In Concert: Missy Raines and the New Hip
Author: Wyatt Sanderman Day | Published: June 21st, 2010
Rhythmic Rhapsody: Missy Raines and the Boys Get the House Rock'n
Missy Raines brought her new band, Missy Raines and the New Hip, to Washington, North Carolina on October 23, 2009, to play the Turnage Theater, and they really just blew me and the sparse crowd frequenting the Turnage Theater, into the stratosphere of rhythmic satisfaction. Some of you may query: Who is Missy Raines and the New Hip?
Missy and the boys take stage.
Understandably, I did not know of their existence before that fated Friday night when we were introduced. Now it is Sunday morning, I am having my strong morning coffee, with plenty of half and half and sugar, and me, Missy and the boys are having a fine symbiotic moment - their music, my moment. At every Turnage Theater production, when I enjoy the music, I purchase their most recent Compact Disc. It often brings back the varying, vintage moments of their show. Presently as I scribe these thoughts, Missy and her New Hip is reprising their show, and it is a perfect clarion memory, beautiful beginning to a bright breezy day.
Missy Raines and the New Hip, from left to right: Ethan Ballinger, Missy Raines, Rob Crawford, Michael Witcher, Dominick Leslie.
From the way this band makes me feel to the way this band makes you feel is who they are, and I will define that experience to the extent that I am capable. Sincerely, they made me feel good. Was it their well crafted compositions, or the presentation of their well honed musicianship, which catapulted mine and this audience's experience to transcend the polite reception of an aspiring group of young musicians to that of acknowledging the presence of these exceptional talents? Probably a great deal of both.
This ensemble is so talented in the wings with its young men playing from my left to right: Ethan Ballinger on acoustic
guitar and electric guitar (the big ones like the used in the early 1960's, Michael Witcher on the dobro and on the electric guitar, which he mostly plays on his lap with the metal fret slider, and Dominick Leslie on the mandolin. As is the method of good bluegrass bands, which Missy Raines and the New Hip is at their core, every one of these young men must play lead; on some songs two or all three play lead. Each are similar in their level of proficiency, however, their styles, and the instruments they play are quite dissimilar. The one standard for each of these performers is the unique tones that they strike from these customary bluegrass instruments.
Another constant for this fine amalgamation of musicians is the solid bass line and accompanying percussion / drums respectively supplied by Mother Missy and Rob Crawford. Missy has such a fundamental grasp of what constitutes a firm foundation to the fancy music this band makes, that just takes solid control of that direction. Rob Crawford, who is reasonably new to the group, has such a sincere sense of where Missy wants to go in her complex bass rifts that he complements well her hard riffs, which lays straight the rigid backbone of this progressive bluegrass band. The young men in the wings need only to shine through their talented leads to make this music work.
Missy, with Rob's help, laying it down hard, laying it down right.
And oh, does it work so well. And as much as I would like to speak authoritatively in favor of these talented musicians,
I can only tell you what I know from I saw and heard that first concert, and now that I have heard again with their newest CD, "Inside Out." I have listened to it thrice on this wonderful Sunday, and I do believe I am enjoying it more each time I listen to it. It is mostly a collection of ten tunes, exploring and therefore explaining a great diversity in their message of ever flowing notes that seem to wash easily, and so completely over and about me. As I discuss the merits of this fine catalogue of their latest tunes, for I do believe they played every song in the concert, I will give you a short picture of their show last Friday night. Maybe the collection of concert pictures that I took from my perfect balcony seat will give some proper exposure this new discovery, that I hope you may discover as well.
This article provided courtesy of our sister site: Beaufort County Now
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