Rebecca Frazier’s lifelong journey between mountains and coastal waters is the backdrop for her flagship album releasing Sept. 13 on Compass Records, BOARDING WINDOWS IN PARADISE, a tour de force of bluegrass and acoustic roots music which celebrates the here and now. Frazier’s compelling original songs range from hard driving to thoughtful emotive folk, and her bluegrass interpretations of diverse classics from Madonna to Uncle Dave Macon fill out the album in a fine-tuned way that only experienced musicians can deliver. A bevy of acoustic A-listers such as Béla Fleck (banjo), Sam Bush (mandolin), and Stuart Duncan (fiddle) flavor her music with the wisdom and grace she was striving to present as she captured life’s juxtapositions with her new music.
Frazier’s bond with GRAMMY-winning producer Bill Wolf, known for working with Tony Rice and Grateful Dead, was the catalyst for the significant caliber of musicianship on the album. Her guitar instrumentals such as “Cantie Reel” give a tip of the hat to guitar legends Tony Rice and the late jazz guitarist Emily Remler, about whom Frazier wrote her Honors Senior Thesis at the University of Michigan.
A bluegrass luminary herself, Frazier gained notoriety as the first woman to grace the cover of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine. In 2018, the Virginia native also became the first woman to earn a Guitar Performer of the Year nomination from the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America (SPBGMA), an honor she received again in 2019. Frazier is widely known for her work with Colorado-based outfit Hit & Run, the only band to score the bluegrass-world trifecta of winning Rockygrass, Telluride and SPBGMA festival band competitions. A single mom of two teens, Frazier continues to divide her time between Nashville and Virginia. Like generations of her ancestors who have lived along Virginia’s coast, she, too, has weathered life’s hurricanes and battering winds — and witnessed its luminous beauty — and she wanted to capture that juxtaposition with her new music.