hiposphere

not quite a sidebar, not really a popup: TIME OUT NEW YORK!

OK, it’s a thrill to play New York, even better to play a free concert with old pals the Claire Lynch Band on the bill. (Tomorrow, all you Nuevo Yorkers up there, 6 sharp, Madison Square Park!)

But it’s also sweet to get a nod from tres hip Time Out New York, let alone to pop right out of their listings.

Come get your daily recommended amount of shake’n’howdy (hard to find in densely populated urban areas), great songs and sophisticated roots.

Burning Ears, pt. 9

Surprised we have ears left and not just piles of ashes on our shoulders. OK, scratch that mental image, and in its place, here’s a nice nod from the Savannah Morning News from a few weeks back:

Missy Raines & the New Hip perform at Randy Wood Guitars Friday

For Missy Raines, starting a band, and putting her name out front, was like taking a giant step out of her comfort zone.

The seven-time winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Bass Player of the Year award, Raines had backed up singer/songwriter Claire Lynch for more than a decade, worked as half of a lauded duo with guitarist Jim Hurst, and joined forces in various combinations with the best players in the business.

“Those opportunities just came around,” Raines says in a phone interview from her home in Nashville. “When I look back, I realize those were absolutely the stepping stones I needed to get to where I am.”

Being a bandleader, she says, “was something I’ve always wanted, but I guess I had a bit of a journey to go through to get there. I kept having all these opportunities to work as a bass player, as a member of someone else’s team, that I couldn’t refuse.”

The band, Missy Raines & the New Hip, is now a reality. They’ll stop in at the Pickin’ Parlor at Randy Wood Guitars on Friday night.

The New Hip is, most emphatically, not a bluegrass band. For one thing, there’s sometimes a drummer, and the tasty guitar solos are played on electric guitar as much as acoustic.

The band, which also includes mandolin, lap steel and percussion, is reminiscent of the boundary-busting “new acoustic” groups like the Punch Brothers - in fact, New Hip guitarist Michael Witcher’s brother Gabe is a member of that aggregate (perhaps you saw them last month at the Savannah Music Festival?).

This music has the lissome jazz feel of swinging “newgrass” music (think early Flecktones), sweet harmony vocals to balance the complex instrumental tunes, and unusual but effective combinations of instruments (mandolin and Hammond B3 organ, for example).

The rule, Raines explains, is simple: There are no rules.

“It’s like cooking. If you love all these different flavors, then a lot of times a few of your most favorite things can come together and make these fabulous dishes that you might not have ever thought would go together.”

As for her band’s moniker, yes indeed it’s a sly reference to Miles Davis’ classic jazz record “Birth of the Cool.”

It’s also grounded in the here and now. Raines, who suffered from hereditary hip problems, finally underwent the total hip-replacement surgery she’d been putting off for years. The pain, she explains, was getting to be too much.

And so: Missy Raines has a new hip.

“It’s like I’ve been reborn,” she laughs. “And that’s the beautiful thing about the whole name thing: At first I thought people were going to think I’m insane for naming this band this, but it made me laugh.

“Plus, it was such a new lease on life because the old hip was starting to affect the quality of my life - now I’m strong, and I can do anything I want again. I thought ‘What better way to say it to the world?’”

Burning Ears, pt. 8: Stockton Record

Tony Sauro of the Stockton Record caught Missy during the California tour (going on RIGHT NOW!) and got her to open up a bit about the new way the New Hip plays music:

“I just would like to be able to pull in as many different listeners as I can from a lot of different worlds. I don’t wanna leave bluegrass behind. I also really like to cross-pollinate. In the jazz world, I know we’re not playing real jazz. I totally get it. For purists, it’s not really jazz.

“I like the whole idea of mixing people up. So I can see dyed-in-the-wool bluegrass people right next to Windham Hill jazzers. They realize what they have in common is the music, and that makes me happy.”

You can read the whole deal here, and you can find Missy and the New Hip on tour here.

Farewell, Kitty Boy

If you hadn’t met KB, you’ve probably heard us talk about him.  He was extremely friendly and very social, he never met a human he didn’t like.   It was another story when it came to other cats though, and he pretty much hated every other cat we ever took in over the years except for 2… Stinky and Beagle.  The three of them had a special bond and with them, we had ‘perfect cat harmony’.   Now there is a huge part missing to that harmony.

KB was a big hunter in his day, and especially loved to bring me gifts like rabbits and snakes.  Even in his weakened condition he managed to bring yet another snake this season, an act of great affection on his part.   He was extremely vocal, a bit of a high talker and loved to walk on my computer when I was working.   He had the heart of a Klingon and the spirit of a lion.  Honor was very important to him.  A rare attribute for a cat…

We adopted KB about 15 years ago.  He was part of a litter of nearly full-grown cats that were left outside the shelter in the middle of the night.  His littermates were all black just like him.  We were told that there are superstitious folks who are afraid of all black cats and think they bring bad luck.   KB brought nothing but sunshine to us.  When we walked into the room to pick out a cat, he just walked right up to me, put his paws gently on my leg and introduced himself.   I was smitten.  

KB was truly one of the sweetest, most gentle kitties I’ve ever known.  I have found that most cats have a personality if you look for it, but KB really had flair about him. If he had been a person he would be like some strange hybrid of the Terminator and Maurice Chevalier.   He was the inspiration for Stop, Drop & Wiggle and everyone who met him, loved him.

