With basses loaded, Raines hits one out of the park

Missy Raines jumped off the front porch without a safety net. Since then, she’s been soaring.
Pop “Inside Out,” the new CD by Raines and the New Hip, into your player and get ready to hear jazz one minute, bluegrass the next and remarkable musicianship, ensemble and timing throughout. 
But starting the kind of new band you’ve always dreamed of and collaborating with its members on exactly what you’ve always wanted to play means stepping outside your comfort zone. And for Raines, selected seven times as bass player of the year by the International Bluegrass Music Association, stepping out in faith meant bowing out of a lineup that meant a lot to her.
She performed with Claire Lynch’s Front Porch String Band from 1995 to 2000 and then again from 2005 to 2008, building strong friendships, forming a popular duo with band mate Jim Hurst and cranking out some top-notch music.
“It was hard to walk away from that band,” Raines said. “It was a bit scary there for a while.”
But the only way to make her own dream a reality was to go out there and give it a shot.
“If I could see it in my head — not to sound like a sound bite from a self-help seminar — if I could see it in the back of my mind, I could make it happen,” Raines said.
“My husband has been completely supportive of me and believed in it as much as I did. Believe me, there were times when I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ ’’
What she did was surround herself with skilled players who believed in her vision and wanted to be part of it. Ethan Ballinger plays mandolin and mandola; Michael Witcher brings resonator guitar, lap steel and vocals; and Dillon Hodges adds guitar and vocals.
“I feel incredibly fortunate to have players of this magnitude going out and being on this record and being committed to this project,” Raines said. “It’s a very collaborative effort.”
And a busy one, too.
“It has beena great year,” she said. “The CD has propelled us.” She calls her label, Compass Records, “a perfect match for us.”
On Sunday night, she’ll be playing the music she loves in a city she misses. Raines lived in Charlottesville for almost a decade.
“I have fond memories of everything about it,” Raines said of living in Charlottesville. “When my husband and I made the decision to move to Nashville, I hated it.”
She moved here to perform in Cloud Valley with her friend Bill Evans. That chance paid off handsomely, too, as Raines first began to make a name for herself in the experimental bluegrass band.
“Bill is the reason I moved to Charlottesville,” she said. “It was the first real professional gig I took after high school.”
That’s why Sunday’s show is a double homecoming of sorts, because it’s a co-bill with Evans and Megan Lynch.