Love & Trouble

Missy Raines grew up in West Virginia and spent much of the 60’s and 70’s, along with her family, going to music festivals in the Baltimore, Washington, D.C. area. She got her first bass at the age of 10, and it soon became her only and best instrument. Over the years, she cut her musical teeth while playing bass with such bluegrass luminaries as Eddie Adcock, Alison Brown, Kenny Baker, Bobby Osborne, Laurie Lewis, Claire Lynch, and others. 

In 1998, she became the winner of IBMA’s Bass Player of the Year, which she won nine more times over the following years. In 2009, she put together a band called The New Hip, and subsequently in 2024 formed her current group, Allegheny. For this new project, Allegheny consists of Raines (bass, vocals), Ben Garnett (guitar, vocals), Eli Gilbert (banjo), Ellie Hakanson (fiddle, vocals), and Tristan Scroggins (mandolin, guitar, vocals), and she includes guests Kathy Kallick (vocals), Laurie Lewis (vocals), and Deanie Richarson (fiddle). 

Raines sings lead vocals, while other band members share the leads and harmonies. Raines wrote or co-wrote three of the songs here, while others come from sources like Roy McMillan, Nathan Bell, Kathy Kallick, Jerry Crutchfield, and Hazel Dickens. Selections include Raine’s “Yanceyville Jail,” “Stop 88,” and “Eula Dorsey,” co-written with Tony Rackley. Others are McMillan’s “Cold Wind,” Bell’s “Coal Black Water,” Crutchfield’s “Future On Ice” (with Richardson on fiddle), and Dicken’s “Scraps From Your Table,” and guests Kallick and Lewis join Raines on lead and harmony vocals on Kallick’s “Anywhere The Wind Blows.” Overall, this is a great new project from Missy Raines and Allegheny.