Champion fiddler got her start in Irish music. Now she’s wowing bluegrass world

In mid-March, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes found herself on the open seas as part of the Cayamo cruise. The week-long trek to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic allowed the champion bluegrass fiddler to be part of an all-star performance roster that included Jason Isbell, Patty Griffin, Kathleen Edwards and Rodney Crowell, among others.

Before heading home, though, there was a stop at the New Orleans Bayou Bluegrass Festival and a show that teamed her with another honored fiddle great, husband Jason Carter.

Speaking on one of the few free days before a co-billed tour with banjoist and former bandmate Kyle Tuttle commences with a Lexington stop at The Burl on April 1, Keith-Hynes is pausing long enough to reflect on a young musical career already loaded with accomplishments — including a Grammy-winning tenure with Tuttle as a member of Molly Tuttle’s popular Golden Highway band (Molly and Kyle are not related) — and a look ahead to working life as solo artist that is heightening her skills as vocalist, songwriter and bandleader.

“I just try to keep growing as an artist,” Keith-Hynes said. “Because what else is there to do?”

Working with Molly Tuttle’s Golden Highway

For many, introductions to Keith-Hynes’ musicianship came through her tenure with Molly Tuttle. The two albums cut with Golden Highway honed Tuttle’s vast stylistic voice to more traditionally leaning bluegrass. Both records (“Crooked Tree” and “City of Gold”) won Grammys and prompted gigs at numerous major music festivals, including a 2023 stop here in Lexington at Railbird.

“We all had so much fun,” Keith-Hynes said of her Golden Highway run. “I don’t know if anybody knew how big it was going to get or how quickly. Right away we had great chemistry in the band and I think that translated. We got to play just a bazillion cool gigs. It was a lot of firsts for all of us — first time being on a tour bus and playing for these crowds and first time getting to meet some of these artists. Great memories I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.”

Sitting in with Dave Matthews

Among those memories: The opportunity in 2023 to meet and perform at The Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Wash., with a high-profile artist who just happened to hail from Keith-Hynes’ hometown of Charlottesville, Va. — namely, Dave Matthews.

“That was the only time I’ve gotten to play with him, but it was incredible,” she said. “When Molly got that gig, I didn’t know we were going to play with him until the morning of. The morning of, his manager contacted her manager and was like, ‘Do Bronwyn and Molly want to sit in on a couple of songs?’ So the whole day I was frantically trying to learn these songs.

“That was the most people I had ever played in front of at that point. It was 15 to 20,000 or something. I just remembered thinking this was a sink-or-swim moment. There was no time to be nervous, so I just went out there with tons of energy. As soon as I started playing, the energy from that crowd just lifted me up. I had never felt that much energy before from a crowd that large. It felt like you could do no wrong.”

Going out on her own

But Tuttle’s 2025 decision to move to a more pop-directed sound meant forming a new band and dissolving Golden Highway. Already eager to develop her own music, Keith-Hynes said the timing of Tuttle’s career shift could not have been better. The fiddler had already developed a taste for performing on her own with a Monday night residency at the Madison, Tenn. bar/music haunt Dee’s Lounge.

“When Molly told us she was going to change her sound and that Golden Highway was going to stop. I was kind of like, ‘This is perfect timing because I’ve been having so much fun doing these local gigs.’ I could have tried to look for another side person gig, but I thought I’d rather give it a try at playing something for myself.”

Solo album backed by Dierks Bentley, etc.

Another step to her own career, one that preceded the Golden Highway split, was the release of a 2024 solo album titled “I Built a World.” The record placed Keith-Hynes front and center as a vocalist for the first time. But she had plenty of world-class back-up from country/bluegrass star Dierks Bentley, dobro great Jerry Douglas (who co-produced the two Golden Highway records), guitarist Bryan Sutton, vocalist Dudley Connell, husband Carter and more.

“I was just so honored these people would consider playing on my record,” Keith-Hynes said. “Dierks Bentley was one of the first people I heard in the country and bluegrass world. I heard his ‘Up on the Ridge’ album when I was a teenager. That’s one of the things that drew me to bluegrass. I didn’t really know what bluegrass was until somebody made me a mixtape that had him on it.”

Wait a minute. One of the bolder new generation voices in bluegrass was unfamiliar with the genre until she heard Dierks Bentley on a mixtape?

“When I was growing up, the first music I was exposed to was Celtic music. I started out when I was three playing classical Suzuki like a lot of kids do when their parents first give violin lessons. But my Suzuki teacher would teach me fiddle tunes, kind of standard American fiddle tunes, when I was three to five. I was really into that. I would practice those a lot more than I would the classical pieces. After a couple years, my parents got me lessons from a teacher who was a Cape Breton fiddler. That’s when I really started getting passionate about it.

“From there, I got into Irish fiddling and that was really my identity up through being a teenager. As a teenager, I would go to these fiddle camps where I heard some different fiddle styles like bluegrass. That’s kind of where I started getting interested in that. Then I got the mixtape with Dierks, Alison Krauss and Union Station, people like that. But it’s all connected, like Celtic is definitely an influence on bluegrass.”

Fiddle Player of the Year — twice

From there, one step of a career path led to another – studies at the Berklee College of Music (where Keith-Hynes met numerous bluegrass contemporaries, including both Tuttles), honors in 2021 and 2022 from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) as Fiddle Player of the Year, the Grammy-winning tenure with Molly Tuttle, a surprise Grammy nomination for “I Built a World” (“I put the record out myself without a label or anything, so the nomination was totally unexpected”), a new album now in the mixing stages due out later in 2026, a co-billed show at The Burl with Kyle Tuttle and a home life with Carter, the esteemed fiddler emeritus of The Del McCoury Band.

“Jason has always been one of my favorite fiddlers since long before we were together. To get to play fiddles around the house regularly, ask his opinions and have him do the same thing... it’s great. It’s just cool to have somebody in on the same wavelength.”

Bronwyn Keith-Hynes/Kyle Tuttle

When: 8 p.m. April 1

Where: The Burl, 375 Thompson Rd.

Tickets: $18

Online: theburlky.com