Bronwyn

The fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes is a crucial component of a cohort expanding the audience, image, and sound of bluegrass, alongside the likes of Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull and Sturgill Simpson. A longtime band member who has played with greats like Peter Rowan and Tony Trischka and won a Grammy as part of Tuttle’s Golden Highway, Keith-Hynes has steadily crept toward the spotlight—a 2021 debut where friends like Tim O’Brien and Sarah Jarosz sang as she played, a 2024 follow-up where she finally sang songs written by others, and, at last, a great 2026 album, Rattlin’ Bones, where she co-wrote every song she sings. These tunes document her progression, from the tender but tough leaving-home anthem “Virginia Gal” to her heady tale of domestic dreaming, “Rainbow Trout.” She extols the modern outlaws of Nashville with “Gallatin Road” and even dabbles with chemically opening the doors of perception on closer “Golden Hour Dream.”

The path to get here has been an unpredictable one for Keith-Hynes. Born to an Irish father, she picked up the violin early and, while playing classical music, gravitated toward the Celtic fiddle tunes her teacher showed her. She was a homeschooled kid, so this music became a social venture, eventually leading her to Berklee, alongside the likes of Tuttle, Hull, and John Mailander. Keith-Hynes recognized that bluegrass was her passion and devoted herself to learning its language, creating and conquering spreadsheets of songs she needed to know while jamming with people who had played this stuff much of their lives. Keith-Hynes now leads a mighty band of her own and has been known to take bluegrass turns on Phish and Fleetwood Mac and rip solos with the Dave Matthews Band. Bluegrass taught Keith-Hynes to be herself, and she is, in turn, taking it somewhere new.