Bronwyn Keith-Hynes on 'I Built a World,' Bluegrass, Fiddle Playing, and Singing | CONTRARY WESTERN

After a week of snow and ice that shut Nashville down in early 2024, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes joined us up at Dee's Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison to share songs from her forthcoming album "I Built a World."

"Only time will tell if it was time well spent," she sang, flanked by her live band as the bartender started her side work for the day. Dierks Bentley, who sang with Bronwyn on the record cut of the Big Al Anderson song, “Trip Around the Sun,” is one of many country and bluegrass musicians to contribute to Bronwyn’s first album on which she’s sang lead vocals.

“Singing’s a different thing, and that’s something I’ve come at a lot later in life—so that’s an interesting mind game, especially the more I sing and put out this record,” Bronwyn said of the leap she’s taken at this point in her career and being asked about the relationship between fiddling, singing, and being an artist. “I’ve just identified as a fiddler for so long, it takes a little while to think about, ‘Okay, I can be a singer. I’ll sing. Now I sing. Am I an artist?’ Yeah, everyone’s an artist who plays music, so I’m an artist too. Singer. Artist. Fiddler.”

With a live band featuring Frank Evans on banjo, Frank Carter Rische on guitar, Reed Stutz on mandolin, Vickie Vaughn on bass—and, of course, Georgia the dog on the couch—Bronwyn would run through a few more songs, including “Riddle” by singer-songwriter and banjo player Brenna MacMillan and "Will You Ever Be Mine" by Reed Stutz, who accompanies Bronwyn on this live session.

“I Built a World” itself features a stacked lineup, featuring bluegrass greats Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas, Bronwyn’s buddy and bandleader Molly Tuttle, and fiancé Jason Carter, to name just a few. But it’s clear in talking to Bronwyn that collaborating with her bluegrass heroes and her contemporaries isn’t about album credits, it's about community. Community in Nashville, in the bluegrass scene, and at Dee’s, where she and the band would be taking the stage that evening, after a set by East Nash Grass, for the second evening of her first ever Nashville residency with the Madison Guild at Dee’s.

By the time the session was over the snow had started to melt, enough for us all to get all the way home. A few weeks later, Bronwyn would run on stage with Molly Tuttle, where the two received the Best Bluegrass Album Grammy for Molly’s record “City of Gold.” And, some weeks later, she announced her engagement to fellow fiddle player Jason Carter, himself a member of the Del McCoury Band. And now, as spring is here, Bronwyn is back on the road playing fiddle as a member of Molly Tuttle’s Golden Highway band, back in the flow state she shared with us, and back after time well spent.

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Director of Photography: Kip Kubin
Photographer and Colorist: Arlie Birket