On her latest album, “Royal Traveller,” Missy Raines explored the bittersweet human condition as it relates to mortality and loss.

“All the songs do have a theme and a common line in my mind,” she said. “Many were co-written by me and they were all handpicked to create a theme of endurance, tenacity and ‘I am here. This is the road I have picked.’”

In the past few years, Raines has experienced the death of loved ones, she said, which led her down an introspective path.

“I’ve had a little bit of a lion’s share of loss these last few years with extended family members and have been trying to process that. That is what this album is about.”

The album also explores the choices we make along the pathway of life, Raines said.

“Sometimes we are thinking there is going to be a different outcome, but the outcome that ends up happening is better than you could imagine.”

Raines and her trio will perform selections from the album as well as new material during an upcoming performance at Rainshadow Recording at Fort Worden.

“I am always looking ahead,” she said. “The record has been out so now I am already thinking about the next thing. We have got some new stuff. Both the guys I am touring with, Ben Garnett and Georege Jackson, are both individually great artists in their own right and write great music, so we will be featuring them as well.”

Everett Moran, owner of Rainshadow Recording, said Raines is at the zenith of her craft.

“A perennial honoree by the International Bluegrass Music Association as Bassist of the year, Missy Raines has clearly risen to the top of her class. It should not be a surprise, then, that she is surrounded by other fine musicians Ben Garnett and George Jackson who do not disappoint.”

After studying jazz performance at the prestigious University of North Texas, Garnett moved to Nashville, home base for so many exceptional players, Moran said.

“To be noticed there, one has to be a first rate player and Garnett is among the best.”

Music is in George Jackson’s blood, having grown up in a family of performers in Christchurch, New Zealand, Moran said.

“Like Garnett, Jackson also studied jazz before moving to Nashville to pursue his love of old time music.”

Growing up Appalachian

Raines grew up in a small rural town called Short Gap, West Virginia, and was exposed to bluegrass music from an early age.

“It was only about 150 miles from Washington D.C., which sounds like it would not be the hotbed of bluegrass, but when I was growing up in the 70s it really was. There was a lot of music in that tri-state area of Virginia, Maryland, D.C., and West Virginia.”

Short Gap was an economically depressed factory and stripmining town, Raines said.

“For a while there, companies found it easier to be there because of lax laws. We had glass companies and tire factories. Overall it was a pretty depressed area. These days it is coming back a little bit. Tourism has gotten big in the area. It is a stunningly beautiful part of the world.”

On her latest album, Raines said she wrote a song about the folks that moved away to find a better life and those that stayed behind.

“Some people made choices to stay there and stick it through even though the economy was challenging, and while other folks made the choice to leave and find better work elsewhere but left loved ones behind and the costs that come with that.”

When she was a child, Raines’ family was one that stuck it out. Her parents found joy in bluegrass.

“My parents were already into bluegrass music before I was born and they didn’t really play themselves, but that was their pastime,” Raines said. “They had lots of friends who played so I grew up going to jam sessions at neighbor’s houses.”

Raines began playing a guitar after getting bit by the bluegrass bug, and switched over to bass after her father brought one home.

“When you are young and interested in music, and a new instrument comes into the house, you have to play it,” Raines said. “Curiosity overtakes. I just picked it up and fell in love with it.”

That love has led to seven International Bluegrass Music Association awards for Bass Player of the Year. She received the first award in 1998, and she went on to win the title repeatedly for the next several years.

“The biggest thing for me was that I was the first woman to win that award,” Raines said. “That was really powerful for me to help break that ‘grass’ ceiling, so to speak.”

Raines enjoys playing with other women in her field who have also achieved such groundbreaking firsts, including Alison Brown, who was the first woman to receive the IBMA for Banjo Instrumentalist of the Year.

“The record that I have out now was produced by Alison Brown,” Raines said. “She also co-owns Compass Records and has done all of these fabulous things. This album doesn’t feature just the trio. It actually features me in a setting with lots of different guests on every song. “There are tons of folks on there and every song is a little bit different in terms of production and guests.”

When not with her trio, Raines performs with the First Ladies of Bluegrass, a supergroup consisting of Raines on bass, Becky Buller on fiddle, Sierra Hull on mandolin, Molly Tuttle on guitar, and Brown on banjo.

“We are all the first women to have won our individual instrument categories within in the IBMA,” Raines said. “Brown got us together for this album and as a result we did some video for the album on a song and word got out. Since then over the last couple of years we have done a few gigs. I call it a sometimes band.”