Rayna Gellert grew up in a musical family, and has spent most her life immersed in the sounds of rural stringband music, heartfelt gospel, and old ballads.  She took up old-time fiddle in 1994 when she moved to North Carolina to attend Warren Wilson College. Since then, she has earned prizes at the Appalachian String Band Music Festival at Clifftop, WV, and recorded two popular and influential CDs of fiddle tunes: Ways of the World and Starch and Iron with Susie Goehring. She has toured as an accompanist to dancers (with Rhythm in Shoes, the Green Grass Cloggers, and Ira Bernstein), performed as a guitarist and singer with the popular stringband The Freight Hoppers, and was featured as an artist representing Appalachia at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 2003.  She has recorded with a host of musicians in a variety of styles (most recently Sara Watkins, Tyler Ramsey, and Toubab Krewe).  Since 2003 Rayna has performed on hundreds of concert and festival stages around the US and the UK with Uncle Earl, a stringband that performs a mix of traditional and contemporary music.  Their second Rounder release, Waterloo, Tennessee (produced by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin), was awarded “Album of the Year” for 2007 by the Folk Alliance.  When not on the road, Rayna Gellert lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where she plays traditional fiddle music, writes songs inspired by old-time melodies, and scours archives for images of imprisoned suffragettes.