Sweet dreams my big boy,
You will be sorely missed.

catching up with a Buffalo Gal

(This is an extended story from my email newsletter. Do you get the New Hip newsletter, with all the hip that’s fit to print? Don’t you want to? I stay up half the night sometimes working on this little devil timely, informative shoutout to friends and fans. -missy)

Speaking of heroes, I got to sing with the Nancy Josephson and her Angel Band!!  I’ve been a fan of Nancy Josephson ever since she headed up the trail-blazing Buffalo Gals back in the 70’s.  The Buffalo Gals were an all women bluegrass band with an enormous amount of talent.  They came across with an empowering ‘tude in what was a mostly all-male environment at the time.  Needless to say, they made a pretty big impact on one bass playing girl from West Virginia.  There are two other women from that band who I’m proud to call my friends, Carol Siegel and Martha Trachtenberg.

Check out this link and get a behind the scenes peek at us working up a song together at Merlefest. (Soon we’ll have footage of the performance later that night when the Angel Band rocked the house with us during the Midnight Jam.)

Next up Pagosa Springs

Dominick Leslie is who that is tearing up the mando in the new hip this tour. (We thought we overheard you asking.) And next stop is Pagosa Springs’ “Folk n Bluegrass Fest’, with sets on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Here’s hoping all you residents of the most geometrically significant region of these United States come out to hear what all the fuss is about.

Burning Ears, pt. 7

There are a handful of music centers in the States that seem to grow all kinds of great music. One we’ve been dying to bring the New Hip to is Colorado. Our dream comes true this week when we travel to Swallow Hill on Thursday and Pagosa Springs on Saturday.

Laura Spunky McGaughey interviewed Missy for the following article in the  Colorado Bluegrass Music Society’s Pow’r Pickin as well as her own blog, the Spunk Zone:

Get Hip with superstar bluegrass bassist Missy Raines at Swallow Hill
by Laura “Spunky” McGaughey
(Originally published in the June 2009 issue of Pow’r Pickin’ magazine, the official publication of the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society.)

A seven-time IBMA Bass Player of the Year Award winner, Missy Raines is a bass superstar. She launched her career playing with the experimental bluegrass band, Cloud Valley, going on to tour the country with masters such as Eddie and Martha Adcock, Kenny Baker, Josh Graves, and Jesse McReynolds. From there she joined Claire Lynch’s popular Front Porch Band, and went on to develop a successful duo with band mate, Jim Hurst.

Now she’s taking the helm of own band, The New Hip, a band that fuses bluegrass virtuosity with jazz grooves. They will make their Denver debut at Swallow Hill on Thursday, June 4 at 8 p.m., and the band just released their debut on Compass records, Inside Out.

“It took time finding the right people,” Raines tells me on the phone from her home in Nashville. “I had a lot of ideas in my head and wanted to find a lot of different folks from whom we could have a good song pull,” she explains. The project she envisioned was one of pure collaboration: a mixture of hot new talent who could all write new, fresh material.

The time involved has paid off, for she has assembled a unique cast of players. The music is rich and deep, filled with beauty and eloquence, and a stirring expressiveness. Inside Out was produced by Raines, members of The New Hip and Ben Surratt. It also features special guest appearances by Matt Flinner (mandolin), John R. Burr (piano) and Megan McCormick (guitar, vocals). The New Hip members on the album are Ethan Ballinger (mandolin), Michael Witcher (resonator guitar), Lee Holland (drums) and Dillon Hodges (guitar).

For the performance at Swallow Hill, the lineup is slightly different, as Ballinger has moved from playing mandolin to guitar, replacing Hodges. “He’s phenomenal on guitar,” Raines notes. Travis Burch takes over on mandolin and Robert Crawford will take the spot on drums. Witcher, whose credits have included playing with everyone from Laurie Lewis to Tyler Hilton and Dolly Parton, is still with the band on resonator guitar.

The New Hip’s name is a play on words inspired by real life. “I wanted the name to reflect the music as much as it could—new and fresh, with jazz sensibilities,” Raines says. “I thought, ‘This band is going to be hip.’ And I had a hip replacement surgery to correct a birth defect earlier in my life that was really life-changing. It gave me mobility, a new lease on life, so I thought it would be fun to call it that: the new hip. It works both ways, whether you know the whole story or not.”

Bluegrass is all about innovation to Raines. Inspired by past role models like Bill Monroe, Raines is spurred on by what he did: taking elements of what is around him—in Monroe’s case, blues and early jazz players—and experimenting with them to create something new. “When I’m playing a jazzier piece, do I lose the essence of bluegrass? No,” she says. “It’s important to preserve the culture and tradition. It’s equally important to interpret sounds in your own, new way, taking the past and the present to make something different.”

Her unique trailblazing abilities have earned her many labels as being the best. For Raines, there simply can’t be a best. “I can name off 12 bass players I’d consider favorites, and that’s just to start. There can’t be a ‘best.’ Music is about affecting people at that moment and I’m gratified that what I have to offer has been recognized.”

And Raines never forgets the fans. “We (musicians) have the best job in the world and they’re the reason we can do that,” she says. Interacting with fans on a personal level is important to her and the band. They put work into personally responding to their own emails and maintaining their own online social networks, from blogging to MySpace and Facebook networking, and tweeting on Twitter. “I love playing to faces I recognize, to see those loyal fans, so personally responding to the fans is extremely important to us,” she smiles.

Opening the show for Missy Raines & The New Hip will be the Boston Boys featuring Sam Grisman. Tickets are available online at http://www.swallowhillmusic.org/, or at Swallow Hill’s box office at 71 East Yale Avenue, 303-777-1003. CBMS member tickets are for $12 advance, $15 day of show.