Award-winning bluegrass musician scheduled for Yachats performance cancels West Coast tour

 

UPDATE, TUESDAY, MARCH 10

The Missy Raines Quartet on Tuesday, March 10 cancelled its visit to Yachats and its West Coast tour after venues in Portland and Seattle decided to cancel performances to help curb the potential spread of the coronavirus.

The quartet was scheduled to play at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 18 in the Yachats Commons.

The performance was being handled located by Polly Plumb Productions, which received word Tuesday morning.

“We’re disappointed, but hopefully we’ll do it again,” board member Robert Rubin said Tuesday.

Rubin said he was told that the Portland and Seattle concerts were the cornerstone of Raines’ tour, so when those venues cancelled, promotors decided to cancel her entire West Coast trip.

The group had sold about 50 tickets to the show; it was hoping to sell 100-125, he said.

The online ticket vendor for the concert, Brown Paper Tickets, will email ticket purchasers and offer a full refund, Rubin said.

As of Tuesday in Oregon, there were 14 confirmed coronavirus cases statewide and none in Lincoln County. The state is monitoring 226 people for symptoms.

 

Below is a feture story that YachatsNews.com had already published to publicize the concert.

By KATHERINE LJUNGQVIST/YachatsNews.com

Miss Raines is a bluegrass road warrior, traveling much of the year to places big (Nashville) and small (Yachats) performing with her own quartet (Yachats) or big-time musicians (Nashville).

On Wednesday, March 18, Raines and her bluegrass quartet will be in Yachats to celebrate the tradition and evolution of bluegrass music.

Celebrated for her contributions to the bluegrass genre, Raines was the first woman to receive the coveted International Bluegrass Music Association’s Bass Player of the Year award in 1998. Since then, she has gone on to receive the award eight times – more than any other musician in the industry.

Throughout her career, Raines has worked with renowned bluegrass musicians including Stuart Duncan and Tim O’Brien. Now, she is being praised for her accomplishments as a songwriter for her third studio album, “Royal Traveller”; an album that chronicles her musical journey and digs deep into her roots for inspiration.

A West Virginia native, Raines was born into a family that had a lot of love for music. From an early age, she recalls family outings to concerts and a shared love of bluegrass.

“I got interested in music through that experience,” she says, “I started with piano and switched to guitar when I got the bluegrass bug.”

Not long after she began playing music, her father made the impulsive decision to bring home a bass.

“That’s all there was to it. It was in the house, I was a little kid, and I was already playing instruments, so I just started playing it. My dad eventually gave it to me.”

You can hear the smile in her voice as she recalls the memory, “I still have that bass.”

Missy Raines and her quartet will be in concert at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 18 at the Yachats Commons. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Tickets are available through the Polly Plumb Productions website and at Brown Paper tickets.

 

YachatsNews talked with Raines about her work and life.

Question: Your newest album, “Royal Traveller” is influenced by your upbringing, but as the name implies, you do a lot of traveling. What is it like being a touring musician?

Answer: Traveling has made up the fabric of my life. That combination of traveling and music started when I was a little kid. It was very natural for me – to just get in the car.

The term “Royal Traveller” comes from the handle of a suitcase I bought a couple of years ago at a thrift store. I opened it up, and it smelled like a perfume my mom used to wear and I knew it was meant to be mine. So I carried it around.

My life is a series of trips and has always been. One tired day, after touring the East Coast during the blizzards of 2015, I had to get up and drive for one more day back to West Virginia. I was driving roads I was familiar with. I was alone and feeling very weary. It was then that I saw the words on the handle of the handle of that vintage suitcase, and they hit me in a way that morning that they hadn’t hit me before. It kind of made me laugh in that moment, but it made me think I’m a royal traveler. We all are royal travelers. I knew it was a song that needed to be written.

That song is pretty much an anthem for me at this point in my life. I dug in deep about how I got here from so long ago. I also think about how it, not just for me, but the traveling part of it … people get up every day and whether they’re leaving their community or town or wherever to travel great distances or not … we all face things we might not want to face, but just being there is a challenge. And we all travel to get there.

Q: How has the bluegrass genre changed since you were first introduced to the scene?

A: I think what I see today is that bluegrass is more of an influencer on music than it ever has been. Other musics have always been an influence on bluegrass, but the differences that I see today verses when I was much younger is that the genre has broadened in its acceptance … gender, sexuality, race … the stereotypical idea of what bluegrass was at some point, those walls are being brought down.

I think that sense of innovation we see today has always been existent since the beginning. That’s what bluegrass is about. It’s about innovation and the artists that were interested in bringing together the interests of their time. The only difference today is that the artists are being influenced by new sounds. And, of course, the fact that we’re all connected by the Internet. We can all have all the information all the time.

Q: Speaking of women who are breaking down barriers, your song, “Swept Away” is a tribute to the first five women who have won IBMA awards. How have women influenced bluegrass?

A: The first women that come to mind for me specifically Claire Lynch and Lynn Morris. Folks I’ve known for over 12 years. Not just musically … someone I’ve watched break down barriers in bluegrass. Katie Lour was a great singer and influencer who had her band. Cheryl White and Ruth McClain were other women bass players. All of these women I saw, and I wanted to do something similar.

To be honest, personally, I never saw a woman do what I’m doing now. Being a woman bass player fronting her own bluegrass band … even the idea of a bass player fronting a band. But to be honest, I never saw a woman doing what I’m doing now – playing bass and fronting her own band.

Q: You’ve preformed with Steve Martin and Martin Short this year. What was that experience like?

A: Oh my gosh. That was really unbelievable. It was the coolest thing. The true gift was getting to watch the two of them interact– both while doing the show and earlier at rehearsal and during sound check. First of all, they’re much older men, but they’re both thriving and they’re both in, probably, the prime of their performance life. Creativity is just bursting out of them, so this just lies to waste any idea that you get to a point where you can’t do this anymore.

To be standing there watching them come up with stuff together, the respect and mutual admiration. It was a beautiful thing.

Q: Do you think you’ll do any recordings with them?

A: [Laughing] I don’t have any plans on recording with him just now … I don’t know what he has in mind…

Q: How did you connect with the quartet you are working with for this tour? David Benedict on mandolin, Ben Garnett on guitar, and Avery Merrit on fiddle?

A: What I love about this group of guys that I’m touring with right now is their knowledge of, not just bluegrass, but a lot of musics that cross over and cross-fertilize with bluegrass. My guitar player has a really strong jazz background, but he’s well versed in bluegrass. My fiddle player also cross-pollinate into the jazz world. The same goes for David on mandolin.

They’ve done the work of understanding the tradition of bluegrass while becoming adept on their own instruments … meaning they’ve allowed different genres to influence their playing. It gives us the freedom to play something that could be traditional, but that also sounds very strongly of jazz.