Fiddle Fuel: Two-Time IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year Bronwyn Keith-Hynes Takes Center Stage
By Stratton Lawrence
Every October, the International Bluegrass Music Association issues an award to the Fiddle Player of the Year. One home in Nashville has eight of those awards. Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, best known for her three years with Molly Tuttle’s band, Golden Highway, has two, and her husband, Jason Carter, has six.
It’s a light-hearted but elite-level spousal competition for the newlyweds, each of whom aligned their 2024 wedding (at the Grand Ole Opry) with decisions to set out on solo careers. Carter left his 33-year post with the Del McCoury Band to debut his own group, while Keith-Hynes released I Built a World, an 11-song collection that garnered its own best bluegrass album Grammy nomination last year.
Since Golden Highway disbanded last summer, Keith-Hynes has embraced her new solo career. “I’m about a year in, and I’m not broke yet, so I feel like it’s off to a pretty good start,” she laughs, on the phone from Nashville between tour stretches. “I’ve been every iteration of a touring musician—a band that’s a democracy, a side person, and now a front person. I never thought I would want to do that, but the more I did, I got bitten by the bug.”
Carter also saw immediate success. His 2025 album with Michael Cleveland (the only fiddle player with more IBMA awards than Carter, at 12) is up for a Grammy this year.
“We both stepped off the rails at the same time into this new zone,” says Keith-Hynes. “We support each other and know what we’re each going through, but it’s also like, ‘Damn. Did we really have to both do this in the same year?’”
Launching solo projects has changed their home lives, as well. There’s less time for fishing trips, the backdrop of many of their first dates together. “We did a lot of fishing on lakes and rivers around here, and we had a lot of fish fries,” says Keith-Hynes of early days as a couple harvesting a cooler of striper and crappie.
An evening at home together now is often fueled by a crockpot stew, and increasingly, by gourmet mushrooms from Gowin Valley Farms in Chattanooga. “They have kits to grow pink oyster mushrooms and Lion’s mane,” says Keith-Hynes. “I’d never tried fancy mushrooms before and now we’re really into them. They make almost any dish better.”
When they’re dining out, it’s often at Mas Tacos Por Favor, a Nashville staple, or Lockeland Table for a special occasion. Their favorite out-of-the-way spot is Green Chili Indian Restaurant, under a highway overpass in Goodlettsville.
“We don’t eat out much in Nashville because we’re at restaurants all the time on the road, but Green Chili might be the best Indian food I’ve had anywhere,” she says.
Bronwyn first discovered her gluten intolerance as a teenager, a trait shared with her father. It’s been a complication for her as a touring musician, which she’s accommodated with a well-packed snack bag.
“I always make sure I have something on hand,” she says. “Sometimes you’re at a festival and all they have backstage is pizza, so I’m careful to always bring fruit, jerky, nuts, that kind of stuff. I went through a big energy bar phase, but then I ate so many I don’t think I can ever eat another.”
An Original Second Act
Keith-Hynes' next album will be even more personal than her last. While I Built a World drew upon Nashville songwriters in her network, her next collection—in overdubs with Jerry Douglas when we spoke—features her own original songs.
“I realized that if I’m going to be a solo artist, I need my own songs, so that’s been my main focus,” says Keith-Hynes. “Songwriting is a whole new skill to learn. I almost felt like I was in college again.”
That’s appropriate, given that her days at Berklee College of Music coincided with other burgeoning names in bluegrass, including Sierra Hull, John Mailander, and Molly Tuttle.
“The house parties were crazy,” she recalls. “There’d be a different jam in each bedroom, with old-time in one room, swing in another, Celtic in the next.”
Keith-Hynes' roots growing up in Vermont and then Charlottesville, Virginia, were in Celtic music, but at a fiddle camp as a teenager, she realized that bluegrass let her improvise freely, unlike the more repeated forms of Irish fiddle tunes.
Her new album will be released later in 2026 and features many of the musicians she’s played with in Boston, Nashville, and at festivals around the country. Flatpicking guitarist Bryan Sutton plays on most songs, and Darrell Scott and Lindsey Lou sing harmonies.
“It’s kind of nerve-wracking,” she says of playing her own songs. “You’re always hoping that it’s good enough, because it feels more personal.”
That’s true at home. When a small fight with Jason provided lyrical fodder, they realized that an inconsequential disagreement was now immortalized.
“No relationship is without its ups and downs, but not every couple has one person write a song about it and put it on an album, and now you’ve got to talk about it years later,” says Keith-Hynes. “He’s a good sport about it.”
Still, she says, it might help if the IBMA started allowing ties for Fiddle Player of the Year.
