisley duets on “These Ole Blues” which Raines discovered on a recent Loretta Lynn album. And producer Brown plays on one track. “She’s only on one song, but her touch is all over. She’s so thoughtful. Creative and full of human empathy,” says Raines. “That comes out in her playing and producing. I love her and I love working with her.”

Today Raines plays the same bass her dad bought all those years ago. It’s a late 30s Kay bass made in Kalamazoo. “It’s from the late 30s, 1937. It’s one of the earliest made of plywood. I’ve played a lot of classical big carved solid basses. My go-to is plywood. It’s got a different sound and reactability.”

She plays D’Addario Zyex strings. “It’s been about 30, 35 years now. The strings simulate gut, give you the best of gut and steel,” Raines says. “They sound so different, and this marries both.


Ross Boissoneau is a regular contributor to Something Else! Reviews, Northern Express and Local Spins. He’s written for the All Music Guide, Jazziz and Progression Magazines, and is a member of the Downbeat Critics Poll.

Ross Boissoneau

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